- Protect people being targeted
- Defend existing institutions
- Envision what happens after Trump
- Strategize forms of resistance
The authors offer several alternatives for each category, presumably not intended to be exhaustive. They favor national networks of all these options, but recognize that national networks are made out of local chapters, so a local focus is also valid. And they believe that whether our democracy survives will depend on whether the resistance groups and the non-resistance opposition can join forces when the ultimate showdown occur. And they assume that make-or-break moment will happen before the semi-quincentennial -- July 4, 2026, a date less than a week away!
Thinking it over I am not sure there is a single make-or-break moment. Rather, there may be times when democracy fails or live to fight another say. The authors 
implausibly propose a make-or-break moment over attempts to shut down electric vehicles. And they optimistically assume that this one dramatic defeat will break Trump's power. I think that our democracy really has survived one potentially fatal moment -- when Trump considered sending the Army into Minneapolis but ultimately backed down in the face of public outrage. That convinced Trump to stop dramatic immigration blitzes and to get ICE off the front pages, which is all fine and good, but it is not the end of our peril by any means.*
But it is the other scenario, the attempt to stay in power after the 2028 election that I can't let go of.
It is not so far from my own fantasy on that score. My fantasy goes something like this. The Democrat wins the election for President in 2028. Trump orders the military to seize the ballot boxes. The military refuses the unlawful order. The Pentagon effectively goes on sit-down strike. He gives similar orders to the Department of Justice. The DOJ also goes on sit-down strike. Then he gives the order to ICE and Border Patrol. We all know they won't refuse. But they are just not numerous to subjugate a country of over 300 million. People turn out in the streets in mass. Democratic governors call out the National Guard to protect ballot boxes, and then to protect the state capitols as they certify the results. Congress does not dare set foot in Washington, DC, so the Governor of Maryland offers the Maryland capitol and calls out the Maryland National Guard to protect Congress. Neighboring states send in their National Guards, and huge crowds turn out. Congress certifies the Democrat. The Democrat names Secretaries of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security and heads of ICE and Border Patrol ahead of his inauguration. The Senate hastens to confirm. On January 20, under the protection of the National Guard of several states and the crowds in the street, the Democrat is sworn in as President. His heads of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, ICE, and Border Patrol are sworn in immediately after. The President orders ICE and Border Patrol to stand down, and orders the Army and federal police to stand up if Trump attempts to stay in power. Trump flees. I would want this to happen because the necessary show of force is easy for Trump's supporters to portray as a coup, but at least it has a satisfying finality and ends in Trump's defeat.
But that is over two years away. I agree with the authors that out democracy is unlikely to survive two more years of Trump's unchecked power. The authors' chronology just doesn't work. If you don't join the resistance Trump consolidates power by July 4, 2026. How is that supposed to work?
But it can be made to work if instead of an attempt to rig the 2028 election, we see an attempt to rig the 2026 midterms. The midterms rate a single mention in the book -- something you worry about if you decide to protect elections. But the attempt to steal the midterms -- through gerrymandering, the SAVE Act, executive orders on mail-in ballots, and truly alarming developments. And we are in the home stretch now, with the midterm just over four months away. The attempt will undoubtedly intensive over the next four months. We don't know yet whether it will succeed, much less what Trump will do if the attempt fails.
The chronology for What if Trump Wins works much better if it is about an attempt to rig the midterms. The resistance can approach the non-resistance early in 2026 with warnings of such a plan. If the non-resistance declines to join forces, we could have the resistance crushed by July 4, the rigged election go through, and Trump end the last embers of independence in Congress and use the same mechanism of rigging elections to rig the 2028 elections and all elections in the future. It seems all too plausible.
The problem is what if we defeat the attempt? Then what? As with ICE backing down in Minnesota, it will not be the decisive triumph of democracy. It will just mean that democracy lives to fight another day.
As for What if Trump Wins, well, maybe they could hold onto hope that the failed coup will reduce Trump to a lame duck, even if he stays in power. I wish I could be so optimistic.
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*I expect immigration to be back on the front pages soon if ICE seriously attempts mass deportations of Haitians.
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