One Year In: Building our Post-Trump Future

January 28th, 2026

A year on, the anger makes sense. Like many of you, we are disgusted and disturbed by the actions of this administration.

ICE raids, mass detention, and open threats against other countries aren’t just policy disagreements, they are authoritarian moves that require resistance. Naming that clearly matters.

In addition to resistance today, we need a strategy for winning the future tomorrow.

Trumpism didn’t appear out of nowhere  and if we don’t change the conditions that produced it, it will return, even if Donald Trump himself doesn’t.

The economic conditions for many working Americans is grim: 

• Nearly 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck

• Rents are up more than 20% since 2020, far outpacing wages

• About 1 in 5 households carries medical debt

• Millions of people have jobs but no real security: no savings, no buffer, no margin for error

Decades of research show this pattern clearly: economic insecurity reliably increases support for authoritarian and far-right movements. When people experience their lives as precarious and disposable, fear becomes easier to weaponize.

When the state shows up primarily with force, through ICE raids, policing, and surveillance, while failing to provide housing, healthcare, or reliable work, it reinforces that fear. Authoritarian movements then redirect it: away from systems and upward accountability, toward scapegoats and punishment.

Ending Trumpism requires starving it of oxygen by dismantling the material conditions that allow fear to take political form.

This isn’t about softening resistance, it’s about making it durable.

Movements win when people can imagine a life on the other side, not just an enemy to defeat. Economic justice isn’t a distraction from fighting fascism. It’s how you make sure it doesn’t come back wearing a new name.

That’s the work of the next year, and the one after that.