The resistance is ascendant

Trump suffers a major defeat. And half of Americans approve of No Kings protests.

Donald Trump may still have a firm grip on the three branches of government, but he has lost the support of the American people.

The resistance is ascendant.

You can see it both in the election results from yesterday and in new polls showing that there is more public support for the No Kings protest movement than anyone could have imagined just a few months ago.

First, let’s talk about yesterday. To a large degree, it was a referendum on Trump, and anti-Trump forces won across the board.

As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote: “[I]t really is the case that Trump specifically, in his capacity as president, inspires ferocious energy and opposition against him among a large part of the voting public.”

Data journalist G. Elliott Morris found “a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections” compared to 2024. “The best explanation for 2025,” he wrote, “is that voters didn’t know what they were getting with Trump 2.0 last November, but now they do — and they don’t like it.”

“Elections are the one opportunity we have to see what the people think,” Michael Tomasky wrote for the New Republic. “And what they think is clear: Trump sucks.”

“Here in New Jersey,” that state’s Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill said in her victory speech, “we know that this nation has not ever been, nor will it ever be ruled by kings. We take oath to a Constitution, not a king.”

“In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani said in his victory speech. He described “a nation betrayed by Donald Trump” and said that “if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one.”

Perhaps the most overt resistance to Trump on Tuesday came in California, where over 8 million people turned out to vote, with more than 5 million of them voting to pass a measure to create more Democratic congressional seats, rebutting Trump’s effort in other states to boost Republican chances of holding control of the House next year.

“We’re proud here in California to be part of this narrative this evening and we’re proud of the work that the people of the state of California did tonight to send a powerful message,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said, celebrating the victory.

“We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness. And tonight after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result,” Newsom said. “No crowns, no thrones, no kings. That’s what this victory represents. It’s a victory for the people of the State of California and the United States of America.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to MSNBC: “I have to tell you, in my traveling across the country, I am hearing and have been seeing consistent things from everyday people. And it is that they are terrified, they are frustrated, they are angry, and they are shocked by a president that thinks he has total impunity and is violating the values that we hold dear, our liberties and our freedoms.”

Surveying the night’s victories, she concluded: “This is about: Do you understand the assignment of fighting fascism right now?”

The answer Tuesday was a resounding: Yes.

Support for No Kings

A pair of new polls finds astonishing levels of support for the No Kings protests

An Economist/YouGov poll from last week shows that half (49%) of Americans approve of the No Kings protests held October 18, while one-third (33%) disapprove. That approval level is 5 points higher – and the disapproval level is 7 points lower — than it was after the No Kings protests held in June.

Similarly, a new NBC poll found that 43% of Americans consider themselves “a supporter of the No Kings protest movement.

As MSNBC’s Steve Benen explained, “this level of national public support for a protest movement that didn’t exist as 2025 got underway is extraordinary.”

And he called attention to “the comparison between the size of the No Kings protest movement and the size of the president’s base.”

NBC News’ national poll also asked respondents whether they consider themselves to be “a supporter of the MAGA Movement.” Just 30% aligned themselves with MAGA, down from 36% from the same poll in March.

In other words, after Trump’s election victory last year, the conventional wisdom suggested that the American right was ascendant and MAGA reigned supreme. But as the first year of the Republican president’s second term nears its end, the number of Americans who consider themselves MAGA supporters is down to just 30%, while supporters of the No Kings protest movement, inspired by Trump’s abuses and power grabs, enjoy 43% support.

Yet another poll, this one from the Public Religion Research Institute, recently found that, given the choice, a sizeable majority of Americans – 56% -- agree that Trump is a “potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.” That’s compared to 41% who agree that Trump is a “strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”

And all this comes as polls find overwhelming disapproval with Trump.

Here, for instance, is MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, with a stunning survey of poll results, including a CNN poll that found Trump has never been more unpopular. He’s now at a 63% disapproval rating, compared to 37% who approve.

Chicago Remains the Epicenter of Resistance

Reuters had a wonderful article about how Chicago locals are taking on ICE:

Chicago, a city of 2.7 million, has long been known as a patchwork of close-knit neighborhoods. And since the city took center stage of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in September, those neighborhoods have mobilized against enforcement efforts, sometimes block-by-block.

That hyperlocal effort, spun off into dozens of chats on social platforms, has helped create a type of zone defense that - activists say - has slowed down immigration agents and in some cases forced them to withdraw without making an arrest.

For instance, Reuters reports:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents prowling city streets in unmarked cars are often trailed by drivers honking their horns and cyclists blowing their whistles on an almost daily basis.

In some neighborhoods, confrontations between CBP and ICE agents and protesters have grown increasingly heated. Immigration agents have tear-gassed at least five neighborhoods in the past month, according to a Reuters tally, crashed their car into another vehicle at least once, arrested protesters trailing immigration agents, used Tasers on people during violent arrests, pointed guns at people and shot two people, including one fatally.

The New York Times reported that “Federal immigration agents fanned out across Chicago and its North Shore suburbs on Halloween, chasing suspects through front yards, driving S.U.V.s onto sidewalks and using chemical agents during confrontations with furious residents.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow saluted the people of Evanston, a Chicago suburb:

Right now, that town is turning out to be a crucible for the forging of incredibly determined people – incredibly determined and resourceful, brave, no-nonsense Americans.

The Week in Court

• There are serious questions as of this writing about whether Trump will defy a court order issued last week demanding that the administration fully fund November SNAP benefits. Plaintiffs on Tuesday filed a request for emergency relief asking the court to order the administration to comply, after Trump posted on social media that the payments won’t go out until the government shutdown ends.

• A federal judge in Illinois on Tuesday called conditions at the main Chicago-area immigration facility in Broadview, Ill., “unnecessarily cruel,” in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. He is expected to issue a temporary restraining order this afternoon.

• A federal judge last week ruled that Trump’s executive order to add a citizenship requirement to federal voter registration cannot be enforced. “The first question presented in these consolidated cases is whether the President, acting unilaterally, may direct changes to federal election procedures,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes.”

End Notes

• CBS News reports that Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking homeland security official in the first Trump administration has launched a new online hub “to facilitate protests and other resistance efforts against President Trump and his policies.” It’s called defiance.org.

• As Vox reports, new research finds that Elon Musk’s foray into far-right politics — and especially his role into the Trump administration —cost his company enormously. The researchers found that Tesla “would have sold as many as 1.25 million more cars in the past three years had Musk behaved differently. This is equivalent to roughly 83 percent of Tesla’s actual sales during this period, meaning the company could have nearly doubled its sales had its CEO not alienated its heavily Democratic customer base.”