https://indivisible.org/resource/guide
If there's one universally accepted truth in the modern age, it's that sequels suck. And Trump 2.0 will be no exception. Trump, Vance, and their MAGA minions feel vindicated by the victory of their bigoted, fascistic clown show of a presidential campaign. Trump takes office with a plan to institute the worst parts of Project 2025. He’ll be enabled by a judiciary packed with right-wing ideologues and a congressional majority stacked with MAGA foot soldiers. And he’s assembled a bloc of corporations and billionaires eager to do his bidding in exchange for tax cuts and corrupt favors. But he has no mandate for the staggeringly harmful agenda he’s about to unleash on the country. And together, we have the power to fight back — and win.
Democracy is in grave peril, but it is not dead. Fascists depend on convincing us to give our power away and fall in line, that the fight is over and we lost. And while we must be clear-eyed about the threat, we must not do the fascists’ work for them by giving them powers they do not have. Trump wants to govern as a dictator, but he has the slimmest possible congressional majority and a grossly unpopular agenda. Winning an election with 49.9% of the vote (of those who voted) does not make him a Dictator for Life and does not make Project 2025 the law of the land.
The truth is that political power resides in many places — from local to state to federal. To stave off the fascists, we must tap into that power in every corner of our country. We must organize ourselves to block their attacks, break MAGA’s political strength, and build a winning majority coalition of our own. Leadership in this moment must come from regular people, not just politicians. Elected Democrats will need our encouragement, support, and cajoling to find their spines and fight back. Elected Republicans can and must break with MAGA or be held accountable for the harm they cause. This guide outlines concrete strategies and tactics that collectively will help us limit harm, win in 2026, and throw MAGA out in 2028.
Eight years ago, we wrote the Indivisible Guide to organizing locally to pressure Congress and block the Trump agenda. Now, we’re offering our best advice on how everyday people can organize to stop Trump 2.0. There’s a lot we don’t know about what needs to be done. We’ll need to learn and experiment as we go. But we hope that this guide will be useful for people across the country who are grappling with what they can do in this moment.
Our shared future depends on everyday Americans choosing to fight back. We believe each of us has a role to play — in blue states, red states, and political battlegrounds across America. We believe MAGA will seek to divide and conquer us, isolating us one by one in an attempt to fracture our resolve. We believe standing together, Indivisible, is the only way to protect our families, our neighbors, and our democracy. And we believe that we will win.
One-Page Summary
Chapter 1: What Happened and Why it Matters. Heading into the 2024 election, Americans were angry about inflation and frustrated with the status quo. Some voters either flipped to Trump or didn’t vote at all. That gave Trump the margins to win — but it doesn’t give him a mandate for dictatorship or Project 2025. Americans of all stripes are going to be pissed when Trump 2.0 comes to town dressed in chaos, corruption, and cruelty. We can stoke that backlash to break up their coalition and build ours.
Chapter 2: A Quick Primer on Constituent Power. Trump wants us to believe that the presidency is all-powerful. It ain’t true. Political power in our democracy overlaps between local, state, and federal electeds. Your power comes from your ability to be a source of support (or a pain in the ass) to those electeds. You can use this power to get them to stand up to Trump 2.0 or face political consequences. We review the basics of constituent power — what it is, how it works, and how yours can do the most good in this moment where you live.
Chapter 3: The Plan to Get Through the Next 2 Years. Our best chance to get through this era with some amount of democracy intact is to hang on until 2026 and win big in the midterms — breaking Trump’s hold on Congress and making sure election deniers and saboteurs aren’t in charge of the 2028 election. We’ve boiled it down to three big plays:
- We will all throw in to say NO to the Project 2025 agenda pushed by the White House and Congress. We’ll stop what we can and pick strategic fights to drive national backlash to win in 2026.
- We will play hardball wherever we’ve got Democrats in local, city, or state office — pushing them to block, delay, and challenge MAGA’s attacks.
- We will work to protect and win elections — defending against election deniers in swing states and turning all that national backlash into an electoral majority coalition that delivers big wins in 2026.
You’ll plug into the plays that make the most sense for where you live and the leverage you have. Think of it as a giant national pro-democracy team — some of us are playing offense, some are playing defense, but if we all play our roles, we’ll make it through together.
Chapter 4: Protect and Prepare. Things are about to get much worse, and we need to treat an attack on one as an attack on all of us. That means supporting communities under threat and preparing to operate under increasingly authoritarian conditions. We’ll review how to:
- Organize to Protect Communities Under Threat. MAGA will hit hard, and we’ll need to stand together.
- Operate Under Authoritarian Creep. We’re not giving up on democracy, but we are not naive about what we face. We’ll cover lessons learned about operating under increasingly authoritarian conditions.
Chapter 5: Practical steps for finding or forming your local Indivisible group. Fascists depend on you, believing you’re alone and powerless. And honestly, on your own, you don’t have a ton of power. But, organized groups of individuals do have power. If you’re a fan of an existing group in your area, join it. If not, get a few friends together, start a new local Indivisible group, and build from there. Your local group is the basis for everything else you can hope to achieve in this period. This chapter includes some starter recommendations for how to pull your new, local, volunteer-led Indivisible group together, connect with others on the ground, and get to work.
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