A turning point for Trump and the Left
By Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2026
Carl Davidson is the editor of Carl’s Left Links Newsletter, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers. Carl is a former leader of the American New Left and a past Vice President and National Secretary of SDS (the Students for a Democratic Society). Carl was a guest on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer and Alice Embree on Jan. 16, 2026, discussing this article and its implications.
We opened the year 2025 with a stark assessment of the political terrain. Trump and the far-right clique around him were taking the Oval Office and key cabinet positions. We made a point, correctly, of defining this clique as fascist, but reminded everyone that taking high offices was not the same as consolidating fascist rule across all 50 states and 100 major cities.
We went further than simply using “fascism” as a nasty label. Our current fascism was not a carbon copy of Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy. It was something more important, a “fascism with American characteristics.” We followed that up with a summary of the counter-revolution of 1876, the Jim Crow years of lynching and terror in the South and Southwest, the hidden stories of plots to overthrow FDR, the sizable pro-Nazi “America First” campaign, and postwar McCarthyism. We described how a Second Reconstruction reversed much of that, with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, followed up with a strong antiwar movement and Black Power election campaigns. Then the 1970s ended with violent repression, and the careful organization of the ‘New Right’ that led, step-by-step, to Trump’s MAGA bloc.
In brief, we took the first step in Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Know your enemy. The next step was to know ourselves. Again, we had a brief summary, we were a small left represented by AOC’s Justice Democrats, but operating within a wider anti-MAGA progressive trend. We also pointed out that progressives were still a large minority — but so was Trump’s MAGA bloc. In addition to the White House, Trump held the Supreme Court and both Houses of Congress, but with very thin margins.
We thus had a good assessment of the terrain. But the future is always open and full of surprises. Trump immediately had Elon Musk take center stage, with his DOGE unit slashing away at critical government programs. But on Feb. 5, 2025, Team Trump (and the rest of us, to be frank) faced a big surprise, the first “50501” elemental rising of anti-Trump millions emerged across the country. “50501” initially meant fifty anti-MAGA protest actions at fifty state capitols on one day. It turned out much larger than anyone had expected, including those who did much of the local organizing, Indivisible, Working Families Party, and Bernie’s “Our Revolution” people.
The second 50501 elemental rising arrived in June as “No Kings Day.” It drew even more millions and knocked the wind out of Trump’s ridiculous military parade for himself in D.C., which was sparsely attended. In this No Kings round, local progressive Democrats and some of the socialist left joined together to build turnout and shape sets of demands.
Trump was unfazed. At the beginning of July, Trump and his anti-immigrant henchman Stephen Miller announced a major upgrade of ICE, from a relatively small arm of the Department of Homeland Security with a $9 billion budget, to a paramilitary force with a $170 billion budget, larger than most standing armies in the developed world. Trump’s “Brown Shirts” proved to be an accurate label for the new ICE project.
A national opposition voice emerged within two weeks, the “Good Trouble” protests set for July 18 in memory of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) on his birthday. Mass rallies took place in 1200 cities, but with subdued media coverage. ICE ran rampant for months, and Trump tried to get the National Guard and the U.S. Army into the fray as well. But the second “No Kings Day” arrived on Oct 18, with even more millions turning up everywhere, aiming for a “Blue Wave” in whatever elections are taking place in November. Thus, Election Day saw the incredible victories of Zohran Mamdani in New York City and Katie Wilson as mayor of Seattle, both of them democratic socialists, as well as other regular Dems taking down MAGA people elsewhere.
We can thus fairly say that 2025 was a turning point year. Trump still has his MAGA bloc of about one-third of the electorate, but the luster has worn off. Even his MAGA base is troubled by what they are seeing with MAGA dragging teachers out of schools and seizing workers at Home Depots. They were expecting roundups of “the worst of the worst,” but saw Latino neighbors and friends in hiding or being mistreated. Reality didn’t match the political advertisements. Mass resistance in a wide common front, moreover, forced the military out of Los Angeles and has held them at bay elsewhere.
Trump now has power but not respect. Once a commanding force in both the Republican Party and the broader arena of American life, Trump’s grip loosened amid mounting legal challenges, rising scandals around the Epstein files, waning support from party leaders, and a shift in the electorate’s priorities. Rather than guiding the national conversation, Trump’s voice was increasingly sidelined. This has opened space for new debates and a realignment of party power. It also signals exhaustion from MAGA’s polarizations and spectacles.
Amidst this power shift, the intensification of ICE raids in 2025 cast a long shadow over communities nationwide. With stories of abrupt detainments and families torn apart, the raids underscored the enduring complexities of America’s immigration debate. Add on the debacle in Gaza and threats of war in Venezuela, and these actions reignited public discourse on civil rights and government accountability, galvanizing both criticism and calls for reform.
The unexpected emergence of the No Kings Risings, alongside the leadership of Mamdani, AOC, Bernie and other Justice Democrats, offers us a beacon for future progress in 2026. Mass action campaigns captured the imagination of a new generation seeking alternatives to entrenched power structures of either party. Mamdani’s articulate vision and DSA’s organizing prowess helped transform frustration into constructive activism, suggesting that real and lasting change is possible. Let’s work on building the organizational infrastructure for a Third Reconstruction, and let’s hope the new year holds new pleasant surprises to help us on our way.
