The tariff fetishist is starting a trade war with our friends and our foes, and it’s going to mean higher prices for you and me, just as predicted by all sane economists. But he says he “couldn’t care less.”

The leader of the free world is trashing his country’s friendly relations with neighbors and threatening a new era of manifest destiny that is forcing some world leaders to publicly acknowledge they cannot trust America to be a loyal friend and ally. (But TFG suddenly changes his tune when one of them calls him on it.)

The chief of the executive branch of government authorized what amounts to a group of consultants to fire government employees and carry out cuts to government budgets, none of which has been authorized by the legislative branch which is suddenly incapable of protecting its own lawful perogatives. The action is sloppily conceived and largely illegal, and being sold to the public as fulfillment of a campaign promise to lower the cost of government…with hopes it will also clear financial objections to a planned upcoming extension of tax cuts for wealthy Americans. (And today he attacked unions representing federal employees.)

The champion of law and order is allowing the illegal kidnapping of people from American streets and having them held in secret, people whose “crime” was lawfully expressing an opinion contrary to the president’s or appearing to be an undesirable. And the guy who has never shut up about the alleged “weaponization” of the U.S. Justice Department by his political enemies to persecute him has installed an acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who is accused of threatening his political opponents and supports the president’s ludicrous calls to impeach judges who rule against questionable Trump policies. And, the president has brazenly used government authority to intimidate lawyers and law firms from daring to oppose his actions or represent anyone who does. Or who has at any time in the past. (The highly-respected conservative jurist Michael Luttig believes Trump will ultimately lose his legal fight against the courts; long-time federal trial attorney and columnist Sabrina Haake hopes the chief justice gets a chance to get specific about what presidential actions don’t qualify for immunity.)

The man who harshly criticized a previous president’s use of executive orders as a “power grab” is doing all this through an unprecedented wave of executive orders that is apparently not a power grab at all. Dan Balz sees it as evidence of Trump’s desire to rule rather than to govern: he can’t be bothered waiting for a Congress (that is already controlled by the party he controls) to pass laws when he can act as king and simply issue edicts.

Is all of this part of the MAGA plan? Is all of this what those Americans wanted to have happen, or expected to happen, when they re-elected him? For many of us who did not vote for him, there is a tendency to feel some level of helplessness, which I think is at least part of the administration’s intent with the non-stop pace of activity. But Timothy Noah reminds us that we don’t have to give up.

Surveying this Boschian hellscape, many good people will despair. Yes, Trump is much more dangerous than he was during his first term (which was harrowing enough). He’s more giddily reckless about impounding funds, shutting down agencies, disobeying court orders, and using the government to punish political enemies. But if you allow yourself to tune out this ugliness, you might as well have voted for the man. The president is counting on such demoralization.

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How can ordinary citizens fight back? To scout the best approaches, I canvassed activists, lawyers, scholars, politicians, and union leaders for advice. Some of what they suggest will lie beyond your abilities, expertise, financial resources, or sense of personal safety—in which case, choose something you can do. Just about everyone I spoke to emphasized that there is no silver bullet—no single arena, not even the courtroom, where Trump’s illegal power grab can be stopped. “There’s no messiah” who will “sweep in and make everything better,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. That’s up to you and me. The good news is there are a lot of us.

Indeed, there may be even more than we can know just yet. Because Trump isn’t careful about whose interests he acts against, Resistance 2.0 has potential to evolve into a bipartisan movement. “Successful authoritarian regimes determine what their winning coalition is,” observed Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the resistance nonprofit Indivisible, “and then they work very hard to keep that coalition together.” Trump lacks such discipline, and as a result he frequently screws over natural allies.

Trump alienates the military by installing as defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a boozer and womanizer who called an officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps a “jagoff” and, after he was confirmed, fired the top JAG officers in the Air Force, Army, and Navy. Trump alienates Big Pharma by installing as health and human services secretary a recovering heroin addict, womanizer, and (according to his cousin Caroline Kennedy) “predator” who less than two years ago said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” As HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommends treating measles with cod liver oil and letting bird flu spread unchecked through poultry flocks. Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says, “I’m not worried about inflation,” and “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Trump, meanwhile, terrorizes Wall Street with market-killing tariffs and stray threats not to honor the national debt.

No matter who joins this fight, it won’t be won next week, or next month. Barring impeachment and removal, Trump will be president for four long years, and not even his allies expect him to become less authoritarian and kleptocratic. So pace yourself. But the sooner you join in, the more effectively we can limit the damage.

The article goes on to outline a number of ways that each of us can do something, the best each of us can, to be part of the resistance, from protests to lawsuits to just staying informed. Don’t give up: the fight isn’t over.