President Donald Trump's second term has been built on a series of bluffs: Act like you have a power and some people may end up giving it to you. From gutting federal agencies to threatening law firms' security clearances, he has expanded the imperial presidency by persuading his targets to give up.
But lately a number of prominent Americans have fought back against Trump — and won.
When Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, she sued, and a federal judge allowed her to stay on the job until her case is heard at length. When he announced plans to send the National Guard into Chicago, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson stood shoulder to shoulder against it, and he started talking about going to Memphis instead. And when he tried to strip Harvard University of funding, it sued and won.
If you do not fight, you have already lost.
These leaders understand a truth that bears repeating: If you do not fight, you have already lost. If you do, you might preserve the law, the principle or the community under siege.
That is the choice now before Congress as another government shutdown deadline looms. Trump has announced he will not even meet with Democrats. Instead, Republican leaders have been dispatched to deliver his ultimatums: funding on his terms, with nothing offered in return. Democrats have not yet decided whether they will supply the necessary votes that keep the government open.
But this is not merely a negotiation over appropriations; it is a test of political courage. If Democrats surrender out of fear that they will be blamed for a shutdown, they will have handed Trump precisely the victory he seeks without forcing him to expend any political capital.
History makes plain what happens when leaders grow weary and turn away. After the Civil War, federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877, ending Reconstruction and abandoning Black Americans to nearly a century of racial terror and disenfranchisement. That surrender to fatigue and compromise cost generations their rights. Trump is gambling that America will also grow weary of fighting and give up.
Yet history also records what is possible when leaders resist. Abolitionists refused to yield when presidents counseled patience and compromise; their persistence made emancipation a moral inevitability. Radical Republicans in Congress defied President Andrew Johnson’s attempts to restore white supremacy. They overrode his vetoes, passed the Reconstruction Acts and impeached him for abuse of power. More than a century later, lawmakers pressed the Watergate investigation forward even as Richard Nixon threatened a constitutional crisis. Their determination forced the release of the White House tapes and ended his presidency.
From abolition to Reconstruction to Watergate, progress came not from passivity but from sustained struggle against leaders who abused their office.
That is the tradition Lisa Cook joined when she refused to be silenced. It is the tradition Harvard and George Washington University reaffirmed when they refused to bend. It is the tradition of Pritzker, Johnson, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, who proved that governors and mayors can still defend their cities from overreach. And it is the tradition that Congress must reclaim if it hopes to preserve its role as a co-equal branch of government.
The struggle is tiring. That is its purpose. Trump thrives on fatigue, assuming that if he presses long enough, the opposition will collapse. But his power is not inevitable. It is fragile, and every time it is confronted, it is diminished.
The only way to defeat Trump’s assault on democracy is to fight. The fight itself is the safeguard of our republic. And if we are willing to engage it — in the courts, in the halls of Congress, in statehouses and city halls across the country — history suggests that we can not only endure, but also prevail.
For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weeknight” every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
