Millions rally against Trump

Italian version

On June 14, five million people, maybe more, rallied against Donald Trump and his policies in more than 2,000 cities and towns across the US. The rallies were called by Indivisible and other organizations of the Democratic Party left. Their theme was “No Kings.”

June 14 was the third set of large anti-Trump rallies in as many months. The April 5 “Hands off!” rallies drew an estimated 3.5 million people in 1,400 locations. Rallies on May Day drew an estimated 2.5 million in 1,000 locations.

The size of the June 14 rallies varied from a few hundred in small towns to more than 200,000 in New York and Los Angeles. The participants were mostly working-class, with many young people. African Americans, Latinos, and Asians were underrepresented, although tens of thousands participated. The May Day rallies, called by unions and immigrant rights organizations, had more people of color.

June 14 was the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US army by an act of the Continental Congress. It was also Flag Day, commemorating the adoption of the Stars and Stripes in 1777. And it was Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.

Trump sought to weave the dates together with a $45 million military spectacle in Washington, DC. His birthday party flopped, despite the lure of tanks, jets, and marching soldiers. The organizers said they expected 200,000 people. Far fewer came. The Wall Street Journal called the turnout “sparse” and “subdued.” The anti-Trump rallies were much larger and more energetic.

The Democratic Party didn’t sponsor the June 14 protests, and few of its politicians spoke at them. Most of the participants see the Democrats as the lesser evil and vote for its candidates. But the party was badly discredited by the Obama and Biden administrations and the Democrats’ losses in 2016 and 2024.

There were American flags at the rallies, but also Mexican, Canadian, and Palestinian flags. Protesters brought creative handmade banners and signs with slogans for democracy, civil liberties, immigrant rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, education, social services, the environment, peace, and Palestine. There were fewer union banners and signs than there had been on May Day, but there were many union members and some union contingents.

The June 14 rallies were mostly peaceful. They were big, and the police generally observed at a distance or directed traffic. There were a few clashes between cops and demonstrators around Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, jails, and other symbols of injustice.

In Minnesota, on the eve of the rally, a deranged right-winger impersonating a cop assassinated a state legislator and her husband and injured another legislator and his wife. In Northern Virginia, a man drove an SUV into a crowd of protesters, causing injuries but no deaths. In Salt Lake City, rally security shot a man who pulled a semi-automatic rifle from his backpack, inadvertently killing a bystander. Self-defense against rightwing violence is now part of political life in the US.


“ICE OUT OF LA”

Nine days earlier, on June 5, ICE agents raided nearly a dozen workplaces in Los Angeles and its suburbs, as part of Trump’s attempt to ramp up deportations of immigrants. Rapid responders tracked the agents and did what they could to warn the community and disrupt the raids. Forty-four people were arrested for immigration violations, and David Huerta, the California president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was arrested for obstruction.

“ICE out of LA” protests continued for the next week at sites of raids, the Metropolitan Detention Center, the Federal Building, and other locations. Protesters blocked the US 101 freeway in downtown LA. Solidarity rallies were held in many cities across the country.

Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to LA, then 2,000 more, then 700 Marines. Democratic Party Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass opposed the deployment and said the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) had the situation under control. Bass declared a state of emergency and imposed a nighttime curfew on downtown LA.

Protests and occasional streetfighting continued for a week. The city grew calmer, as ICE and the National Guard backed off, and the balance of forces discouraged confrontations.

The June 14 rallies repudiated Trump, ICE, and the National Guard deployment. “Chinga la migra!” (“Fuck ICE!”) was a popular slogan in LA and across the country.

What comes next will depend in part on what Trump does next. If ICE raids continue, they will be met with protests. Deployment of the National Guard won’t stop that. Nor will it stop the growing mass resistance.


A WEAK HAND

Trump is playing with a weak hand. He became president with the votes of less than a third of the electorate. His standing in the polls is the lowest of any president at this point in his term, except for his own standing in his first term. All his policies, including his immigration policies, are “under water,” meaning that in polls more respondents oppose them than support them.

Time is not on Trump’s side. Republican candidates are expected to do badly in off-year elections this year and midterm elections next year. The presidency is likely to return to the Democrats in 2028. The two-party oscillations are more frequent and agitated, and they still solve nothing, since both capitalist parties are enemies of workers and the oppressed.

It’s hypothetically possible that Trump will declare a national emergency, cancel elections, and hold office into his dotage. But for this he would need support from the military, and for that he would need support from the ruling class. Trump’s policies are too incoherent for either to be likely. Democracy is still the best possible shell for capitalism, and the capitalists are doing very well with it..

Take immigration, the current flash point. Trump says that he wants to deport millions of immigrants. But the US economy needs immigrants. The native-born population is shrinking. Native-born workers are aging out of the workforce. The capitalists want low-paid immigrant workers in agriculture, food processing, construction, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, childcare, and eldercare, and highly skilled/educated workers in science, tech, and engineering.

Trump knows this, since he profits from the current system. His assault on immigrants is not to expel them, but to terrorize them for the benefit of their bosses. Immigrants work hard for low pay in jobs Americans don’t want. Trump wants to keep them doing so.

Trump also wants to stoke the xenophobia of his followers and promote reaction generally. The capitalists are willing for him to try, as part of dividing and conquering the working class. But not to the point of disrupting business.

Hence, the administration’s flip-flops over the past few weeks. Trump says he wants to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day, up from 600 per day in February, after which the administration stopped releasing data. To do this, ICE would have to raid workplaces, which disrupts business and provokes resistance.

On June 14, Trump told ICE to exempt agriculture, aquaculture, food processing, hotels, and restaurants from workplace raids. His advisors pointed out the inconsistency of exempting those industries but not construction and healthcare, and the impossibility of meeting his deportation targets without workplace raids.

Trump has similar problems with his tariff threats. The US economy can cut loose from China — with difficulty — but it can’t cut loose from the whole world. The administration declared April 2 “Liberation Day,” the day the US economy would liberate itself by imposing tariffs on its trading partners. But then Trump announced a “pause” in the tariffs to allow negotiations. This led Robert Armstrong of the Financial Times to propose what he called “the Taco theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.”

Trump’s Ukraine policy seemed intended to woo Russia from China and partition Ukraine into a Russian zone and a US zone. But Trump couldn’t offer enough, neither Russia nor Ukraine accepted his proposal, and he washed his hands of the problem.

In the Middle East, the cornerstone of Trump’s policy was to complete the Abraham Accords and normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors, most importantly Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. For this, he advised Israel to “finish the job” of driving the Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank, since the “optics” of genocide are bad, and normalization could come only after the war was over.

Instead, Israel has attacked Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran. It may succeed in expelling the Palestinians and bringing down the Iranian regime. But then what? Israel will still be seven million Jewish settlers surrounded by 700 million hostile Arabs, Turks, Kurds, and Iranians, and the US will be even more reviled than it is.

And this is just the beginning. The data for gross domestic product, employment, and inflation show that the US economy is not yet in a recession, but it’s on the brink. Trump’s policies are hastening the downturn. The future seems sure to include rising inflation and unemployment.


BEYOND TRUMP, BEYOND THE DEMOCRATS

Opposition to Trump is growing, and his base is beginning to fracture. But there’s a problem. The US lacks a mass workers’ party. Without one, the turn against Trump will tend to strengthen the Democrats. The greater the alarm over Trump, the more this will be true.

Revolutionary Marxists need to participate in the fight against Trump’s policies. We should urge escalation to strikes and occupations, the building of mass democratic organizations of struggle, and workers’ self-defense.

But we must keep in mind that the struggle against Trump is just the beginning. While participating in the struggle, we must explain the need for a mass working-class party. Many will listen to us, although few are yet ready to act. The Democrats, however distasteful they may be, still seem to most workers the only alternative to Trump.

We must explain further that a workers’ party is not, in itself, the solution. The program and strategy of the party are decisive. If the party’s orientation is to reform capitalism, it will fail. Hence, the need for a revolutionary party and International. Familiar ground, but all the more important to remember at this moment, when fighting Trump and Trumpism is so urgent.