This giant backlash reveals how Trump will lose

As I travel around the country flogging my new book Coming Up Short (which, please remember, you can order here, and the audiobook here), I’m seeing a groundswell of revulsion against Donald Trump.

His economy is a disaster. He promised to bring down prices, yet the prices of most goods are rising. Food prices are soaring. Job growth has stalled. American manufacturing has contracted for six straight months.

Trump’s poll numbers are dropping like stones.

The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt him.

He’s now trying to deflect attention from his failures by renaming the Defense Department the War Department and threatening to occupy if not go to war with Chicago. (“Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR” read a White House post.)

Yet most Americans don’t want federal troops in our cities and don’t want a war-mongering America. His immigration dragnet is deeply unpopular.

He surrounds himself with sycophants and lapdogs who tell him only how wonderfully he’s doing — he fires anyone who tells him the truth — which means he’s flying blind and doesn’t know how badly he’s doing.

Trump’s rampage is inadvertently teaching many Americans the importance of things we once took for granted: democracy, the rule of law, due process, federalism, checks and balances. As well as the value of several programs we took for granted, such as Medicaid, food assistance, and child vaccines.

A new cohort of progressive young candidates is catching on with voters. They include Zohran Mamdani in New York and Senate candidates Graham Platner in Maine, Dan Osborn in Nebraska, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Nathan Sage in Iowa.

The federal courts are doing a commendable job refusing to go along with what Trump wants.

In just the last 10 days, they’ve said no to Trump’s taking tariff authority away from Congress, no to Trump’s withholding research funding from Harvard, no to Trump’s firing an FTC commissioner, no to his effort to deport Guatemalan children, no to his use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to speed deportations, and no to the deployment of the National Guard for law enforcement purposes in California.

Don’t get me wrong. We remain in grave danger. The Oval Office is occupied by a sociopath. His twisted lackeys Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Pam Bondi, and RFK Jr. are doing terrible harm. His congressional enablers in the Republican Party have relinquished their integrity and kissed his derriere to remain in office. An authoritarian if not neofascist takeover of America is still occurring.

But across America I’m seeing the stirrings of a giant backlash. The people are rising. Americans are catching on. Our fight — the fight you and I are waging for democracy, the rule of law, social justice, and decency — is gaining ground.

Trump will lose. We will win.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
• Robert Reich's new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.