Democrats face new dividing line: Cooperate or resist Trump 2.0?

Democrat Shasti Conrad worries her party is too eager to make nice with President-elect Donald Trump and his populist-fueled movement, which returns to power with a Republican-controlled Congress.

A telling example is the Senate vote that happened on Friday.

Ten Democrats, mostly from battleground states, joined the GOP Friday to break a Senate filibuster to advance the Laken Riley Act, giving Trump an early win with a measure that requires, among other things, federal authorities to detain undocumented immigrants suspected of theft, even if they haven't been charged.

"Perhaps we're getting hoodwinked," Conrad, the 40-year-old chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, told USA TODAY.

She understands voters want officeholders to get a handle on border security and other issues.

But as an older millennial who worked as a White House aide during the Obama presidency, she's rarely witnessed Republicans rush to accommodate the progressive agenda when Democrats won the White House and Congress.

"I have not seen a Republican Party interested in working together," Conrad said. "What I have seen is the Republican Party getting further and further radicalized into the far right, even the most moderate Republicans have been eaten alive."

As Democrats and progressive activists reach the acceptance phase of their political grief, there is less uniformity in confronting or cooperating with the returning Trump administration.

Among more moderate Democrats, the calculation is wait-and-see based largely on a verdict from independent voters whose opinion of the president-elect has improved. But those on the activist left warn drifting even an inch toward the MAGA agenda on certain wedge issues could embolden the incoming president by giving him key wins at the expense of core progressive values.

"I'm most afraid of Trump making good on the things that he says, which ends up pulling American culture further to the right, and the Democrats chasing that middle – further ostracizing the left in marginalized communities," said Corryn Freeman, executive director of Future Coalition, a grassroots organization focused on supporting youth activists.

Democrats representing the most populous states, however, are raising their hands as the front lines of the resistance, saying they won't back down as those strongholds have plotted out ways to oppose the more MAGA-aligned policies with a liberal alternative they believe will reawaken a base that largely stayed home on Election Day.

Yet even some left-leaning grassroots groups told USA TODAY internal polling shows their members are looking for areas of agreement amid a razor-thin House Republican majority and a president-elect with a penchant for deal-making.

The shift in approach is due chiefly to the electoral differences in Trump's two victories, experts said, with the 2024 win coming via a sweep of all seven battleground states, winning the popular vote and making gains in Democratic strongholds, such as the Bronx, where Trump received 27% of the vote compared with 9% in 2016.

"Eight years ago, there was such shock within the Democratic Party that it was a better electoral strategy for a lot of elected Democrats to be the ones fighting the hardest against Trump," said Casey Burgat, director of the legislative affairs program at George Washington University's graduate school of management.

"It may remain that way for some members, but now enough of them are saying, 'Hey, he is the president. They have the majorities in both chambers, let's do what we can,' such as making sure Democratic preferences are included in these bills."

'Clamoring for governance': Trump returns with rising favorability, anxious electorate

Part of the acquiescence by Democrats stems from seeing Trump's popularity grow post-election, even as deep skepticism remains about his top campaign promises, such as mass deportations and tariffs.

The president-elect's favorable-unfavorable rating is tied at 47%, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk poll shows, which is better than in years past. This can be attributed to shoring up independents, from a net negative 22% in a December 2020 survey to a net negative 5% in January 2025.

Voters have an appetite for change on key issues, the survey found, with 54% of respondents saying the country is on the wrong track. Forty-seven percent said the economy was the top priority on a list of seven issues with immigration, at 21%, the only other issue breaking into double digits.

"People are clamoring for something to happen in D.C. that resembles governance," Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who voted against moving the immigration bill forward, said.

Kim served in the House when Trump first arrived in Washington almost a decade ago. He said Democrats will never turn their backs on opposing "reckless" and "irresponsible" policies, but for the foreseeable future, the question of collaborating with the Trump administration will be a situational one.

"A lot of people voted for Donald Trump, in part, because he came across to them as a disrupter," he said. "Very clearly, a lot of people, including myself, don't believe that the status quo of our politics is working right now. I think it's important for the Democratic Party to not come across as a party that's trying to defend the status quo."

The freshman senator, for example, said he has engaged with the Trump transition team about investing in a new era of public service ahead of the country's 250th birthday this July. He also wants to look at possible anti-corruption legislation, such as barring cabinet officials and members of Congress from trading in stocks while in office, an effort that has drawn interest from some GOP lawmakers.

J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, at the University of Virginia, which forecasts elections, said Trump's win this time feels more like a conscious choice by the country than a fluke.

As a result, Trump might be experiencing a post-election honeymoon period that may end once he takes office and begins signing executive orders or enacting policies less popular with average voters. The USA TODAY/Suffolk survey, for example, showed voters aren't keen on him issuing pardons for those indicted or convicted in connection with the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

Time will determine if that theory holds, Coleman said.

In the interim, many Democrats representing swing states or congressional districts Trump won aren't certain whether they're standing on concrete or quicksand politically speaking and are waiting to see if the president-elect overextends himself on less popular parts of his agenda.

"Trump is very transactional and maybe by this point some of the Democrats have figured out: 'If I want to get something for my district or my state, this is how he works,'" Coleman said. "They figure it will be best to play ball."

Democratic leaders in this realm acknowledge a big lesson from the latest presidential election has been the party recalibrating after Americans expressed a distrust in U.S. politics and an even greater skepticism about government and other institutions serving them.

"If we're talking about the outrage of the day in Washington, D.C., if we're talking about the crazy thing that President Trump may have said the night before and then we're talking about jobs, we're only talking about jobs a third of the time," said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who was vetted to be on the 2024 Democratic ticket at one point last year.

Beshear was recently elected vice chair of the Democratic Governor's Association, which will be heavily involved in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial contests this year. These races will be used as an early thermometer of Trump's performance.

He said Democrats won't shirk from being authentic when discussing their values or being compassionate about vulnerable populations, such as protecting immigrants, women's reproductive health and LGBTQ+ rights. But the Bluegrass State leader said his party must be keenly focused on earning back voters' trust by leaning into things they care about broadly, such as the cost of living, public safety in their communities and better public schools for their children.

"So, when President Trump moves the American people forward on those issues, then Democrats should be supportive because it helps the people of the United States," Beshear added. "When he pushes policies that would harm our people on those issues, we should oppose them."

Resistance moves from the streets to the states as Dems prepare firewall

A clear sign that the left is rethinking its anti-Trump strategies is the reality that organizers haven't planned large-scale protests for his second inauguration on the scale of the 2017 "Women's March."

There are fewer applications for protest permits than eight years ago, according to the National Park Service, and organizers of the "People’s March on Washington," which is scheduled the weekend before Trump's inauguration, believe they will draw 50,000 participants.

That's far fewer than the roughly 470,000 protesters who crowd scientists estimated demonstrated ahead of Trump's last swearing-in ceremony in 2017.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, the largest grassroots progressive political action group in the country, said those numbers represent a larger acceptance and shift in strategy by those on the activist left.

"At the end of the day, I think there's a recognition Trump's got a governing trifecta and that we cannot just protest at every turn," he said. "But we have to exploit strategic opportunities to advance things we might agree on."

He said there is more willingness to cooperate on things such as capping credit card rates, which Trump called for during the campaign, and finding wasteful Pentagon spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which the president-elect promised would send "shockwaves through the system."

A tracking survey of the group's membership conducted after the election and shared with USA TODAY reveals a yearning for strategic cooperation with 63% saying Our Revolution should "support initiatives of common ground" with DOGE versus 37% who say the group should oppose it outright.

Democrats outside the Beltway, meanwhile, are raising their hands to the resistance call, particularly in populous blue states such as California, New York and Illinois. The party enjoyed some electoral successes at the state level and government trifectas – states that hold the governor's mansion and full legislative control – nearly tripled from six to 15 in that timeframe.

In California, for example, Democratic state legislators have proposed legislation to keep federal agents from detaining undocumented children or their families on or near school property without a warrant.

Another measure seeks to limit collaboration by state prisons with federal immigration enforcement, and Sunshine State Democrats have already approved $50 million to shore up state and local legal defenses against the Trump administration and fend off any mass deportation plan.

Monique Limón, a California legislator who represents much of Santa Barbara County, said undocumented immigrants have paid billions in taxes, according to IRS data from 2022.

"There are sectors here in California that rely on immigrant workers," she said. "So whether it's Silicon Valley or whether it is our agriculture field, immigrants contribute and the understanding of the crippling (effect) that it will have to certain economic sectors that contribute to our state and the country will be a real challenge."

Limón said Democratic state legislators would play a pivotal role in opposing federal policies under Trump, adding that the president-elect and his allies should listen to their fellow Americans' viewpoints.

In Maryland, for example, bills have been introduced to better evaluate greenhouse gas emissions on transportation projects and create a climate superfund that would require fossil fuel companies to pay to help fight the effects of climate change.

New Mexico Democrats have proposed a measure to prohibit new emissions in counties with high ozone concentrations and pushed a constitutional amendment that would protect people’s rights to clean air and water.

On abortion access, Virginia Democrats have introduced proposals that would require health insurance companies to cover fertility treatments, including in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and are working to pass a constitutional amendment that establishes a fundamental right to reproductive freedom.

In terms of LGBTQ+ rights, officials point out that Old Dominion State Democrats have advanced a constitutional amendment to secure marriage equality.

"As we face a Republican takeover in D.C. with Project 2025 as their guidebook, hope and resistance will be found in the states," said Sam Paisley, spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party's state legislative political arm.

"State legislators formed a firewall against Trump’s policies during his first term, and that firewall is even stronger as we head into 2025," she added. "Democratic power in the states will fight back against a wholesale rollback on climate progress, reproductive freedom, immigrant protections and more. All eyes should be on the states."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democrats face question: Fight back or work with Trump 2.0?