Posted October 30, 2025
This is the text of the political resolution adopted by the September 12-14, 2025, national convention of Solidarity. The convention resolution on imperialism and consistent anti-imperialism has been previously posted.
1 The Right Wing Takes Power
1a) A Blitzkrieg of Diktats
Donald Trump’s election in November 2024 marked a sharp acceleration of the dissolution of the New Deal Democratic Party coalition, largely the result of the right-wing drift of the Democratic Party. Many unions and workers endorsed and voted for Trump, over 40% of Latinos/as voted Trump, and 24% of Black men voted for Trump.
Since taking power on January 19, 2025, the Trump government has launched a blitzkrieg of diktats inspired by the ultra-reactionary Project 2025, including a vicious campaign of deportations and terror against immigrant communities, attacks against trans and LGBTQI+ people, public health, Medicaid, climate science and regulations, and the democratic rights of free speech, assembly, and the press, particularly against those on campuses and elsewhere protesting the genocide in Gaza.
The Trump government has shredded consumer and environmental protectional agencies, dismantled DEI and hard-won affirmative action programs, attacked academic freedom on campuses, implemented huge cuts in spending on health, education and other social programs and services, all accompanied by huge increases in military and repressive state apparatus spending.
Bourgeois political institutions have been attacked with the aim of augmenting executive power at the expense of the courts and Congress. Meanwhile inflation — one of the reasons why many voted for Trump — is getting worse. The passage of a regressive budget by the Trump/Republican controlled congress in July clearly cuts social spending for the poor to give fiscal gifts to the rich. According to polls, much of the public, including Trump supporters, are aware of and oppose this.
This involves a $800 billion cut for Medicaid, government health insurance for those earning under the poverty line — a key part of the U.S. welfare state — to pay for the tax breaks which will kick twelve million people off Medicaid, effectively taking away their health care. The budget also involved sharp cuts to VA hospitals as well as food stamps — the SNAP program.
Trump’s attempt to outlaw unions representing federal government workers — of whom Elon Musk’s DOGE laid off 20,000-40,000 — gives a taste of the anti-union assaults to come. Most workers work for private capitalist firms that have yet to launch a new general assault against the unions and workers’ standard of living. But they are certainly aware that they have an extremely pro-business government that would support them.
On abortion and reproductive rights, Trump sees this is a no-win and wants to leave reproductive policy to the states. But he’ll be pressured on his right to enact a national abortion ban. In any event, we can be assured that the anti-abortion forces are not sleeping and looking to advance their goal. Big battles lay ahead.
The racist character of the Trump presidency is seen in all of its policies. The exploitation of the working class and the oppression of Black people and other people of color in the United States are intertwined aspects of capitalist rule. Moves for abolishing DEI are attacks on Affirmative Action, one of the important gains of the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
The attacks on voting rights, while aiming to strengthen Trump’s political vehicle, the Republican party, is also designed to disenfranchise people of color, largely because of their presumptive support for the Democrats.
The racist and antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory lurks behind the Trump government’s immigration policy. The Trump/Miller immigration policy is deeply racist and classist in its conception and execution. ICE raids are also terror raids against communities of color, particularly Mexican and Latin American communities, while the Muslim travel ban is also a racist policy because it mostly targets Global South peoples.
Trump’s other policies, which might not appear on their face racist, are in fact. Climate change denial, for example, hurts the entire planet and its inhabitants, but the ravages fall most heavily on communities of color. Cuts to Medicare threaten the health of tens of millions of people, but given the overrepresentation of African American, Hispanic, Native American and other people in the ranks of the poor and lower levels of the working class, they have a distinct racist as well as class flavor.
Trump’s open attempt to rig the 2026 midterm elections by demanding that the state of Texas break its own constitution to gerrymander five Democratic-leaning congressional districts with majority minority populations to help assure a national Republic majority in the 2026 elections — a demand enthusiastically taken up by Texas’s ultra reactionary governor — is the latest attack against civil rights and democratic rights for all, and a further assault on democratic rights.
The Trump government has shown a propensity for violent repression, including arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants and even elected Democratic officials, as well as what are called in other countries “disappearances.” The repression has been uneven: while most of the U.S. population is not living in police-state conditions, a significant sector is facing exactly that reality.
This is the reality for immigrant families and communities — not only the undocumented individuals who at any moment may be snatched up by masked ICE goons in unmarked vans, for incarceration in mass detention concentration camps followed by peremptory deportation.
These methods can be extendable to everyone, citizen, resident or any other status. Travel bans and threats have sent back people to dangerous places like Haiti and South Sudan and of course the hellhole CECOT prison in El Salvador.
Trump’s sending the National Guard and other military forces into the streets of Washington D.C., and threats to do so in cities with sanctuary policies and Democratic mayors under the fictious pretext of “fighting crime,” represents an escalation of anti-immigrant repression force and lays the groundwork for repression against political opposition to Trump’s reactionary attacks on broad sectors of thee working class and minority communities.
It also attempts to further increase executive power at the expense of other political institutions, while curtailing democratic rights. The assassination of far-right activist Charlie Kirk has become a pretext to accelerate the McCarthyite attack, including firings of people who posted messages critical of Kirk.
1b) Neoliberal austerity
Wholesale assaults on social services and environmental and consumer protection reflect extreme neoliberal free marketing, and in the case of the environment an attempt to disappear from public view the impending environmental disaster while giving gifts to the oil industry.
The assault includes classic conservative “small government” thinking but also, in the case of the Trump and Musk attacks on state institutions, a way to help fund the massive tax benefits given to the super rich as well as rooting out political resistance to Trump in the state bureaucracy.
The Trump/Musk attacks on the U.S. State itself is notable in its paleo-capitalist return to the “night watchman” conception of the state from the earliest periods of industrial capitalism, well before the welfare states.
The rapid-fire flurry of Trump’s executive orders dismantling government agencies, abolishing recognized rights, and reordering foreign policy appears novel, and in many ways is. Many of these measures, however, are warmed-up policies from classical conservative ideology, while others are from the authoritarian/neo-fascist playbook.
1c) Trump government as neoliberal with authoritarian and neo-fascist tendencies and ambitions.
Trump’s drive to institute a full-fledged authoritarian regime remains aspirational at this point. Institutions of bourgeois normality, particularly the judiciary and legislature which serve as checks on the power of the executive presidency, and the political rights of the press, speech and assembly, while threatened, remain at this point intact.
The United States therefore cannot at this point be considered as fascist or neo-fascist. The Trump government is a rightwing, white nationalist, neoliberal government with a large dose of crony capitalism and authoritarian, neo-fascist tendencies and ambitions, which don’t directly represent any particular wing of capital.
Trump and the far-right wing ideologues behind Project 2025 can be expected to pursue their program and to increase executive power by any means they feel they can use. Big battles certainly lay head, including what could become a full “post-Constitutional crisis.”
The use of mass sweeps; proclamation of clearly fraudulent “national emergency” pretexts for deployment of National Guard and military on the streets; deliberate lying demonization of communities of people with legal protected status (like the Haitian immigrants accused of “eating our dogs!”) peremptory removal of their status; these can all be portents of measures for use against broader populations.
1d) Economics
Tariffs of course put Trump at odds with free market thinking that has dominated the capitalist world since the days of Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl.
Further, Trump’s runaway (mostly illegal) imposition of tariffs threatens the stability of the U.S. and world economy, including the threat of a “stagflation” recession and potential hemorrhaging in the bond market, which via the sale of Treasury bills is absolutely essential to financing the U.S. national debt. A disaster on the scale of the 2008-9 housing collapse or the impact of the Covid pandemic is not ruled out.
Fragments of the tariff agenda make some sense from an imperialist standpoint. If the United States is to rule the world (not our agenda, but certainly that of U.S. capital), it does require domestic steel, aluminum and semiconductor industries.
But sweeping tariffs, including on friendly allies who would be essential in a U.S. confrontation with China, serve only as a regressive sales tax that hurts less affluent U.S. consumers and hits the poor hardest – while forcing Canada, Mexico and European countries to scramble for more diverse trading partnerships.
The intensity of the anti-immigrant campaign is causing labor shortages in some sectors (agriculture, construction, hotel and restaurant services etc.) which will alienate sectors of capital and the general public.
2) Fightback and Resistance
2a) Congress
Congressional opposition to Trump’s Project 2025-inspired agenda have been pathetic. Republican congresspeople and elected officials have toed the Trump line on nearly everything, from the pardoning of January 6 insurrectionists and massive cuts to Medicaid and VA health funding. Meanwhile Democrats have largely limited their opposition to verbal protests.
The Bernie Sanders wing has been active with his popular anti-billionaire tour. The sordid Epstein affair has produced some fissures within the Republican camp that could fuse with other issues to break the MAGA monolith in the Republican party.
2b) The Courts
The courts have been more of a speed bump in Trump’s attempts to increase executive power than an effective bulwark against the dictatorial ambitions of his government.
Several appellate courts have ruled against Trump regarding deportations of immigrants, his right to levy to unilaterally levy tariffs, and other issues, but the reactionary majority of the Supreme Court has shown both ideological sympathy for the Trump/Project 2025 agenda and Trump’s attempt to increase executive power.
2c) Mass Resistance
Within weeks of the beginning of Trump’s onslaught, scattered resistance appeared. First there were protests by Federal Workers — FUN — to protest the 40,000 layoffs. There were also the Tesla take downs. Then came April 5, May 1, and June 14 and anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.
2d) The Hands Off! Demonstrations
The Hands Off! demonstrations on April 5 were a turning point. There is now a general anti-Trump mass resistance. The protests on April 5, May Day, and June 14 were against a variety of Trumps policies, most prominently defense of the LGBTQI+ community, social security, Palestine, immigrants, democratic rights, and VA hospitals. The protests against ICE raids in Los Angelas last spring were part of this wave of resistance.
The open-ended nature of the slogan “Hands off” on April 5 permitted a wide variety of demands and made the protests very diverse in their demands and the composition of protestors. There were many first-time protestors including disaffected Trump supporters.
Threats against Social Security, Medicare but especially Medicaid VA hospitals, and the firing of federal workers and the loss of the services they provide are strongly resented by many Trump supporters as well of course, by those who are not.
The May Day and “No Kings” demonstrations on June 14 were similar to the Hands Off demonstrations but bigger. Five million participated in over 1000 demonstrations. These have been localized events, not unitary national protests limited to Washington, DC or New York.
This points to new patterns of collective action. In the past few years, we are seeing the rise of multiple local protests rather than a focus on large single-city protests. The May Day Strong coalition of unions, reports of dramatically stepped up labor participation in Palestine solidarity work, and Labor Day planning coalitions, signal the emergence of labor participation in the anti-Trump movement.
2e) Weaknesses
While the demonstrations have been massive and energetic, the demands are defensive in nature.
The mass protests have been called by groups like Indivisible and 50501 and run in top- down fashion by NGO activists tied to the Democratic Party. Building a mass, democratic anti-Trump movement is a challenge. Last year’s oppression against protestors and the universities at which they took place, has been effective: There were far fewer pro-Palestinian protests on campuses this year.
There have been few labor strikes but calls for political strikes have been raised in forums like May Day Strong. So far there is Iittle organized labor presence at the large rallies and demonstrations. One barrier is that part of the UAW membership agrees with Trump on tariffs.
The protests have also been largely white. On April 5, several Black “influencers” urged Blacks not to participate. Mobilizing communities of color as full partners in the struggle against Trump’s assaults is a major challenge.
Most groups on the left have been present in the protests. DSA remains the largest U.S. socialist group and some Solidarity members are active members. (Other convention documents analyze DSA in greater depth.) Aside from PSL, the far left, including Solidarity, total several hundred members. Despite the problems of “campist” and sectarian politics, the left led protests in the summer of 2025 against the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, and the Democratic national convention in Chicago, assuring high energy but narrowing their mass appeal.
While Trump fired thousands of federal workers and is trying to destroy their unions, there has not been yet a real showdown because they constitute less than two percent of the union sector. But Trumps savagely pro-business orientation will certainly inspire employers to launch a wage cutting and anti-union campaign.
3) Prospects for Resistance and Socialist Politics
While alarming numbers of workers and Latino and African Americans voted for Trump in 2024, attacks against DEI and affirmative action, minority voting rights, the brutal anti-immigrant raids and deportations, the strengthening of the carceral and repressive apparatus of the state, as well as the whole anti-working class Trump offensive will eventually lay bare those contradictions.
Media accounts of the starvation in Gaza have helped lead to cracks in the U.S. pro-Israel edifice as seen in public opinion polls, including among Jewish Americans and even statements of elected officials of both main parties.
The May Day Strong initiatives show the potential to move unions into the anti-Trump movement. There is therefore great potential for a very broad, mass, working-class-led anti-Trump coalition, though as always there is the danger that much of it will be recuperated by the Democratic Party, with the inevitable pressure around the midterm elections to elect Democrats and strip Trump of his Republican majority.
As noted above, the demands of the mass anti-Trump movement are largely defensive. The breadth and energy of the anti-Trump movement and widespread alienation from the two capitalist parties open the political space to advance offensives around issues such as health care, immigrant rights, housing, the end of military aid to Israel, and other issues.
The current situation confirms once again that independent political action remains a central question for U.S. socialists. The generalized fightback opens space for interest in socialist politics and recruiting possibilities, and socialist organizations including Solidarity have seen a “Trump Bump” in membership.
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