As we prepare for 2026, remember we have the power to make our future | Rebecca Solnit

WWhen we talk about opposition in politics, sometimes it is simply political disagreement – ​​but in the current political crisis in the United States, the opposition has become the opposite of the Trump administration in a significant way. It was necessary because it is not just a political conflict.

Between the administration and the opposition there are real opposites of principle: between those who are committed to inclusion and those who are committed to exclusion; truth and lies; kindness and cruelty; the protection and destruction of systems which in turn protect the climate or public health.

It seems possible that what will ultimately emerge is a clarified sense of principles and a deeper commitment to them (which is why part of the conflict is over American history itself).

On one side are federal government leaders and their spokespeople, whose lies are part of their contempt for the electorate and the rule of law. These lies are also used to justify their cruelty – cruelty to federal workers, immigrants, the children of this country who need food and health care, including vaccines, and the millions currently starving or devastated by preventable diseases around the world since Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Effectiveness” gang destroyed USAID.

Lies by politicians were once decried and punished when detected, in a process that often led to contrition and apologies on the part of the liar. Even the act of lying was stealthy when people feared detection and its consequences. Today, lies form the backbone of the Trump administration’s statements – from probably lies about the people on the small boats they blow up in the Caribbean, to lies about vaccines, the economy, climate, polls, laws, history, race, immigration and just about everything else.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt specializes in grotesque lies praising Donald Trump’s health, intelligence, success and popularity. Robert F Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services, peddles lies about health, healthcare and the science behind it. Vice President JD Vance has also lied on a wide range of issues, but his venom has been particularly directed at immigrants, whom he falsely accuses of disastrous economic consequences and extravagant crimes. White House advisor Stephen Miller told the same lies, with even more venom. But Trump is above all the liar in chief.

It is clear that many people on the far right have become part of a subculture that celebrates and revels in cruelty and villainy and does not shy away from dishonesty. Trump officials sometimes seem baffled by the response from the rest of us who aren’t part of it, but apparently they don’t think we matter. We are not their target audience, and this indifference to majority opinion and values ​​in itself demonstrates their commitment to minority government. It’s our job as the opposition to matter. And we did it.

Opposition to immigrant rights is driven by solidarity with those under attack, backed by compassion. From Los Angeles to Chicago to Charlotte, North Carolina, people have risked their own physical and legal safety to stand alongside those under attack by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and have organized, trained, and done the work to protect their neighbors. This has had a major impact on ICE’s ability to persecute immigrants and people of color and black people whose immigration status doesn’t seem to matter to these goon squads — sometimes as specific as preventing a person from being deported, sometimes as broad as this year’s unprecedented protests.

For example, the Chicago Tribune reports that on October 25, “officers deployed even more tear gas, this time just before a children’s Halloween parade in Irving Park, where a resident rushed out of his home, still in Chicago Blackhawks pajamas, to confront federal authorities who had attacked a man in his yard.” »

Others, such as lawyers, judges, protesters, journalists, scientists and educators, have stood up for truth, facts, science and law to protect human beings and the social and natural systems on which we depend. They defended the authority of truth that authoritarians seek to stifle or corrupt. The administration’s withholding and corruption of information is corrosive to democracy, and it comes from a kind of elitism that sees the rest of us as undeserving of the truth — and perhaps idiots who will believe the lies (which many people on the right actually are, and most of us are not).

Facts, truth, science, history are themselves democratic. The causes of civil war, Covid-19, and the climate crisis are the same whether you’re a billionaire or a busker, and money can’t get you out of it – even if it can buy you a social media platform or news network to corrupt.

The opposition was marked above all by solidarity (which is by definition an alliance and a commitment to those who are not the same as you), an adherence to difference. I don’t believe there has been this level of solidarity with immigrants and refugees before, from the crowds protesting in the streets to the U.S. senator who flew to El Salvador to try to save the kidnapped and persecuted Kilmar Ábrego García. I hope this leads to a shift in the Democratic Party’s narrative about immigrants and refugees, from a watered-down acceptance of their characterization as a burden and a problem to a recognition of their irreplaceable contributions to this country, economically and otherwise.

Attempts to secure truth and perhaps justice for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims have also been driven by solidarity with the victims and a sense of principle that the Trump administration and Trump himself do not share. Their victimization is the result of the radical inequality between poor girls and young women and rich men. So one of the underlying questions is about equality, about whether we will have a nation in which everyone’s rights matter, in which everyone deserves the protection of the law.

It is remarkable how this scandal that refuses to go away caused widespread Republican defection, when members of the House and Senate voted so overwhelmingly in favor of releasing the files and some Republicans came out openly against Trump himself. Polls show that Trump’s popularity and that of his handling of the economy and immigration have declined dramatically over the year.

It was unclear in early 2025 what kind of opposition to the Trump administration there would be and how effective it would be. At the start of the year, many feared a powerful administration whose destruction was not contested, but it was contested and it stumbled, faltered and retreated in many situations.

The administration now appears to be becoming more extreme and reckless as it becomes more desperate, chaotic and unpopular. We enter 2026 with radical uncertainty about the fate of this country – but also with the certainty that citizens have the power to determine what happens, if they continue to come forward and stand up for their principles.