The walls are closing in on Trump, and his reaction is to become increasingly repressive and violent. Is the Mamdani Movement and the resistance in general prepared for it?

Consider what is happening:

Finance capital disenchanted
On the one side, finance capital is becoming increasingly disenchanted with Trump. They had thought they could control him regarding tariffs. They found out they were mistaken. They are not happy about Trump’s attempt to give away the Donetsk region of Ukraine to Russia, with the promise of opening the door to Russia taking the rest of Ukraine in the future. Now, the policies of Trump‘s secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK jr., threatens to unleash long-term health crises in the country. RFK’s policies actually threaten the return of polio, a deadly disease which was eradicated over 50 years ago. Diphtheria, mumps, rubella? All those and others are now on the table again. This is not only bad for profits, it threatens to unleash social chaos. Even some Republican senators are starting to speak up against RFK – the same ones who voted to confirm him a few months ago! And what is worst of all, Trump is trying to take direct personal control over the Federal Reserve Bank and bend its policies to suit his own personal interests rather than the interests of finance capital!

Hemmed in from below
Trump is also being hemmed in from below. His overall approval rating in the latest poll was down to 43%, and on what was supposed to be his strongest issue, immigration-border security, he only gets 47% approval rating. On the key issue that helped propel him into office, inflation, his approval rating is 39%. That will inevitably get worse. A recent Financial Times article reported that “Americans face biggest increase in health insurance cost in 15 years.” Those increased rates will hit voters in the key state of Florida even harder. According to the Florida Phoenix, insurance companies there are proposing rate increases of between 19 and 41% for 2026, just in time for the midterm elections.

The birthday card Trump allegedly sent to Epstein has now been made public. More will be revealed in coming weeks, ensuring that the issue won’t die.

Epstein
Then there is the issue that won’t go away: Jeffrey Epstein. Whether it is because Trump himself figures prominently in the so-called Epstein files, or whether it is because his closest associates do, or whether it is because Trump and those he represents simply support sexual abuse of young girls (and young boys too), the Trump administration is doing everything it can to keep Epstein’s secrets a secret. This is causing even those on the far right to speak up. They have been campaigning for too long around the issue of child predators, as well as around the conspiracy theory issues, and they cannot drop it now. Some on the far right or even using the Epstein issue to hype antisemitism. Try as he might, Trump cannot make this issue go away.

Trump’s response
Trump’s response to the press conference of the Epstein survivors was classic and also very significant. He said “it’s really a Democratic Party hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president. even if you look at DC right now, it’s a totally safe zone…. It’s a safe zone because it’s very safe. You can walk down the street now and nothing‘s gonna happen no crime, no murders no nothing…” In other words, Trump is using crime and use of the National Guard to distract from from the Epstein issue. He is hyping his sending the National Guard into Washington DC to supposedly combat crime. This reaction of his to the Epstein issue will be repeated with every other issue, including the question of inflation.

That is his natural instinct, but it is more than that. After he lost the 2020 election, Trump wanted to mobilize the National Guard to seize the ballot boxes and overturn his defeat in that year. In other words, he wanted to in effect institute martial law. It was only the so-called “adults in the room” from his top military officers to even his up till then completely pliable attorney general, Bill Barr, who prevented him from doing that. Trump learned from that experience and there are no more such figures in the upper echelons of the present Trump administration.

Trump declares war on Chicago

Now, Trump is threatening to unleash the National Guard, or other federal agents, on the people of Chicago. In case anybody has any confusion about what that will mean, he recently posted this AI graphic of himself, looking lean and mean with the fires of war and black helicopters in the background The whole thing is a reference to the brutal Vietnam war movie Apocalypse now. “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” he wrote (or more likely, somebody wrote for him). This is a reference to the statement in the film “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. Nepalm, of course, was widely used by US troops in Vietnam to burn huge swaths of that country and also to burn people alive. Trump also wrote, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of War”. In other words, he is prepared to declare war against the people of Chicago. This, in fact, is what the name change from Department of Defense to Department of War is really about – a declaration of war against any domestic opposition.

Trump has Mamdani and NYC in his sights

New York City elections
Trump next has New York City in his sights. He is not talking about sending the National Guard there so much right now because he does not want to inflame that situation and help Mamdani win. But he has made it perfectly clear that if Mamdani is elected he will send the National Guard into New York City.

Trump and Cuomo
Behind the scenes. (or maybe not so much behind the scenes) Trump is maneuvering to help Cuomo. According to reliable reports, he is trying to get Eric Adams and Republican candidate to drop out. Most polls show that even in a head-to- head race between Mandani and Cuomo, Mamdani would win. However a recent poll indicates the opposite. A Mayor Cuomo would be indebted to Trump, and Cuomo would welcome Trump’s federal forces, even including the National Guard, into New York City. So no matter who wins the mayoral race, it is hard to see how Trump will not send his forces into that city.

Of course, it will be a far better situation if Mamdani is the new mayor, since he opposes almost everything that Trump stands for, as opposed to if  Cuomo is elected, especially since he would be indebted to Trump and would facilitate Trump‘s direct intervention into the city. But the question still remains, what would this intervention signify and how to oppose it? There does not seem to be a lot of clarity around that issue.

Chicago
In Chicago according to politico. com Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin simply called Trump’s threats “irresponsible“ and “reckless“. Illinois representative Chuy Garcia said “we’ve seen it as a declaration of war against the Mexican community, against the immigrant community.” A similar interpretation was also given by the Chicago Teachers Union, which wrote “this is about attacking black led political power in cities, more than anything else. They can call it immigration and they can call it crime, but we know that it’s racial profiling and stop and frisk on steroids.” Yes, it is all of that, but it is far more. As we have shown, it is about moving towards martial law and preventing an election defeat in 2026. In other words, it is a threat to the entire US working class.

Democrats
The Democrats’ strategy is essentially to go to court. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said in reference to going to court “that’s all we have….” He added that if the courts do not stop Trump, “then we are at the whims of a fighting force that they’re planning to send here,” In other words, outside of legal challenges, we are powerless to stop Trump. This strategy will not succeed. Even in cases where lower courts rule against Trump, the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court will reverse that. That is what they just recently did regarding the National Guard in Los Angeles. They reversed the lower federal courts ruling and have now given Trump a free hand in that city. And even if SCOTUS doesn’t unequivocally back Trump, the whole court route will take so long to rein Trump in that it will be too late.

Union leadership
The union leadership, including the so-called “progressive” union leaders like those leading the Chicago Teachers Union remain true to their traditions and have not expressed the slightest difference with the Democrats’ strategy.

Socialists
And how about the left, the only one of which really matters is Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who are at the center of the Mamdani Campaign. Two recent articles indicate their direction. One was an article in the Nation magazine. It was co-authored by a labor studies professor and two former low-level union bureaucrats, all of whom are in or around DSA. Oakland Socialist showed in our previous article, “The unspoken questions standing over the Mamdani Movement”, how the approach advocated in that article was completely inadequate to deal with the coming storm.

A more recent article in Jacobin magazine, which is an unofficial journal of DSA, repeated the same mistake and added some new ones of its own. The article is by Álvaro López, who is New York City DSA’s electoral coordinator. In the first place, López suggests that if elected Mamdani cannot and should not use his office to build a mass movement from below. According López, that is the role of the left, in other words of DSA. There is one, and only one, mention of the National Guard, which López pictures as being sent into New York “as part of efforts to facilitate immigration enforcement raids on our churches, daycare centers, and schools.” When combined with his perspectives for the coming year or so,, you can see where he and DSA are headed. “To successfully protect a Mamdani mayoralty and to build institutional structural power, we will need to seize this opportunity to rebuild powerful, working classes, institutions, and power, community organizations, organize a mass base around popular demands like taxing the rich, and continue using elections to reach millions with our message and shape public perception during a Mamdani mayoralty.” In other words, continue to campaign around economic reforms. Behind this word salad stands the unspoken assumption that in the next three years of a Trump administration we will continue to see some semblance of “free and fair elections,” and some semblance of freedom of speech and freedom to organize. This is extremely unlikely.

Coming protests
Yes, there will be protests in the streets against Trump‘s

Several thousand Chicagoans protested Trumps National Guard plans on Labor Day. It is a start, but only a start.

threat of sending the National Guard. Recently, there was a protest of several thousand in Chicago. Even bigger ones are likely, and that is a start. But will it be enough?

During Trump’s first administration there were even bigger protests against Trump’s deportation of immigrants. That did not stop him. This time, while street protests are a necessary first step, but protests alone will be even less adequate.

Role of the unions
This is where the role of the labor movement comes in. In general, the union leadership has been silent on the question of the National Guard. As we noted, the Chicago teachers union did raise that issue, but their action proposal was little but letting people know what rights they have. And since the Supreme Court will sign with Trump almost every time, the legal rights people have are minimal at best. Another way of putting it is that the union leadership has no difference with the Democrats’ strategy of relying on the federal courts.

The union leadership has tremendous potential power to organize and mobilize their membership to come out into the streets. That is a first step. There’s no reason whatsoever that the Chicago Teachers Union could not follow this up by preparing for a citywide teachers strike, if and when the national guard or a mass of ICE agents enters Chicago. After all, Chicago students and their families as well as teachers themselves would be unsafe. The same applies to many other union workplaces.

And how about the New York unions, most of which have formally endorsed Mamdani? Will they stand idly by if Trump attempts to in effect overturn the mayoral election by brute force?

In France in 1968 university students came out to protest around their own issues and they were met with such brutality that tens of millions of French workers join them and the situation became almost a revolutionary situation with the entire country shut down. We’re not saying that the same thing will happen here, but most certainly repression of protesters will tend to radicalize millions of workers, including union members.

Making the unions really stand up will mean a necessary struggle within the unions themselves. Their leadership has long opposed such a militant and independent action. Rank-and-file union caucuses can initiate this struggle. Most times, there is no substitute for the union leadership doing what it was elected to do – to actually lead. But in extreme situations, such as ones we may be facing in the near future, it’s possible that a rank and file opposition can actually gain enough power to help a mass of union members organize and take independent action on their own – in other words, a mass wildcat strike. In any case, the struggle to build an effective opposition to Trump and his plans for martial law must involve the struggle to transform the unions.

Danger from ultra left
If the struggle against Trump‘s repressive measures intensifies, and if the unions do not take decisive action, there is an additional danger. That danger is that ultra left groups could engage in property, violence or even violence against individuals associated with Trump. That would be all the excuse Trump needs to vastly step up his repressive measures. In fact, it is entirely possible that far right provocateurs could take such actions in order to help Trump. This is added importance to the urgency of starting the campaign within the unions now.

Update: Since this article was published, we saw the interview Mamdani did with Al Sharpton on MSNBC. While he ceded some ground on the issue of “globalizing the intifada” that he should not have, that is not the main concern. The main concern is that he indicated no difference with the strategy of the Democratic Party regarding stopping Trump’s drive towards martial law. (Mamdani did not mention the term “martial law”.) Instead, Mamdani indicated support for relying on the courts and stressed how the court in California had ruled against Trump regarding his troops in Los Angeles. Presumably just hours after the Sharpton interview, the Supreme Court MAGA majority lifted that ruling, thereby leafing ICE to carry on freely and leaving Trump to continue his march towards martial law. This was entirely to be expected, and Mamdani should have anticipated it. What alternative does that leave Mamdani? That is the question. As Oaklandsocialist has shown, the unions must be central in defeating Trump’s drive towards martial law. That won’t happen unless there is an organized campaign for it.

If you find value in this approach, we urge you to subscribe to Oaklandsocialist to get notified when new articles appear here. It’s free and your contact info won’t get passed on anywhere else.