04.14.26

Resistance works

Actually, nope.

Resistance, in physics, is the force that hinders the flow of charged electrons as they zigzag from point to point. Resistance doesn’t stop the flow of electricity. Instead, it causes heat. Popular resistance works the same way. It obstructs and slows the government’s business, creating political heat and slowing it further.

That’s what is happening to Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

That’s the lede of my piece in Sunday’s “Fighting Back” section of the Guardian. The piece speaks for continuing to fight in the streets, the courts, and at the polls — because we can win.

Yesterday, two stories in the New York Times offered more evidence of that fact.

In New York, the LGBTQ+ pride flag that flies in New York’s Stonewall Park was freed from further menace by Trump’s National Park Service. The vest-pocket park, across the street from the Stonewall Inn, commemorates the riots that began in that bar on June 28, 1969, when the working-class, racially integrated, and substantially transgender clientele fought back against (yet another) police raid. The riot grew and lasted for days, becoming what is widely viewed as the beginning of a visible mass movement for queer people’s rights, then called the Gay Liberation Movement.

As part of its war on LGBTQ people — most viciously and concretely against transpeople — the Trump administration took down the rainbow flag last year, using the bogus justification that it was not an “official” National Park Service flag. Community members immediately raised a new flag, protest broke out across the country, and a group of queer organizations sued the feds. They argued that the government had illegally targeted queer people and violated a policy that allows the NSP to fly “non-agency” flags at federal sites if they provide historical context. Stonewall Park does nothing but provide a historical event.

The Trump administration entered a settlement requiring the park service to allow the flag to fly and prohibiting the government from taking it down again. If you’re in New York, sit on a bench in the park and enjoy the rainbow.

Another settlement reached last week represents a victory for the U.S. federal civil service, the First Amendment, and the rule of law — and another defeat for the Trump administration.

In February 2025, an executive order abolished the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the federal agency that oversees and funds libraries throughout the country. The EO zeroed out the IMLS’s $290 million budget, already appropriated for 2026, and fired its 70 or so employees. The American Library Association and the union representing the workers sued on the grounds that these actions violated the Constitution and the federal law that gives Congress sole authority over the spending of federal funds.

The cuts threatened to decimate local libraries, many of which depend on the IMLS for their survival. Twenty-one state attorneys general also sued on their behalf.

The administration dropped its appeal of the favorable ruling for the AGs and settled with the plaintiffs. Under the agreement, the government must restore the agency, rehire its staff, and distribute the funds. ALA president Sam Helmick called the settlement a victory for “every American’s freedom to read and learn.”

And finally, a blow to one of the more egregious displays of Trumpian hubris — of which there are a zillion: The president agreed, for only the second time, to take down an image he had posted on Truth Social (the other one was an image of the Obamas as apes). Trump didn’t apologize, of course, for the picture or his insults to his nemesis Pope Leo (“he is weak on crime”). But the post is gone nonetheless.

As it turns, Donald Trump is not the second coming of Christ.