ASSESSMENT: State of the Anti-Trump Resistance Movement and the Burgeoning Color Revolution
Former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department employees are hosting recruitment and training sessions for current federal employees to resist the Trump administration from the inside, according to a report from nonprofit media outlet NOTUS.
“But they’ve [the Trump administration] done a very foolish thing [by disbanding USAID]. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime,” said one anonymous former USAID employee.
DemocracyAID, a group founded by former USAID official Danielle Reiff, is hosting invite-only workshops with federal employees to train and coordinate resistance networks in federal agencies to engage in “noncooperation” tactics. DemocracyAID has previously “remained under the radar” and doesn’t even have a website, according to the NOTUS article. But they’re providing instruction to current and former federal employees on topics like the Danish resistance to Nazi occupation.
“Getting people to understand that it’s part of a process is the training,” said one DemocracyAID leader. “It feels silly. ‘Why are we going to get ice cream?’ You’re building up that muscle and that bravery, and you’re building up your numbers. Today it starts with four, but tomorrow it’s 10. We’re helping them understand that is the organizing, and that is the process to get to a massive strike.”
Some members of the informal network of former USAID and State Department employees are also distributing the Office of Strategic Services’ (OSS, the CIA predecessor) Simple Sabotage manual to political allies currently working in the federal government. [source]
Assessment: A “noncooperation” campaign is a resistance campaign, using predominantly nonviolent tactics to attack or otherwise undermine the legitimacy, authority, and capacity of a sitting government – in this case the Trump administration.
In a “best case” scenario, this group and others like it will use tactics like civil disobedience to grind down the gears of the Trump administration and prevent them from, as they see it, becoming authoritarian. In a worst case scenario, the leaders of this resistance movement decide to foment an actual revolution – colloquially known as a Color Revolution – to topple the Trump government.
Briefly, a Color Revolution is a type of irregular warfare that uses predominantly non-violent action to topple an existing government, usually through mass protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and public displays of mass political defiance.
As opposed to the hard power of an insurgency — a violent, armed attempt by irregular forces to overthrow a government — these “popular” revolutions use soft power — social power — to resist, embarrass, frustrate, and undermine the legitimacy of a government and then force it from power.
It’s more than political warfare, but less than a military coup or armed revolution.
The goal of a Color Revolution is to topple an existing government in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of human suffering.
That precludes armed violence as the primary tactic, considering that an average insurgency lasts roughly 10 years and carries a high death toll and no assurance of success (and severe repercussions for failure).
A Color Revolution once launched, on the other hand, is typically over in weeks to months, and has a comparatively higher success rate to insurgency with a far lower death toll.
Whereas armed revolutionary violence is used to attack the military capacity of a government, Color Revolution is the coordinated, strategic use of soft power against the three pillars of governance:
It attacks legitimacy by turning the people against the existing government, towards an alternative shadow government or government-in-waiting.
It attacks authority by encouraging the people to openly disobey the government.
It attacks capacity by sapping the money, resources, and manpower required to carry out government functions.
A government with no legitimacy, no authority, and no capacity is no government at all, and is soon replaced.
One of the most important things we can do to anticipate the future is by identifying where we are in the phases of this burgeoning resistance movement and possible Color Revolution attempt.
To start, a Color Revolution has three basic prerequisites:
Powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) capable of developing a strategic plan, and organizing and directing resistance campaigns.
Popular dissatisfaction that creates a foundation for mass resistance and a revolutionary rupture.
A shadow government or government-in-waiting that’s:
capable of resuming government functions once the previous government has been forced from power
and recognized as the legitimate government once it assumes power.
Midway through 2025, I see:
Powerful NGOs capable of developing a strategic plan, and organizing and directing resistance campaigns
Significant dissatisfaction with the Trump administration. “Popular” – as in popular support or popular dissatisfaction – is a vague term. Popular does not mean a majority of a country, but a substantial portion of the overall populace. Certain protest organizations, like Indivisible, have called for a movement of active participation from just 3.5% of the country, or roughly 12 million. That would constitute a “popular” movement. Is at least 10-20% of the U.S. dissatisfied with the Trump administration? Of course, so they technically have achieved “popular” dissatisfaction, although it’s far from a majority. Again, it’s a vague term, but is the textbook term.
Are we seeing a shadow government emerge? Not overtly, and certainly not legitimately.
We can also use the work of Frances Fox Piven (yes, the Piven half of the Cloward-Piven Strategy) to gauge where we are. In her book Challenging Authority, she outlines the four lines of effort for a popular revolution:
Building a broad coalition of activists ✅
Mass mobilization protests ✅
Mass civil disobedience ❌
Strikes and economic disruption ❌
This is a great gauge to determine where this resistance movement is, and how close they are to becoming a revolutionary movement. They’re inching closer, but they’re not there yet.
Broadly, a resistance and then revolutionary movement foments revolution by moving the mass of the people from some level of active/passive support or acquiescence to some level of active/passive opposition or defiance. As you can see on the spectrum below, noncooperation – the stated goal of shadow groups like DemocracyAID – is firmly within the resistance and revolutionary paradigm.
I built this “Color Revolution Pyramid” (below) to help us understand where this movement currently is. I’ve determined four primary phases, which help us determine exactly where we are on the scale and how much risk this movement poses right now:
Symbolic Resistance: Relatively low-risk actions such as protests at government buildings and small demonstrations against symbols of power. These pose no threat to a government, but are used to gauge popular support for political opposition, build legitimacy for a resistance movement, and boost the confidence of actors for larger demonstrations in the future.
Selective Resistance: After support and legitimacy are gained through symbolic resistance, a popular revolutionary movement can begin engaging in select political defiance. These actions include civil disobedience such as sit-ins and occupations, boycotts, and sustained demonstrations that garner media attention and begin building pressure against a government.
Mass Resistance: When selective resistance achieves active support from a substantial portion of society (typically 15-30% or more), a resistance movement can begin coordinated, targeted, and nonviolent strategic action like national strikes and boycotts, large scale disruption to economic activity and civil society, and other forms of mass political defiance designed to damage a government’s legitimacy, capacity, and authority.
Transition of Government Power: Through each phase, a resistance movement builds legitimacy for alternative institutions, especially a shadow government or government-in-waiting capable of stepping in to fulfill government functions once the previous government has been forced from power. This often includes the development of a transitional government to oversee new democratic elections, or to overturn the results of a previous election perceived to have been corrupt and/or produced an illegitimate and illegal outcome.
If this were a game of baseball, I’d say we’re in the 3rd or 4th inning. We can see overt indicators – the building blocks – of a resistance and revolutionary movement, but the majority of the game is still ahead of us. I hope this gives you some insight into what comes next. As always, I’ll continue to track these developments and provide an assessment of where we are along with expectations of the near future and what you can do about it. Thank you for the support. - M.S.