When Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, opponents marched in pink knitted “pussy hats” while protesters abroad plastered streets with images of the new US president as “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader.Spool forward eight years — after his entanglements with the law, two impeachments and divisive pardons of violent criminals — and the vibe among the anti-Trump resistance movement isn’t so much “A New Hope” as its darker sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.”Although there has been sporadic protest, the United States has seen almost none of the mass mobilization that made opposition to Trump in 2017 the largest social movement in a half-century.Even in Congress, Democrats have been more inclined in recent weeks to talk about “working with” Trump — noting his popular vote victory — rather than going after the Republican at every opportunity. “Resistance alone is a failed strategy. If it worked, Trump wouldn’t be president,” said political consultant Andrew Koneschusky, a former press secretary to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Democrats ran a campaign of resistance last cycle and it barely made a dent.”Trump, 78, sparked outrage after winning a tight 2016 election despite disparaging Mexicans, boasting about groping women on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and facing numerous sexual misconduct allegations.Democrats see as much to worry about this time around, and yet analysts have noted a palpable lack of the anger that came with his first term.- ‘The new Resistance’ -There has been some limited action by Democratic leaders in California to counter Trumpism, mainly behind-the-scenes strategy sessions, and “The People’s March” in Washington last weekend was reasonably well attended.But it was tiny compared to the 500,000-strong 2017 “Women’s March.” Even liberal Hollywood seems cowed, with the political spotlight moving away from the music and movie stars who backed Kamala Harris in 2024 to the Tinseltown legends like Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson who have joined Trump’s team.Koneschusky suggested that opposition was shifting to a more focused approach that targets specific aspects of Trump’s populist “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda, in the courts as much as in news studios.”The Resistance hasn’t vanished — it has evolved. It has moved from the streets to the courts. Well-crafted legal challenges have replaced protests and public displays of opposition,” he told AFP.He pointed to more than 20 Democratic states suing to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and civil society groups like the ACLU girding for a variety of legal fights. “The lawsuit, rather than the protest, is the new Resistance,” he said.Veteran political strategist Mike Fahey added that those who organized against Trump in 2024, only to see him win anyway, have hit a wall, and that exhaustion rather than apathy is paralyzing opposition.But he agreed that much of the opposition was simply less performative than in the past — and not necessarily less effective.- ‘The guts to fight’ -“Instead of relying on the sorts of large, dramatic demonstrations that characterized the early weeks of Trump’s presidency, these organizations have begun to stage far more sophisticated and less visible public events to work their will,” he said.While Trump’s victory last November was painful for Democrats, many believe that presenting Trump as an avatar of all society’s ills — or shrieking that every tweet was a threat to democracy — was counter-productive.Peter Loge, the director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, said smart opponents were tuning out the noise coming from Trump’s Truth Social feed to focus instead on specific policy impacts. “One way to think about it is like an amusement park or nightclub. When the lights are flashing and the noise is blaring it’s easy to get caught in the show,” he told AFP.”Smoke machines, disco balls and laugh tracks drive attention and resources, but ultimately it is about how people live their daily lives — and that’s policy.”Some groups that opposed Trump first time around reject the idea that his narrow popular vote victory gave him a broad mandate, pointing out that more people voted against him than for him in November.”Democrats can’t afford to cower behind half measures or excuses,” said Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of progressive lobby group Indivisible.”If they don’t have the guts to fight this now, when it’s all on the line, they’ll be handing Trump and MAGA Republicans exactly what they want: a propaganda victory that will embolden their assault on our freedoms.”

Venezuelan Josnexcy Martinez, who is staying at a shelter in a Texas border city, said she’s afraid of getting swept up in a raid targeting migrants even though she entered the country legally.   President Donald Trump began his second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling immigration into the United States. He has signed orders declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border and announced the deployment of more troops to the area while vowing to deport “criminal aliens,” moves that have spread fear across many communities.  Martinez, 28, is staying at a shelter in the city of El Paso with her five-year-old after entering the United States using the CBP One app.The platform allowed migrants in Mexico to make an appointment with US officials at designated border crossings, where they could apply for temporary residency. Trump cancelled the service on the first day of his new term. Even though Martinez is entitled to stay in the United States until her asylum case is heard by a judge, she said Trump’s actions have left her perpetually on edge. “My fear is that I will be arrested in a raid, by a police officer or someone from immigration and that they will ask me for my papers,” she said.Martinez, who gently drew a sheet over her son in the bunk bed where he sleeps, also held up the ID given to her by US officials when she crossed, explaining that she always has it on her. Karina Breceda, who runs the shelter where Martinez is staying, voiced concern that because of Trump’s policies, “we’re… going to start targeting people based on what we think a person that’s undocumented looks like, based on the color of their skin, or their clothes.”- ‘Just insane’ -In El Paso — a city of 678,000 people where roughly 80 percent of the population is of Latin American origin — Trump’s actions have bred anger among some. Mirna Cabral, 37, is a beneficiary of the DACA program launched during former president Barack Obama’s administration that gave some undocumented migrants who arrived as minors temporary work permits, which must be renewed.  She entered the United States illegally as a child and made a life in Texas. She married an American, who has since died, and had two children.Cabral was outraged by Trump’s executive order that aims to restrict birthright citizenship, an action already facing legal challenges on grounds that it breaches provisions in the Constitution. “That is just insane,” she said of Trump’s order. “It’s going against our Constitution because it doesn’t matter if you have a legal status or you don’t.”Everyone born in the United States, she said, has “the same rights.”Julieta Torres, 65, was born in Mexico but has lived in El Paso for decades. Cancelling birthright citizenship was unfair to children, she argued. “If they were born here, they are from this country, even if they are the children of undocumented parents,” she said.Hector Chavez, who works in El Paso, said migrants aspiring to be American in search of a better life should rethink their plans.  The 61-year-old Mexican national legally crosses to work in the United States, but chooses to live in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border, where life is more affordable. Immigrants should “stay on the other side,” he said. “The American dream is over.”

Donald Trump has derided the Delta smelt as a “worthless fish,” blaming efforts to protect the species for the devastating Los Angeles wildfires on social media, in a press conference, and even a White House order.In reality, California’s Delta smelt has minimal connection to the city’s water supply, say experts, who argue the US president’s willingness to condemn an endangered species reflects the chaotic and shortsighted nature of his environmental policies.”It’s scapegoating an internal enemy that’s supposed to be responsible for all our problems, in this case, fires and drought — and directing everybody’s anger toward that,” John Buse, general counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP.It is a “classic authoritarian” move, he argues — and a likely harbinger of what we will see under Trump 2.0.Trump’s assertion, first made on Truth Social, claimed that Governor Gavin Newsom’s failure to sign an order allowing millions of gallons of water from excess rain and snowmelt to flow southward from the state’s north had hampered firefighting efforts.He reiterated the accusation in a Day One executive order dramatically titled “Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.”-  Real crisis, wrong culprit – California has a complex water crisis — with climate change an outsized factor.But the Delta smelt — a small, translucent fish considered a “sentinel” species that indicates the health of its Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta habitat — is not a culprit.”It was once one of the most abundant fish in the upper estuary, supporting a diverse array of predators including striped bass,” said Peter Moyle, a University of California, Davis ichthyologist widely regarded as the leading expert on the species.However, habitat degradation caused by water diversions for agriculture and urban use, competition and predation by invasive species, exposure to contaminants, and dwindling food sources led to the Delta smelt being listed as “threatened” in 1993, and “endangered” by California in 2009. Water projects in The Golden State must balance conservation with meeting agricultural and urban demands.Trump’s rhetoric has nationalized what was previously a Californian political narrative pitting fish against farmers, leaving the Delta smelt a convenient “scape fish,” according to Moyle.Massive federal- and state-run pumping stations redirect water from northern areas to the south, creating challenges for the smelt and other aquatic life. Increased salinity from these pumping operations harms the fish, and many are killed when they are sucked into screens or diverted into canals.- Culture war politics – Despite Trump’s claims, however, protections that limit the amount of pumping for the Delta smelt and other fish have had minimal recent impact on the Los Angeles water supply.The federal Central Valley Project, which Trump has targeted under his order, primarily serves agriculture in Central California — not Los Angeles, explains Buse.While the State Water Project does supply water to Southern California, including Los Angeles, most of the state’s major reservoirs are currently at or above historic levels for this time of year, particularly in the south, official data shows.Even in drier years, protections for the Delta smelt account for only a small fraction of reductions in outflow.The primary factor determining water pumped downstream is the amount of rainfall and snowmelt flowing into the San Francisco estuary.As Moyle explained in a 2017 paper, the same saltwater that harms the fish also poses significant challenges for agriculture, making it the key driver of restrictions on water exports.The Delta smelt’s legal protection “has been particularly controversial because right-wing pundits and politicians have seized on its small size,” said Caleb Scoville, a sociologist at Tufts University. “Salmon aren’t as easy of a target.”Rather than addressing the root causes of California’s water challenges — including climate change — Trump’s rhetoric turns “hardships associated with environmental destabilization into partisan gotchas,”  Scoville argued.”It feeds us-versus-them identity politics but doesn’t actually hold power to account.”

The US film industry’s first major gathering since wildfires devastated Los Angeles began Thursday at Sundance, where Olivia Colman and John Lithgow kicked off the indie movie festival under somber circumstances.Hollywood’s annual pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains to debut the coming year’s top indie films started barely two weeks after blazes killed more than two dozen people and brought the US entertainment capital to a halt.Festival chiefs spoke at length with filmmakers “who lost homes or were displaced” by the fires before deciding to press ahead, Sundance director Eugene Hernandez told AFP.Among those were the team behind “Didn’t Die,” an indie zombie movie about survivors podcasting to an ever-dwindling human population, which was partly shot in the filmmakers’s now-destroyed Altadena homes.”We turned the film in, and a few days later… our homes were lost,” director Meera Menon told AFP.The film’s producer and editor, who lived near to Menon and her co-writer husband, also fled their house before it was razed by the fires.”The four of us really lost everything… our home was our dream home,” added a tearful-sounding Menon, who was nonetheless driving up to Utah on Thursday to attend her film’s premiere next week.Also among the 88 features being screened in snowy Park City is “Rebuilding,” starring Josh O’Connor as a rancher who loses everything in a wildfire.”It takes on an added poignance,” said Hernandez.”It’s an incredible film, and one that we felt was important to show, based on that spirit of resilience,” said Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.- J-Lo, Cumberbatch -The big opening night film this year was “Jimpa,” in which Colman plays a mother taking her non-binary teen to visit their gay and highly outspoken activist grandfather — played by Lithgow.It premiered as new US President Donald Trump said he has made it “official policy of the United States, that there are only two genders, male and female.”Lithgow said it was “extremely important” to begin Sundance with a film fostering acceptance “at this particular historical moment… when hatred is in the air.”Among other festival highlights, Jennifer Lopez brings her first film to Sundance this weekend with glitzy musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”From “Dreamgirls” director Bill Condon, the film is based on the Broadway adaptation of Argentine author Manuel Puig’s novel.Lopez plays a silver-screen diva whose life and roles are discussed by two mismatched prisoners as they form an unlikely bond in their grim cell. Benedict Cumberbatch stars in another literary adaptation, “The Thing With Feathers,” based on Max Porter’s experimental and poetic novel about a grieving husband and two young sons.Rapper A$AP Rocky and late-night host Conan O’Brien make up the eclectic cast of mystery “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”And “The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri teams up with John Malkovich for thriller “Opus,” about a young writer investigating the mysterious disappearance of a legendary pop star.- Politics -Among Sundance’s documentary selection, which has launched several of the most recent Oscar-winning nonfiction films, politics will feature heavily.Former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern is expected in town to promote the behind-the-scenes documentary “Prime Minister.” And two films touching on the Gaza conflict will see their debut, days after the ceasefire agreement with Israel began.”Coexistence, My Ass!” follows Jewish peace activist-turned-comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, as she constructs a one-woman show and grapples with the consequences of Israel’s military campaign.”As an activist, I reached 20 people, and in a viral video mocking dictators, I reached 20 million people,” she told AFP, admitting she is “anxious” about how the film will be received.Palestinian-American director Cherien Dabis will unveil “All That’s Left of You” in a prominent Saturday evening premiere at Sundance’s biggest venue.Sundance runs until February 2.