Indivisible Releases New Guide For Defending Democracy

As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. To unhappy Democrats and progressives, 2025 may look a lot like 2017: Donald Trump will soon be back in the White House, the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the causes they hold dear seem to be under attack.

Eight years ago, two former congressional staffers, Ezra Levin *13 and Angel Padilla *13, provided a battle plan for the left. Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda, an online booklet, became a blueprint for the self-styled resistance movement that fought numerous Trump initiatives, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act. Reenergized Democrats recaptured the House in the 2018 midterms, the White House and the Senate in 2020, and then had a better than expected midterm.

The first Indivisible guide, which started as a Google Doc shared among friends, led to the founding of a national organization of which Levin and his wife, Leah Greenberg, are now co-executive directors. (Padilla is no longer affiliated with the group.) There are currently more than 1,000 Indivisible chapters across all 50 states.

Back to square one after the November elections, Levin has updated the online guide for “Trump 2.0” with, Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink. “This guide is narrow, it is short term, and it is defensive in nature,” he says. “It is not a guide for how we build the world we want to see, it’s a guide for how we live to fight another day.” One consequence of being out of power, Levin acknowledges, is that Democrats no longer have the power to set the legislative agenda. Efforts are focused on putting Democrats in the best position to regain control of at least one branch of Congress in 2026, Levin says, and on increasing resistance at the state and local levels.

“Trump wants us to believe that the presidency is all-powerful,” one passage in the guide reads. “It ain’t true. Political power in our democracy overlaps between local, state, and federal electeds. Your power comes from your ability to be a source of support (or a pain in the ass) to those electeds.”

So long as the GOP controls Washington, Levin says, opposition there will have to be opportunistic, seizing on instances of overreach if they present themselves. One such opportunity did present itself within weeks of the election, he says, contending that organized pressure on senators by local Indivisible groups in the form of emails and phone calls helped amplify opposition to the nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general and led to Gaetz’s withdrawal.

“It’s going to be incumbent on us to pick strategic fights going forward,” Levin says. “Literally saying ‘no’ to every single thing that comes down is probably an ineffective strategy and one that will use up a lot of time that could be used in picking fights that are the most damaging.”

At the congressional level, Indivisible plans to press sympathetic Democrats and vulnerable Republicans to resist Trumpian excesses. “They can’t get all of Project 2025 through if we respond forcefully enough in the right ways and the right places,” Levin says. “And every day they spend fighting us to get something bad done is a day they can’t do another bad thing.”

Asked if he fears that anti-Trump groups are exhausted after the grueling presidential campaign and years of struggle, Levin says he still sees commitment and enthusiasm, citing the 31,000 people who joined a postelection Zoom call to launch the new Indivisible guide.

Still, Levin sees a long road ahead and encourages volunteers to rest up.

“The choir keeps singing even if one of us takes a breath,” he says. “If you need to say, ‘I’m going to go have Thanksgiving with my family and the holidays with my family, and then I’m going to come back,’ great. That’s healthy, and we’ll be here.”