The resistance meets daily on Microsoft Teams. The country's 23 Democratic state attorneys general log on at 4pm ET for a thirty-minute confidential video chat to coordinate their plans for pushing back against the Trump administration.
The American left has floundered during Trump 2.0. The mass protests of 2017 have not emerged, and donors to progressive causes are not giving the way they did then, either.
Then there are the attorneys general, who see themselves as the last backstop between the people and the president. Their multi-state lawsuits have temporarily stopped the president from revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal funding, and cutting off money for medical research.
Democratic state officials were not the only plaintiffs emerging to sue the new president. The AFL-CIO challenged Trump's changes to the civil service, the ACLU to protect access to gender-affirming care, and the City of Baltimore over the shuttering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Amid bleak talk of constitutional crises, the attendees' mood was lightened by the easy familiarity of comrades that have bonded in trench warfare. They greeted each other with inscrutable inside jokes and praised their lesser-known talents.
To mount his suits, California sent Bonta an extra $25 million. Rhode Island's Legislature gave Neronha more money to staff up. Attorneys general in Hawaii, Connecticut, and elsewhere are hoping their lawmakers will tap state budgets, too.