The Left’s lackluster resistance comes as it has grappled with how to respond to Trump’s reelection, with Molly Murphy, a pollster for Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign, telling Democratic National Committee members last month that “the 2025 playbook cannot be the 2017 playbook.”

While resistance to Trump this time around attracted smaller numbers in the nation’s capital this month than it did eight years ago, Democrats are still rolling out demonstrations. Here’s a look into a few of them. 

The Women’s March and ’14 Now’ protesters

Days after Trump won the election in November, the progressive Women’s March conducted a small-scale protest in Washington at Columbus Circle and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with ties to the president-elect. 

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A larger anti-Trump protest spearheaded by the Women’s March and aided by groups such as Abortion Access Now, Planned Parenthood, National Women’s Law Center, and the ACLU will take place in Washington two days before the inauguration. The annual event isn’t just an outreach to female voters. Rebranded this year as “the People’s March,” it will bring together a coalition of progressives, including members of the LGBTQ community who oppose Trump’s agenda and say he represents a “fascist” threat to their agenda. 

“We’re also trying to make visible a resistance … Looking at the election results, there is this narrative around a broad mandate within the electorate in favor of Trump’s policies. We want to demonstrate that there are people who will continue to stand up and fight against that,” Tamika Middleton, managing director of the Women’s March, told TIME magazine. “We’re going to need women. We’re going to need queer, trans folks and non binary folks. We’re going to need men. We’re going to need all of us really in this struggle together in order to fight back against what we see coming.” 

However, the march has been significantly scaled back this year compared to 2017, when it began the day after Trump’s inauguration in protest of his winning the election. As many as 500,000 showed up that year to support abortions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and more during the first Women’s March on Washington. This year, event organizers expect only around 50,000, according to a permit application. 

The lackluster enthusiasm for resistance efforts rang loud and clear in a comment one person wrote in response to an Instagram post from the Women’s March sharing information about an upcoming protest.  

“No im tired, yall have fun though,” they said. 

Anti-Trump demonstrators also held a protest in D.C. from Jan. 3 through the fifth, calling on Congress not to certify the election results. Citing the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the movement, called 14th Now, says Trump is an “adjudicated insurrectionist,” disqualified under the 14th Amendment to serve as president. 

“President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election. He will unify the country through success,” a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team told Newsweek in response to 14 Now’s demonstrations at Franklin Park and the Lincoln Memorial.

The three-day protests saw relatively low numbers. It is unclear whether the group might hold similar events during inaugural festivities. 

Congressional boycotts

At least 55 House Democrats boycotted Trump’s first inauguration as an act of resistance to the president-elect. This year, that number is set to be significantly lower. 

Several lawmakers, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Veronica Escobar (D-TX), and Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who are boycotting the inauguration this time around, are doing so in reaction to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol, which they said were spurred by Trump, according to an Axios report. 

Calling the inauguration “that spectacle,” Cohen explained he wouldn’t be attending because he was “locked in my office” on Jan. 6  as the “insurrectionists tried to overthrow our government.”

Another lawmaker told the outlet she wouldn’t be attending the event because, as a Hispanic, she didn’t “feel safe” around Trump supporters.

“I’m not going to physically be in D.C. on that day,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL).

Instead, Ramirez, along with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-OH), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and Judy Chu (D-CA) are set to attend Martin Luther King Jr. Day events. Commemorations for the famed civil rights leader fall on the same day as the inauguration. 

The future of resistance efforts

Pro-Palestinian groups, labor coalitions, and socialists are set to hold a large anti-Trump protest on Inauguration Day, according to the Washington Post. Other anti-Trump groups, including United We Dream, Justice Democrats, Working Families Party, and Democracy Forward, are continuing to strategize resistance efforts while holding rallies, press conferences, and lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill. 

Still, some activists are growing tired of traditional protest efforts, calling for people to run for office as an alternative to demonstrating. Others are grappling over how to resist the president-elect without losing to him.

“We’ve marched so much. We’re tired of doing the same thing over and over,” gun control activist David Hogg told the New York Times. “After the election, I got several texts saying, ‘Screw it. People in power don’t know what they’re doing and I need to run.’”

Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that formed after Trump’s first inauguration, told CNN, “We have been, for years, a party against Trump instead of a party for something. We cannot just fight against Trump and just say this policy is bad.”

As for Trump, he has signaled a largely conciliatory tone ahead of his second term. He held a meeting with Washington’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser at the end of December, after which both spoke favorably about working together ahead of Inauguration Day.