Trump 2.O Survival Guide

5 ways to stay safe and make the world a slightly better place

Welcome to 2025. Glad to have you. Sorry everything is such a mess.

To greet this new year and this new phase of the assault on our freedoms and self-rule, I'd like to offer you these words from Andrea Pitzer:

“What we do will not always work, but the cost of doing nothing in the big picture is often very high. If you want to live this next year in a more beautiful world, go make that world.”

That’s from the closing of the latest episode of Next Comes What—Andrea’s podcast that I produce— goes to the ends of the earth to help us understand how others have carried on and even celebrated in the bleakest of times. I hope you will watch it above, share it with friends, and subscribe to support the work Andrea is doing by drawing on the history of authoritarianism to help us find ways to thwart Trump and his allies.

I promise you’ll learn something from every episode. And the goal isn’t to inspire you. Inspiration often fades quickly, only to get stepped on or deflated—like a balloon dropped from the ceiling. The goal is to build determination: yours and ours.

But before we get any further into 2025, I’d like to revisit the first episode of Next Comes What, which is the most consumed media thing I’ve ever worked on and certainly the most important.

Released ten days after the election, “How to Survive This Mess” records the anguish caused by that result and guides us through the process of beginning again. Andrea’s “dark yet encouraging” insights are gleaned from her remarkable life and honed by her research on civilian detention and authoritarians around the globe.

I think this episode has exposed a nerve for many of us because it concludes with some blissfully practical advice. It's so helpful that I will now turn some of her suggestions into a checklist that starts with the most concrete stuff because I need it. (Ask my wife.) Hopefully, it’s helpful to you, too, because, as Andrea notes, “it's going to be so much worse if we do nothing, right?”

Make a safety plan.
Andrea suggests starting with the bare basics and establishing a plan for the most extreme possibilities. Not out of paranoia but because “free-floating anxiety eats up people's actual capacity to do real things. And if you just make some of these lists of like, if scary things happen, I have a plan, then your brain says, I have a plan, and it doesn't have to spin its wheels…”

Some thoughts to help build your safety plan:

• Do you have a driver's license that's up for renewal soon?
• Do you have a passport that will be valid for a while?
• Are you or your chosen family behind on vaccinations?
• If your job might be in jeopardy if your political leanings were to come to light, get your checkups now, do procedures now, and get your preventive care while you have good health insurance, while you have time, and it's not stressful.
• If you had to leave your apartment or house to go somewhere else in town for a while, who would you stay with? Where would you stay?
• If you had to leave your city for a bit, consider who you would stay with somewhere else in the country. How would you get there? What would you take?
• And if you have the means to do it, where and how would you go if you had to leave the country?

BONUS FROM THE IRREPLACEABLE MARCY WHEELER: 
Ramp up your digital privacy and security. Marcy recommends a browser that protects your privacy as much as possible. And then, begin taking your online security seriously with the help of the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense Guide.

Assess your strengths and weaknesses.
”There is probably an organization already existing that cares about an issue that you want to work on that is dying for your skills,” Andrea said. A perfect example of this came up in the Next Comes What on immigration: “Someone to Hate.” 

From Andrea’s post that inspired that episode:

If you’re a lawyer or speak Spanish if you speak another relevant language and want to assist, the American Immigration Council has an Immigration Justice Campaign, which you can participate in remotely or in person. There’s a mentorship process, and you can check it out at immigrationjustice.us. Reichlin-Melnick also recommended looking into similar projects established near regional and local detention centers around the country, which often need help.

Find an issue that matters to you and connect with a group locally or online.
It could be abortion rights or raising money for abortion funds. It could be immigration. Or it could be climate, which Andrea notes could be suitable for “people who are too overwhelmed” by issues that may feel personal—like abortion or trans rights. If you’re stumped, Indivisible groups are an excellent answer, and this is a fantastic time to join or reactivate. The goal is to find out how power in our community functions and push those levers.

I’m one of those people who is only comfortable behind a keyboard, so I’m ramping up my Giving Circle for Virginia’s upcoming elections, which you can join. I’m also looking for a way to overcome my anxiety and connect with my community. And that’s because of Andrea’s next piece of advice.

After you build your silos, cross them if you can.
”I don't mean go be friends with Nazis,” she said. “I'm saying [find] people whose age group or religion or something else might be different than yours. That cross-silo work is the best way we can on the ground, in the absence of new laws, build more resilient community structures.”

MAGA wins by destroying the social fabric. We must find new ways to weave it.

Nurture hope.
“If you find yourself feeling that sense of helplessness, that's what Trump and his allies want you to feel,” Andrea reminds us. So keep going until you find things to do that build your determination and hope.

This nightmare might or might not radicalize you, but action is a far better outcome than falling into despair. We need you. 2025 needs you. So, let’s start with the basics and do what we can to make the world we deserve.