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The federal government has never declared itself immune to the law and the Constitution while explicitly denying protection to peaceful opponents, until now. Many Americans who thought they were living under the rule of law feel paralyzed. The vague exhortation to “do something while you still can” creates a sense of urgency but doesn’t provide a plan. Rather than inspiring action, the question of what to do more likely leaves you feeling depressed and alone. Not even the prospect of waiting out the year until the midterms provides much reassurance. Trump has made it clear that he will try to undermine any election that might cost him some of his power.

Without a constructive answer, the danger is that Americans who find themselves without legal remedies will turn to illegal and violent ones. That would be a catastrophic mistake, both strategically and morally...

Minneapolis is setting an example for the rest of the country: a nameless, leaderless, self-organized movement. Self-organization is a term I heard from almost everyone I met in Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion. It’s an inherently hard form of activism, requiring high levels of motivation and trust. These obviously exist in the neighborhoods of South Minneapolis, where civic spirit and personal connections run deep. But replicating them on a wider scale—essentially, creating a mass movement for basic decency—raises obvious problems. That movement’s energy might depend on the arrival of conspicuous federal oppression in other blue cities and states (which Trump has promised). It would have to remain decentralized and maintain its local integrity while creating a capacity for nationwide coordination...

Beyond neighbor-to-neighbor support in a moment of crisis lies a wide range of means to withhold cooperation from an illegitimate government. The late theorist Gene Sharp laid them out, along with ideas for strategic planning, in books such as From Dictatorship to Democracy and Waging Nonviolent Struggle. Sharp’s work has been used as an essential guide for democracy activists under dictatorial regimes in countries such as Serbia, Burma, and Iran. Americans should pick up these books and absorb their lessons.

Sharp analyzed various “methods of noncooperation”—political, economic, and social—that stop short of more aggressive disruptions. They include boycotts and strikes (such as the widely observed general strike in Minneapolis last Friday); refusal to participate in administration-supported organizations and events; “quasi-legal evasions and delays” and “reluctant and slow compliance” with government edicts; and finally, nonviolent civil disobedience. Anti-ICE actions that try to thwart the brutal and indiscriminate enforcement of immigration laws can become a form of civil disobedience....

Nonviolent struggle carries serious risks. It can lead to social ostracism, legal harassment, state intimidation, prison, injury, and, as we’ve seen in Minneapolis, death. One sign of the authoritarian depth to which the U.S. has sunk under Trump is that none of these risks is hard to imagine. Examples accumulate every day. A movement of resistance against an illegitimate regime has a chance of succeeding only if it remains strictly nonviolent and avoids the familiar trap of sectarianism. It has to be democratic, patriotic, and animated by a sense of basic decency that can attract ordinary people—your TV-watching mother, your apathetic teen, your child’s teacher, the retiree next door, the local grocer.