The New York Times decided to ask the million-dollar question that’s really bothering the left: if Trump’s supposedly so dangerous, such a Nazi, and such a threat to precious democracy, then where are all the young protesters? Where’s the big student revolt? Where’s the powerful, neverending “resist” energy?
And while they were trying to answer this big question, they ended up admitting something much bigger. What they actually ended up describing was a total collapse inside the youth culture the left worked so hard to build… a culture of doom scrolling, government dependency, social fragility, and complete helplessness. The NYT wanted to write a piece mourning the absence of anti-Trump activism. But what they actually did was accidentally confess about checked-out young people when it comes to anti-Trump angst.
Right out of the gate, the NYT admits the core problem. The country is supposedly ripe for anti-Trump activism, and yet the youth uprising the left keeps waiting for is nowhere to be found.
Today, the United States would appear ripe for a resurgence of student activism, beyond the flourishing of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus in 2023 and 2024 in particular.
We have a president who has directly attacked the finances and the intellectual freedom of colleges and universities, is building the technology for a surveillance state, undermines free and fair elections and took the nation into an unjustified war with no explanation while causing domestic economic havoc.
But one ingredient is missing: a substantial anti-Trump youth movement.
Even after piling on every standard anti-Trump talking point they could think of, the NYT still has to admit the movement isn’t showing up. Clearly, that shows the problem isn’t a lack of messaging. It’s the people they expected to flood the streets who have been shaped into an army of lazy, uninspired layabouts.
And here’s where the panic shows up.
NYT:
Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University, tracks the demographics of participants in major anti-Trump demonstrations. In a phone interview, I asked what she had found about the mobilization of students and younger men and women.
She replied, “We’re not seeing them in the streets at No Kings events.”
She provided the following data about the three No Kings protests: “At No Kings 1 (June 14, 2025) the median age was 36, at No Kings 2 (Oct. 18, 2025) the median age was 44, and at No Kings 3 (March 28, 2026) it was 48. Clearly, it’s getting older.”
The participants in the initial No Kings Day demonstrations, Fisher wrote, were “predominantly white, highly educated, female and middle-aged.”
Yikes, that’s brutal. That is brutal, and it probably says more than the NYT wanted to. Basically, the big anti-Trump resistance is aging out. The elites who spent years insisting the kids were the future now have to face the fact that young people have checked out of politics.
Hellbound and Down 