Political activism across the United States has intensified dramatically since Donald Trump returned to the White House, with protest numbers far exceeding those seen during the same period of his first term.
A Historic Surge in Public Mobilisation
According to data compiled by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a collaborative open-source project between Harvard University’s Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut, more than 10,700 protests were recorded in 2025. This figure marks a staggering 133% increase from the 4,588 protests tallied in 2017, the inaugural year of Trump's first administration.
"It is a very historic time, in the sense that people are mobilising where they live in ways that I don’t think I have seen before in my lifetime," stated Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School and co-director of the consortium. The data indicates that an overwhelming majority of US counties have witnessed at least one protest since Trump's re-inauguration, including 42% of counties that voted for him.
From Coast to Countryside: A Diffused Movement
The character of protest has evolved significantly. Traditionally, major demonstrations were concentrated in large cities or focused on marches in Washington DC. "We’re not seeing that," Chenoweth observed. "We’re seeing very diffused protest mobilisation all around the country."
This geographical diversity is evident in events organised in traditionally conservative and rural areas such as Cut Bank, Montana, and Sparta, North Carolina. "It definitely cuts against the narrative that protest is confined to major cities, to the coasts, and to predominantly liberal areas," Chenoweth added.
The protest agenda in 2025 and early 2026 has been broad and sustained. It has included demonstrations for trans youth healthcare, protests against US support for Israel in Gaza, so-called "Tesla takedowns" opposing Elon Musk's influence, and widespread anti-ICE protests following federal immigration raids. Highly coordinated, single-day national actions like the No Kings and Hands Off protests have also drawn large crowds.
Sustained Momentum and a Potential Inflection Point
This pattern of widespread, nonviolent protest has continued into 2026. Following the killing of Renee Good during an ICE interaction in Minneapolis on 7 January, coalitions swiftly organised a "weekend of action" featuring over 1,000 participating protests across the nation.
"What’s really notable now is how much grassroots, improvised and then organised response there is to ICE operations," Chenoweth explained, highlighting the public's focused outrage.
Chenoweth's own seminal research, which analysed over 300 nonviolent movements from 1900 to 2006, found that no government has ever survived a challenge from a nonviolent movement that engaged at least 3.5% of the population. When asked if the US is approaching such a tipping point, Chenoweth suggested it might be more accurate to consider the current climate an "inflection point," with public opinion demonstrably shifting.
Perhaps most crucially, Chenoweth notes that these growing movements provide participants with hope and "a sense of agency" in a political landscape where many feel powerless. This stands as a powerful counter-narrative in today's divisive climate.
