As Trump prepares to return to the White House, elected officials and activists alike are already planning to counter him at every turn.

From The New York Post. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James treated President-elect Donald Trump as the enemy in a divisive post-election press conference Wednesday.

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A defiant Hochul announced she formed an “Empire State Freedom Initiative” to prepare to fight “policy and regulatory threats” from the incoming Trump administration.

The Democratic governor said she’s prepared to work with Trump, but spent much of her time talking about readying for political and legal war. …

She spoke of potential spats with Trump over abortion, labor, LGBTQ rights, environmental policy and immigration.

James, meanwhile, said her office had been “preparing” for a potential second Trump administration.

“I am ready to do everything in my power to ensure our state and nation do not go backwards,” she said in a statement. “Together with Governor Hochul, our partners in state and local government, and my colleague attorneys general from throughout the nation, we will work each and every day to defend Americans, no matter what this new administration throws at us. We are ready to fight back again.”

The attorney general’s presence at the press conference was noteworthy and evidence that New York’s top two Democratic leaders are preparing to be on an adversarial, war-look footing with Trump. …

Hochul treated Trump’s victory — he won both the electoral and popular vote nationwide and performed more strongly in blue New York than he had in 2020 — like a funeral.

“New Yorkers will persevere over the next four years,” she said. …

Trump’s New York Republican allies blasted Hochul’s press conference as out of bounds and counterproductive for New Yorkers dependent on support from the White House and federal government.  …

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said it was “inconceivable” that a governor would disregard and disrespect Trump’s electoral mandate — including winning hundreds of thousands more votes in New York state than he did four years ago.

“Rather than being gracious and trying to work together, Hochul took a defiant, war-like stance against President-elect Trump. This strategy will add to the continued decline of New York,” he said.

From Fast Company. In November 2016, many liberals were surprised by Donald Trump’s resounding Electoral College victory over Hilary Clinton. They scrambled to respond, with spontaneous efforts popping up in places like Facebook, and on shared Google docs. This time, the left had determined in advance how to respond—for either outcome—by building a coalition and planning a series of postelection mass online strategy meetings.

In the lead-up to the election, the Working Families Party (WFP) had already joined with other sponsor organizations including MoveOn (which started as an emailed petition in 1998), Indivisible Project (which emerged from a Google doc in 2017), Public Citizen, and the American Civil Liberties Union. They have aligned with more than 100 other groups, according to organizers, and with Democratic U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington. …

“We’re not trying to organize into a big, top-down super group. Ultimately, what we want to do is be well networked and in deep relationship with each other,” says Leah Greenberg, cofounder and co-executive director (with husband Ezra Levin) of Indivisible, which emerged in 2017 to invigorate political organizing on the left.

The postelection plan

Now that the election has been decided, the activist community is focused on morale-building. “I think the first priority is going to be holding space for our community and making sure that people understand that this is a devastating development. But it is a blow to democracy. It is not the end of democracy,” says Greenberg. …