After Trump’s First Year, The Left Is Starting to Realize That It’s Losing
Tim O'Brien | 12:57 PM on January 07, 2026
As President Donald Trump nears the end of the first year of his second term, the left is starting to realize he’s winning and they’re losing, particularly in the culture war. Exhibit A is this opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled "The Trump Revolution Is Going Much Further Than We Realize." It was written by Thomas B. Edsall, a Brown-educated snob who relied mostly on ivory-tower academics to inform the essay's perspective.
The roughly 3,000-word essay is four times the length of your typical newspaper opinion piece, which says something about the weight the Times is giving this issue. Obviously, there’s a good deal of concern and angst on the left that some of the things Trump is accomplishing may actually stick.
While the piece touches on a lot of things, the impetus seems to be that Trump has gutted certain non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and “nongovernmental” influences like the news media, law firms, universities, corporations, and activist groups.
Matt Grossmann, an academic at Michigan State, seemed frustrated that while during Trump’s first term, the institutions he attacked resisted, while this time, they’re giving in: “We don’t know yet the extent to which these efforts will produce lasting change across sectors, but we do know that many institutions have changed their posture in response from resistance last time to accommodation this time.”
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https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2026/01/07/after-trumps-first-year-the-left-is-starting-to-realize-its-losing-n4948001
