Bulwark Takes - Where Did the Campus Protests Go in Trump 2.0?

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

Rachel Janfaza and Lauren Egan explore a striking political shift: campus protests that once followed every move of Democrats have all but vanished under Trump—even amid a growing conflict with Iran. From massive campus shutdowns to near silence, what happened to Gen Z activism? They discuss protest fatigue, fear of consequences, changing campus rules, and a deeper cultural shift among young voters who may be giving up on protests altogether.Read more from Lauren’s reporting: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-campus-protest-culture-that-targeted-biden-goes-silent-for-trump-iran-anti-war

Hey guys, it's Rachel Jan Faza here at The Bullwork, talking today with Lauren Egan, who writes the opposition newsletter, giving us a deep dive into everything that's going on with Democrats right now. I'm excited to chat about her latest piece about how campus protests have largely gone silent in Trump 2.0. I'm curious if you can give us a little bit of the background into the gist of the piece and the inspiration for reporting it. Well, I covered the Biden White House all four years. And obviously, the last. year and a half, I guess, of that administration was just completely dominated by campus protests and protesters that would just interrupt him and Vice President Harris, no matter where they went. I mean, I have all these memories from traveling with the president or being on the campaign trail where anytime Harris would get up and give a speech, you could bet that she would get interrupted

at least, you know, like a dozen times with pro-Palestine protesters, basically saying that she was complicit in genocide. They followed Biden and Harris around wherever they went. And obviously, the campus protests were a huge, huge deal. I mean, Biden had to address this from the White House. It was something that his entire communication shop was incredibly sensitive about. I was traveling with him when he went to give the commencement address at Moore House, which is in HBCU. So it has a little bit of a different kind of campus culture in terms of protesting like this. But it was a huge stressor. I mean, the White House was preparing weeks in advance about how they would handle it if there was these massive protests during the commencement address. It's hard to really overstate just how

dominant of an issue this was in that last year for Biden. And then fast forward to where we are now. And just a couple of weeks, Trump's launching this war in Iran completely unauthorized, really not making, you know, taking care of being mindful of civilian lives. Obviously, there was that horrific incident where we bombed a school, as it turned out. And I was struck by how quiet campuses seemed. Some of these anti-war groups, the pro-Palestine protesters, were not demanding or commanding media attention in the same way that they were when they completely shut down Columbia's campus, if you recall. And it was making, you know, the six o'clock news and dominating national headlines. So anyways, that's a long way of saying. I was really curious why this was happening. I started asking,

around to folks. As you can imagine, a lot of the Biden administration former officials that I talked to were also wondering this. I think they looked at this and said, what the hell? Like, this is something we dealt with nonstop. And now are Republicans in office? And like, why aren't people making a big deal about this? Yeah. I found this to be very interesting because given the focus on students and Gen Z and their relationship to activism and is something that I've literally spent my entire career steeped in is youth-led activism. And what I've noticed is that there's been a major shift in young Americans' relationship to activism really within a small time frame. I mean, if you look at the first Trump term, there was, Gen Z was leading the resistance, whether it was

the march for our lives and protests for gun safety or climate strikes. There were literally, people would miss school every Friday to strike for the climate. And then the Black Eyes Matter movement, of course, in 2020. And that activism has just completely subsided in Trump 2.0. And really what I see is that I talk a lot about the two Gen Z's and this theory that Gen Z was split down the middle based on how old they were at the time of the pandemic. So Gen Z 1.0 is anyone who had graduated high school before the start of the pandemic. And Gen Z 2.0 is anyone who had graduated high school during or after. And they just have a different relationship to politics for a number of reasons, whether it be COVID or social media or their relationship to Trump. And this is a part of that.

And we've seen that amongst Gen Z 2.0, there's just less activism. And I know that, you know, if you look at these campus protests that were going on during the time of Israel and Tamas fighting in Gaza and the war in Gaza, those students at the time are also Gen Z 2.0. But I think that that was a short stint. And it was also, even though they made a ton of noise and a ton of headlines and even caused controversy on campuses leading to faculty and even university presidents having to step down, it actually was just a small number of students who were involved in those demonstrations. It did really change the culture on campuses. But I also think that part of why were seeing this further shift away from activism is actually in part because of that too.

And I've spoken to plenty of students in focus groups who say that they were kind of wary of protesting after those demonstrations or turned off by just the idea of protesting altogether. So I guess that's part of what I'm seeing. But I'm curious when you spoke to Democrats who were kind of looking at the discrepancy between the activism then and the lack of it now, what did they have to say? and what was sort of their rationale behind it? Look, I think one thing that I should point out is that there's obvious reasons why this is happening too.

Like after the initial wave of protests in the aftermath of the October 7th, a lot of colleges did change their rules on campus about protesting, whether it was like noise restrictions or, you know, you can't pitch a tent on the quad anymore. So it's harder to kind of co-op that space. So there were real changes that were made. And then, of course, Trump comes into office. and he goes after universities. He's made really clear that anything he sees as promoting violence or anti-Semitism,

he's going to crack down on. He's threatened to withhold federal funding from some schools. And then Charlie Kirk gets assassinated on a college campus, and Trump just kind of ramps up a lot of these threats and attacks. And so I do think it's raised the stakes of getting involved in campus activism in a way that was not true in the Biden administration. And those are real concerns that students have to think through and real tradeoffs for some folks. So I do think that that is a big part of it. But you know, you talk to people that were in the Biden White House.

And they often say that there is kind of this imbalance between how a lot of activists treat Democrats versus Republicans. And they feel, you know, some of these activist groups think that they have more sway correctly, think that they have more pull with Democratic officials. Democrats are more malleable. They're more responsive to things like this in a way that Republicans just aren't. And activists know that. And it leads to a dynamic like this, which I do think is really real at the same time. If you were around in the Biden White House, you can understand why they feel so frustrated to see that in balance right now. That makes a lot of sense.

I think there's something to that and sort of the relationship that students have to authority and the fear around that. as well. But I also just can't overstate, like, I do think there has been a cultural shift here. And I think that a large part of it is that Gen Z 2.0 looks at the efforts of these prior activists and of their older siblings or maybe friends who are a few years older than them. And they're like, where did it get us? And the activism hasn't necessarily led to much substantial material change. I think especially if you look at more of those sort of quintessential social justice movements that were taking place during the time when I was in college that I mentioned, whether it be March for Our Lives or Climate Strikes or Black Lives Matter, like all those problems still

exist. There's still gun violence. There's still racism. There's still climate change. And so, I mean, I know that the protesters at the time didn't necessarily think they were going to solve it all together. But I think that what I'm hearing in my conversations with young people and students today is that they're kind of like, what's the point? And they feel a little bit numb to that as well. And it's not as motivating now as it was, also because a lot of these issues have been going on for so long. Yeah. And I did hear that from Democrats, too. I think a lot of them said, look, one of the lessons that some of these activists and some students might have taken away was that it didn't work. Sure, like some universities did divest, which was obviously one of the pushes that some of these activist groups had. But Harris lost. Like, she didn't really move her positions. You know, she kind of tried to have it both

ways at some points, but she didn't meet the activist groups request on on some of the statements that they were looking from her and some of the changes in her position towards Israel. And the Democratic Party as a whole has kind of tried to shift on it, but it's been a really uncomfortable journey. And, you know, some folks have really distanced himself from Israel, but others, it's just, you know, they're not there yet. And that, I think, is a frustrating place if you were involved in those protests to kind of look at the national. party and say, well, they didn't change. And here we are. But yeah, it's like kind of depressing to be like it just doesn't work. But yeah. And I mean, I'm looking at this broadly, like not just

when it comes to the war, but just in terms of the activism in general. And I think it kind of goes in line with just young voters, young Americans, broader political shift in general of there's an argument to you made here that this generation is just more. independent now than it was and they're not as tribal and they're not necessarily going to go in protest for a sort of a laundry list of causes that Gen Z1.0 did. And it was very much in the cultural zeitgeist. Like it was considered cool to be at these demonstrations when I was in college and everyone was posting about on social media. And now that's just not the case. And I think a large part of that is also because of the pendulum shift and internet culture moves

really quickly and Gen Z-Muse at the speed of the internet. And nothing trends for that long. And I don't know that this will necessarily last. And I think that there at the same time are plenty of things that young people are fed up about overwhelmingly not in favor of this war, overwhelmingly moving away from Trump, overwhelmingly frustrated by the lack of affordability in this country, anxious about AI. The list goes on. There are plenty of reasons why young people are dissatisfied right now, and yet it's not translating into activism in the same way. And we also saw, there was a piece from the New York Times today that showed the age range of the folks who have been at the No Kings protests, and it skews older, too.

I'm curious what you've been hearing and the conversations you've been having about that. Yeah, I was really interested in that breakdown. And I didn't go to this last No Kings, but I went to the one before that. And it was something that struck me. I mean, if you go out there and you are reporting, you do notice that it is a pretty old crowd. And this is on a weekend, right? They strategically pick the dates for Saturday. So that if you are a younger person, you're in school, you're in work, you can show up potentially.

Look, when I first started covering No Kings last year, something that the Elsome organizer said was, look, we're trying to do, we're not going to ask people to do this every weekend. were not, it's going to be different from the first Trump administration. Remember, there was constantly protests. Like every day of the week, it feels like you could have found a protest to show up to. And they recognized that in the second administration, that things were going to have to look different, that it was going to have to have to be fewer. But they were going to, when they did show up, they were going to try and make them a really big statement.

And there has been some, I think, awareness in some of these groups that the, that the No Kings rallies have skewed a lot older. there's been some sensitivity to how we talk about it and cover it, wanting us to note that, no, there are younger people showing up, but the stats just show it is still a really old, old demographic. And I think it's fascinating. I think it was you that tweeted out, like, what do you expect from a generation that's been defined by sort of like instant gratification, the swinginess to them? I mean, do you view like Gen Z2.0 is kind of this like permanent like swing block or like how do you think about sort of the long-term trajectory of their politics?

Yeah. Obviously, I can't predict the future. So I don't know if it's permanent, but I do know that right now they're swing voters. And we hear this in our research all the time of young people saying that they're not interested in party label. There was a Gallup study earlier this year showing that 56% of Gen Z identifies as independent. And when they talk about what they're looking for from elected officials, they want results. And when the results aren't delivered, they will, they'll move on. They'll move on to a different politician. One point that I want to make that I think is missing from a lot of the conversation here about young people's current political engagement is that they're actually still turning out to vote in really high numbers. And you wouldn't necessarily think

that that's the case, given that they're not showing up to these demonstrations. But if you look at the local elections in 2025 and state level races and New York City mayoral. There was higher youth voter turnout across the board in 2025 than there was in 2021 in New Jersey's gubernatorial race, in Virginia's gubernatorial race, and in New York City in the mayoral race. So they're turning out to vote. And I think they still see that as a way, even if they're not necessarily, you know, so sure about what party they belong to or they don't necessarily want to confine in the way that older generations have. They are voting in relatively high rates. And in relatively high rates compared to other generations of young people when they were their age too. So looking at like millennials

when they were their age. And so yes, I think they're swing voters. I think part of that is because of this instant gratification, being used to things happening really quickly. You know, we've all grown up on our phones. We can have something delivered within five minutes, the sort of Uber generation, Uber, eats, postmates, whatever. And also we're used to social media and the speed of the way things move so quickly there too. So it's not entirely confusing why they would expect things to be happening quickly. But at the same time, politics just doesn't work like that. Yeah. And I think it was Tim Miller said this in like one of our Slack channels. I feel like the other day where he was, he was like, my theory on this is that Genzi just doesn't want to go to these protests that all their parents

and grandparents are at. Like it's no longer cool. Which, you know, there might be something to that. Yeah, for sure. And I think maybe the branding is a little bit. The branding isn't what it could be. There is something to that. But at the same time, like, you know, in, think about 2017, the Women's March, for example. That was a intergenerational situation. There were grandparents there. there were parents there. There were voting age people there and there were young kids there. And it was sort of something that everyone did together. And there was a sense of solidarity and sisterhood found in that. And we're not seeing that today in any capacity. Yeah. I do think, you know, when I talk to Democratic officials, one thing that they do talk about is just, and this applies not just to young voters,

but just to everyone in general and to the, you know, anti-Trump resistance to, you know, so to speak, left in general, that there's just an exhaustion. Like, we've been at this for 10 years now, right? Trump first came onto the scene, what, more than 10 years ago now? And that's a really long time to ask people to sustain the same amount of outrage and the same amount of energy. And so the way that, you know, No Kings is structuring their events where they are trying to do this only every couple months, so they're not over-asking anything from everyone.

I do think that speaks to this, like, broader, just total exhaustion. And you have to find ways to say engaged and to stay motivated and not burn out when this is like a decades long, who knows how long type of thing that you're trying to fight against. Yeah, and I think also to that point, you know, it's kind of strategic to be, it's no kings. It's not an anti-Donald Trump explicitly framing. And I think that's necessary and smart because a lot of people are just sick of talking about Trump and are sick of a political dialogue that centers around him. We're seeing this in our focus groups where young people tell me that they're looking for post-Trump vision on both sides of the aisle, Republicans, young Republicans, young conservatives,

young people in the middle and also on the left, progressives, who are just like, can we look towards the future instead of talking about the present or the past? And I wonder if that plays into this too, even if it is, you know, if the No Kings protest are trying to sort of differentiate and have it be more of a catch-all rather than focus specifically on the president. But I'm curious if you have heard that from the organizers in terms of sort of what is what is a actually look like for building sustenance within the Democratic Party beyond this current moment in our Trumpian era of politics. Yeah, and they've talked a lot about trying to keep this a really broad coalition and not have it be, even though obviously it is kind of this left-coded event and

it's left-leaning organizations that are doing this. They made a point of saying these protests are happening in blue areas and red areas in big cities and in real parts of the country. And we welcome Trump voters into this coalition. But yeah, the challenge now is how do you translate that into an electoral movement? How do you get electoral gains from that? I think that that is a larger question for the entire Democratic Party. And for midterms, it's going to look different state by state and congressional race by congressional race. I think right now, the obvious answer for the Democrats has been relentless focus on affordability.

You know, some people have tried to center Trump in some of their races, but I think for the most part, people have really, really said we have to keep this big picture, big tent. The whole goal here is to not turn off disaffected Trump voters. But, yeah, that is always the challenge. How do you get some energy like that and translate it into actual results at the polls? Yeah. What you just said reminded me of there was a Yale youth poll that came out yesterday. And one of the dynamics that they were looking at was if voters believe that the parties should be appealing more to the base or to a bigger tent, so to speak. So that's, that's interesting given the approach there.

What the poll showed is that young people were more looking. It was, there's a difference in terms of Republicans and Democrats. But the Republican side of things, they cared more about appealing to the base. They didn't care so much about appealing to the masses. And I've seen a little bit of dialogue online about this in whether or not that should be a different strategy for Democrats, of course, right now Democrats are having their own sort of conversation about the online ecosystem and types of voices that are uplifted or not there. And I think this is all a part of the conversation about where the momentum goes from here.

And I'm curious, given your reporting and your focus on sort of what is happening to Democrats ahead of the midterms, how, what do you think this means for Democrats moving forward specifically in midterm races? On the big tent or. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting you asked that because I was just in South Carolina over the weekend. I'm doing some reporting on a house race there. And I was at this local indivisible event.

It's like a candidate forum. And so, you know, these members of this indivisible chapter are getting. up and asking all these House, and this is for the Democratic primary, asking all these candidates, different questions. And my takeaway from that event, after like two hours of just normal voters, asking questions, was that people really want a fighter, like Democrats, Democratic voters really want a fighter. And obviously, that's kind of an ambiguous word. People define it in different ways. But they also want to win. And I've been covering Democrats for years and something that always happens when you're at these kinds of events, you know, when I'm in Iowa, talking to people ahead of the

caucuses, like, electability is always on the mind of Democratic voters, especially in a primary. Democrats like to kind of put on like a political pundit hat. And again, I'm talking, especially in the context of a primary and try and game out who they think is going to be most electable. So I do think they're fairly strategic sometimes in these races, right? This is kind of the story of how Joe Biden won the primary in the first place. It was like, who's electable against Donald Trump and voters decided that was Biden. So I think that there's a balance. I think even though you feel people kind of wanting, you know, maybe to speak to the base more in kind of an economic populist way, there's also a real appetite for widening the tent. And that's going to mean different things in different

places. And obviously, Democrats are going to have a million arguments, mostly online, about what that looks like from here until 28. But fundamentally, I think, voters want someone who can win. Yeah. I was just actually talking about this with Amanda Lipman, who runs, run for something. We did a sub-Sec live. And we were talking about the hope maxing piece that I wrote for the bulwark about how Gen Z actually is looking for a little bit of hope and change in their politics, stealing from millennials, a bit recycling that for them it's new because they weren't of voting age or maybe even born during the Obama days. Anyway, the point that Amanda and I are talking about is that any voter, young people in particular, but any voter wants there to be,

yes, someone who is bringing new energy, someone who is hopeful, someone who is moving forward, but at the same time, they have to be to your point of fighter. They have to have teeth. They have to be willing to stand up. And I think a good example of this is Zara and Mom Doni, who has been leading a campaign, let a campaign all with, you know, charisma and positivity and going on every social media platform and also mainstream media, et cetera, and bringing that new energy and that hopefulness and that bringing, like building a coalition that was beyond a traditional base, so to speak, and brought a lot of new voters into his coalition as well.

But then at the same time, willing to fight and willing to piss people off. And he went to the White House and he's met with Trump and he's, you know, there's all the memes that came out of that, et cetera. But I think that even the most progressive of voters here in New York, look to the fact that he went and stood up for New Yorkers at the White House and stood up to Trump and they appreciated that. Right, as opposed to like not engaging or yeah, running away from some of these hard conversations. Yeah. Thank you so much for chatting through this with me. Thank you. I hope we keep talking about Gen Z and their impact on the midterms. I'm super

fascinated in everything you're doing at the bulwark. So thanks for chatting. Thanks, Lauren.