WASHINGTON –î Resistance: a watchword for our times.

The state of Wisconsin is showing us how, above all 49 others.

In Washington, a senator and congressman heeded the call.

To inspire us, first Wisconsin stood up to the Trump-Musk blitzkrieg in a state Supreme Court race. Elon Musk spent $20 million to back a right-wing Republican.

That obscene outside sum landed as an insult on the state where the Progressive Party was born. Liberal Susan Crawford won going away, by 10 points.

Not even close, Elon. Mars makes a better habitat for you than Madison, Wisconsin. Washington is walking wounded from a chainsaw you so proudly used to cut more than 100,000 federal workforce jobs. Very nice.

Voter resistance to Musk caused national waves and gave a ray of hope to Democrats for the 2026 midterms. Wisconsinites knew a lot was on the line to show money isn’t everything in politics.

Then came the Milwaukee judge who defied Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in her courtroom. They showed up to arrest a man, with no judicial warrant.

Judge Hannah Dugan, displeased at the bald show of force, is charged with aiding an undocumented immigrant to “escape” from the building. To arrest a judge in handcuffs is wrong, a threat to a coequal branch of government.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) also challenged President Donald Trump’s regime. Tom Homan, Trump’s border boss, hinted at arresting Evers, too, for efforts to ensure state employees knew their rights.

The governor’s calm, clear statement on his “chilling” concerns about the rule of law is a study in rational resistance. (The struggle over borders is not new to Wisconsin. Dred Scott, an enslaved man who was taken to Wisconsin, a free territory, made for the most infamous Supreme Court case ever, in 1857. The court ruled that Black people could never be citizens, even if free, and lit a match for the Civil War.)

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) took direct action to stand up for the right of due process.

On his own, he boarded a plane to El Salvador to visit a Maryland resident, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was abducted here and imprisoned there for no reason, at our taxpayer expense.

The Supreme Court ordered the president to “facilitate” his freedom in a 9-0 ruling. Abrego Garcia is a sheet metal worker with a family, including a young son with autism.

Trump ignored the high court. So now what?

Texas Democrat Al Green, 77, a fierce civil rights champion, knows the art of resistance. He’s the ponytailed congressman who shook his cane — over cutting Medicaid — at Trump during a 99-minute rant.

“Still I rise,” he says often.

Green moved for Trump’s impeachment in the first term and plans to do so again.

“(Trump) is testing to see if there are people who have the courage to put him in check,” Green declared on the House floor. “We have to stop him. … The moment of truth is upon us.”

Green urges peaceful protest against abuse of presidential power.

The conscience of the Senate — and the House — is speaking out.

Nothing is given in this moment when it comes to government and human rights. The president and the Constitution are getting a divorce.

A silence fogs society — the parts that are still breathing. Publicly funded arts, humanities and news are hit especially hard.

Trump’s White House fired the Library of Congress leader overnight, with a curt email. Dr. Carla Hayden is the last person who deserved that.

Citizens are facing “times that try men’s souls,” as American revolutionary Thomas Paine put it. There is never a convenient time for a rude awakening.

Tomorrow will be like yesterday, so we thought: Democracy’s rules and habits will endure at the end of the day.

We never foresaw we’d fall so fast from grace in the world’s eyes.

Yet here we are. Time is not on our side — the collective “we” in the constitution.

Nonviolent resistance is not easy, meek nor mild. But it works.

Quakers invented the practice, then used it against slavery; suffragists took it to the streets; the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached it to advance racial justice. Pieces of resistance: a way forward.

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The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.