For as much as President Donald Trump put his stamp on 2025, it was also a year marked by high-profile acts of protest against his agenda. Individuals and groups who refused to stay silent in the face of power and injustice made bold, outlandish and deeply moving acts of resistance. People took to the streets, the courtroom and even the stage to leave a lasting mark on society.
Here are this year’s standouts who took a stand:
Immigration protesters
As Trump variously deployed federal law enforcement agents and the National Guard to Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Portland, Charlotte and New Orleans — to round up immigrants and, ostensibly, to fight crime — protesters found creative ways to fight back. Hundreds were arrested, and occasionally violent confrontations broke out between police and demonstrators.
But in Portland, protesters fought cruelty with absurdity. People donned giant inflatable costumes and stood — or rather, danced — outside the city’s immigration detention facility in defiance of the Trump administration’s policies. Ridiculous scenes played out in which a giant frog was pepper-sprayed and a banana led a march against the backdrop of armed officers.
In the nation’s capital, “sandwich guy” made protesting against mass deportation an art. On Aug. 10, 37-year old Sean Charles Dunn, an international affairs specialist for the Justice Department, loudly confronted a group of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Washington, chucked a wrapped Subway sandwich into one of their bulletproof vests and sprinted off. The officers gave chase. Video went viral.
Authorities didn’t think it was funny. Attorney General Pam Bondi threw the book at Dunn (and fired him). But in a sign that citizens wanted prosecutors to lighten up, a D.C. grand jury refused to sign off on a felony indictment against Dunn, and a trial jury found him not guilty of misdemeanor assault.
Epstein survivors
The women who survived abuse at the hands of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein — including Annie and Maria Farmer, Jess Michaels, Danielle Bensky and Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide this year — pushed past their own trauma to try to hold Epstein’s associates accountable.
Survivors put pressure on the government to make public its files on Epstein and have called out the Justice Department for failing to meet a Congress-imposed deadline to release all the files, and for doing so in a way that makes it hard for them to find any related to their cases.
In a joint statement this month, a group of them wrote: “Survivors deserve truth. Survivors whose identities are private deserve protection. The public deserves accountability. And the law must be enforced.”
Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil, who led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, became a Trump administration target and was eventually arrested in March. He spent more than 100 days in immigration detention — despite being a legal permanent resident — and missed the birth of his first child.
Khalil, who is of Palestinian descent, was freed on bail in June 2025 after a federal judge ordered his release and has been outspoken about his ordeal ever since.
His ongoing legal battle with the federal government sparked debates over constitutional rights to free speech, protest and political dissent in the U.S.
Kennedy Center artists
Upon taking office in January, Trump made it a priority to put his stamp on the historically nonpartisan John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In February, he fired the president and several board members, replaced them with his own choices and had himself appointed chairman.
Big-name artists pulled out of performing and serving in various roles at the renowned venue in response to the leadership changes. Television producer Shonda Rhimes resigned as the board’s treasurer, opera singer Renée Fleming resigned as one of its artistic advisers and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical megahit “Hamilton” scrapped a run scheduled for 2026. In early December, the new board — ignoring dissenting members — voted to rename the center the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. However, Congressional approval is still required for an official name change, since the center was established by federal statute as a memorial to Kennedy. In addition to her enormous list of tasks as the sitting president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum made it a priority to press charges against the man who publicly groped and tried to kiss her outside the National Palace in Mexico City last month. Video of the encounter shows Sheinbaum — the first woman to serve as Mexico’s leader — greeting people on the street before a man approaches her from behind and puts his arm around her, then leans in for a kiss while lifting his hands toward her breasts. The man was arrested and placed in police custody. “It must be clear that, beyond being president, this is something that many women experience in the country and in the world; no one can violate our body and personal space,” Sheinbaum wrote in Spanish on X.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian. Recommended
Kerry Kennedy, daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, vowed to “grab a pickax” to remove Trump’s name from the center after it was mounted on one of the walls of the building earlier this month. And musician Chuck Redd canceled a traditional Christmas Eve jazz concert at the facility after he saw the name change on the building and the facility’s website, prompting the board to threaten to sue him.Claudia Sheinbaum
