Donald Trump has turned his ire upon the Squad, that progressive group of congresswomen composed of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. All are women of color in politics, and all have progressive policies on topics like climate change, immigration, health care, and student debt.

They are also vocally anti-Trump.

In response, Trump has tweeted that he doesn't “believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country.”

He’s claimed that Ocasio-Cortez called the county and its people “garbage.”

(She did not.)

Other republicans have fallen in line, like GOP Sen. John Kennedy, who called the squad “the four horsewomen of the apocalypse.”

People have noted that biblically, the four horsemen are sent by God to unleash wrath upon the sinful, but Kennedy probably meant it as an insult.

The Squad didn’t say they hated America or that its people are garbage, of course. But if they had, the attacks would still ring a bit hollow from Republicans who regularly criticize American institutions like, for instance, the legal right to abortion.

But the point isn’t to be truthful. Trump has always needed an enemy. In 2008, it was Barack Obama, at whom he leveled absurd birther attacks. In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton, to whom he directed his base’s “Lock her up” chant. If he could have employed Clinton as his foe again, he would have. Indeed, he’s kicked off his 2020 campaign attempting to revive the attacks on her.

The only problem is that Clinton isn’t running, so he’s essentially fighting a ghost. And if he doesn’t fight someone, he doesn’t have much of a platform. It is hard to appeal to the moral majority, as Republican candidates often have, when you’re a man who pays women money to cheat on your pregnant third wife. He’s notoriously inconsistent when it comes to his policies. It’s hard to claim he’s a brilliant businessman when the country is deep in debt. What he can claim to be is a warrior who will lash out at any and all opponents.

He could, of course, turn his ire toward Joe Biden, the current front-runner. But as Sady Doyle noted over at DAME magazine:

“Trump is working harder on demeaning the Squad than attacking Joe Biden because he understands he’s not running against Joe Biden—he’s running against these four women, and the future they represent. No matter who becomes president in the next election, the real threat to Trump and Trumpism is the idea that progressive or radical women of color might come to determine how the country works.”

Trump isn’t fighting against a world governed by men who look like him. He knows that world isn’t intimidating to his fans. Instead of a black man, or a feminist woman, he’s gambled that his supporters will be frightened by a group of progressive women of color. Given his base’s enthusiasm for chants like “Send them back,” he’s probably right.

But, if we can dredge any inspiration from these attacks, it’s that they haven’t worked. Certainly, they haven’t worked until now. If they had, the Squad wouldn’t exist.

The intent behind Trump’s attacks is to rally his base, certainly. But it’s to terrify people who aren’t white cis men into submission. For these women of color, it is hard to get onstage to address issues in this country to begin with. I imagine it is much harder if you know that you will be immediately yelled at to produce your birth certificate, to be locked up, or sent back.

That’s the point. The point is to get women of color to sit down and shut up.

It’s failed. If Trump’s bullying was working, we’d be seeing a Congress made up of more and more white men. We’re not.

In spite of “nasty woman” chants, women are persisting. God, are they ever persisting. The 116th Congress is made up of a record number of women. The midterm elections also included historic wins for LGBTQ people and people of color.

Despite attacks directly on them, both Omar and Ocasio-Cortez still have a higher popularity rating than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to a poll taken by the conservative bastion Fox News.

Meanwhile, Sen. Kamala Harris, a woman of color, is currently coming in second in CNN polls, an achievement that would have been unthinkable to most people only eight years ago.

All of this brings to mind Gloria Steinem’s statement that the 2016 election was “a vote against the future and the future is going to happen anyway.”

And the message the Squad is bringing with them isn’t one of terror of a changing world. It’s joy for that same changing world.

“I can tell you, you are all the squad, trust me. If you support equity, you support justice, you are one of us,” Tlaib said at the national NAACP convention. “The Squad is all of you.”

Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, stated at a recent rally, “We will not go back to the days of injustice. We will not go back, we will go forward. But we sure as hell will not stand still.”

Maybe there’s still hope for a future that includes all of us after all.