NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — July 31, 2018, was a Tuesday, which meant that constituents of Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman from Orange County, were out protesting. Until recently, the weekly demonstrations had been in front of his office, but for the summer, activists from Rohrabacher’s district, the 48th, are teaming up with those from the neighboring 45th, represented by Republican Mimi Walters. Fifty people met in a small park in Newport Beach, then stood with protest signs by the side of the road. They earned a surprising number of appreciative honks, given that Orange County was once at the very heart of the American right.

Bob Hartman, a 70-year-old who works in real estate, described watching the results of the 2016 election with his mother, a registered Republican who hated Donald Trump. “She was very much upset,” he said. “She died a few weeks later, not at all happy.”

Afterward, he got involved with the anti-Trump resistance group Indivisible, becoming an activist for the first time in his life. “It’s about someone being in the office that I think is one of the worst individuals to ever be there,” he said. Another demonstrator, Bethany Webb, 57, told me she’d cut back at work to devote more time to anti-Trump activism. “We’re gonna flip this district!” she told me. “Yes, we are. I believe.”

A few years ago, this might have seemed fantastical. Since its creation in 1993, no Democrat has ever represented the 48th district. Hillary Clinton won it by 1.7 points in 2016, but Rohrabacher was re-elected by more than 16 points. But since 2016, Rohrabacher’s odd Russophilia has been thrown into high relief by the Russia investigation. (“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a secretly recorded 2016 conversation.) Some of his constituents are up in arms by the prospect of oil drilling off their gorgeous coast.