“I am not the leader of the resistance.”

Gov. Wes Moore made this assertion to Baltimore Banner editor-in-chief Kimi Yoshino last week.

A pithy statement. Moore is good at making them, and this one traveled far in the political news media, which is looking for someone to speak for the 48.36% of the nation’s voters who didn’t want Donald Trump returned to the White House.

He liked it so much that he repeated it word for word to CNN’s Jake Tapper that day.

“I am not the leader of the resistance.”

Protest too much, Mr. Governor?

That’s exactly the sort of thing a resistance leader would say.

“I’m the governor of Maryland, and I’m going to fight for Maryland,” Moore said at The Banner’s deep dive into legislative issues in Annapolis. “And that has been my posture, that I will work with anybody, including the incoming administration, to make sure that Maryland’s hopes and Maryland’s dreams can be supported and lifted up and protected.”

So who is the leader of the opposition?

I was thinking about this Thursday night while at Live! Casino in Hanover. I was waiting for the 37th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards dinner to start.

There was a lot of talk about what Trump’s second term would mean for King’s legacy and Maryland. With the inauguration just four days away, the consensus of speaker after speaker was: not much good.

“How we treat each other now … will determine whether we win the long game,” County Executive Steuart Pittman told the crowd.

Gavin Buckley, the mayor of Annapolis, offered a bit of wisdom, too. It’s not an original thought, but it was timely and well-phrased.

“In times of anguish and gloom, true leaders emerge.”

Could Moore be the leader?

He’s long been far less sanguine about Maryland’s hopes and dreams under Trump unfettered by divided government. He campaigned last year for Joe Biden and then for Kamala Harris after the president bowed out of the race because of his age.

In less public moments, he acknowledged that Maryland is about to get screwed because it doesn’t support many of the ideas Trump wrapped himself in for his campaign.

Maryland may not have much choice. Neither may its governor.

In his second inaugural address, after the Naval Academy Glee Club sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Trump claimed a political mandate from the ballot box and divine intervention in thwarting an attempted assassination.

“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said Monday in Washington.

He promised to send military forces to the Southern border, restore manifest destiny, slash federal government, take back the Panama Canal, end diversity and inclusion efforts, begin sweeping deportations, legislate gender, reverse federal policy on climate change and put the American flag on Mars.

“Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” Trump said. “But as you can see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.”

Days before, in that same Annapolis ballroom where the governor demurred leadership of a resistance, House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones was less circumspect.

An hour before Moore’s talk, she told my colleague Pamela Wood that she’ll work to give Attorney General Anthony Brown all the resources he needs to defend Maryland values from Trump and his supporters in Congress and on the Supreme Court.

Brown, a former lieutenant governor and congressman, plans to resist. He could seek up to $1 million to fund legal challenges to Trump policies by a special team of lawyers.

His Republican counterparts used this strategy well in red states such as Texas, where Trump ally Ken Paxton made tying up Biden administration priorities in friendly courts a conservative art form.

The first moment of anguish and gloom will come on the subject of immigration.

“As part of our efforts to control federal spending, one of the first things we’re going to do is go to those jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with the federal government and attempt to achieve savings there,” U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, told my colleague Brenda Wintrode.

There won’t be any secret handshakes of this resistance. No midnight broadcast from safe locations with coded phrases like, “Grandpapa has a long mustache.”

Yet there are clues about Maryland and Moore’s role.

Trump complained last week that flags in some states would still be at half-staff Monday out of respect for Jimmy Carter. The nation’s 39th president died last month at age 100, and Biden ordered flags lowered for 30 days.

“The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my Inauguration...” Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social.

“Let’s see how it plays out.”

Moore followed Biden’s example, setting Maryland’s official status for state and U.S. flags at half-staff until Jan. 28. Some 30 other governors ordered their flags raised in a gesture toward Trump.

Asking about it last week elicited a dodgy response. “We are working on a decision related to your inquiry and can update you at the appropriate juncture,” Michael Lore, spokesperson for the state secretary of state, wrote in an email.

You can find the flag status online. But hours before Trump took the oath for a second term, I went to the State House to see for myself the answer to an old Maryland question suddenly new again.

O’ say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Trump left the ceremony and immediately signed a slew of executive orders. Among them was a command to raise flags for him.

All morning and into the afternoon, the Stars and Stripes stayed where it was — flying at half-staff atop the dome at the center of Maryland.

And then, bowing to direct instruction from the White House, employees raised it for the remainder of Trump’s first day back in power.

Vive la résistance.