When Matt Meyer was elected as governor of Delaware last year, the outgoing US president called with congratulations – and a warning. “Joe Biden did tell me that I had to do my job and do it well or in four years he’s running against me,” Meyer said, smiling. “He’s a Delawarean and I don’t doubt that he would run.”

Now 82, Biden has retired to Delaware after leaving the political stage. At 53, Meyer is among a new generation of Democrats trying to navigate a post-Biden world in which Donald Trump is eviscerating the federal government, stress-testing the rule of law and prosecuting a global trade war.

As governor of America’s second smallest state, Meyer finds himself playing Whac-A-Mole as he deals with the consequences of Trump’s capricious actions while pursuing an ambitious agenda of his own. The keen cyclist is also trying to maintain a balance between defending progressive values and finding pragmatic ways to work with Washington.

“If there is fascism we need to call it out,” he says during a Zoom interview from Wilmington. “We shouldn’t be shy about it. At the same time I’m working hard with my head down, understanding that my job, at its root, is delivering for Delawareans and doing that however I can.”

Born in Michigan, Meyer moved to Delaware as a child and knew Biden’s sons Beau and Hunter. He attended the Wilmington Friends school and went on to study computer science and political science at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Then came Africa.

He recalls: “In middle school social studies, my teacher talked about Kilimanjaro, this amazing snow-capped mountain on the equator in Kenya, and so I always wanted to go to Kenya. In my junior year in college, I was flying into Kenya to study abroad there and a Tanzanian guy sitting next to me said, ‘You’re going to the wrong country: Kilimanjaro’s in Tanzania, not in Kenya.’ But I was stuck.”

Meyer loved his time in Kenya and became fluent in Swahili. One day he bought a pair of sandals made from used tyres that were sold on the side of the road in Nairobi and discovered they were a hit with US students. He founded Ecosandals, a recycled footwear company selling to customers in 17 countries on five continents. It was the first e-commerce company in Kenya and grew to 30 staff.

Meyer went on to spend a year in Mosul, Iraq, as a diplomat embedded with the US army. He then returned to the US and worked at one of the lowest-income middle schools in Delaware, where he felt “pissed off” as he witnessed communities facing problems including unstable housing and gun violence.

“It’s disheartening when you spend time in places like Kenya and Iraq and then you come back home, teach in a school that’s a couple miles from where I grew up, and the education kids were getting, the safety of their neighbourhoods, in many ways was worse than neighbourhoods and schools I saw in places like Iraq and Kenya,” he said. “I felt that’s not what America should be in 2016.”

Meyer – who is married to an emergency room doctor, Lauren Meyer – ran for elected office, winning a New Castle county executive position in 2016 by defeating a three-term incumbent through grassroots campaigning. His subsequent run for governor was an example to Democrats of the need to engage with tangible issues such as failing schools and unaffordable housing.

But what Meyer could not know was that he would also be confronting the return of Trump – emboldened, unfettered and hellbent on maximum disruption. He reflects: “We put together what may be the most extensive set of policies of what we were going to do that anyone running for governor has ever put together in Delaware history. Then we came into office and found ourselves trying to play Whac-A-Mole, trying to stop holes in the pipes.”

Trump’s cuts to the federal government meant 62 state public health employees, funded through a CDC grant, were in jeopardy. Market-shattering tariffs could also upend the Meyer agenda, especially if the country enters a recession. “Whatever was in those policy papers we’ve got to put lower in the pile and we’ve got to figure out how we wade through what’s looking like is going to be a challenging time for Delaware and for America.”

Trump’s first term was notable for the resistance of blue states such as California and New York. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and then attorney general, Xavier Becerra, filed more than a hundred lawsuits against the Trump administration over gun control, immigration and other issues. Should we expect a repeat this time?

Meyer replies: “Look, I’m naive, I’m an outsider, I’m not a partisan. I’m not a fan of very much of what Donald Trump says but if there’s any way possible for us to work with the Trump administration to move Delaware forward, to protect those in vulnerable communities, and to make sure our economy is growing and expanding – my preference is more prescribed programmes but if he wants to do it through block grants, I’m game.

“But we’re not seeing that. We’re not seeing resources. Pretty much everything any governor is seeing right now is cuts – sometimes dramatic cuts to services, cuts to the federal workforce that have an impact.”

Trump has spent his first two and a half months in office demonising immigrants and transgender people. Yet some business and university leaders have capitulated to his administration.

Meyer does not intend to. He insists: “We need to hold strong when the president or any elected official, anyone in a position of leadership, are vilifying people from certain communities. I don’t begrudge any of my Democratic colleagues or colleagues of any party that are standing up and calling it out in the harshest language.”

Locked out of power, the Democratic party has been soul searching and struggling to find an inspiring and unifying narrative. Meyer believes that it should include delivering for working people, protecting the most vulnerable, allowing people to celebrate their sexuality and gender identity and helping legal immigrants to pursue the American dream while treating undocumented immigrants without cruelty or hatred.

He says: “The more we can deliver on these things and show people that even in this crazy Trump time, look at the benefits to our schoolchildren and in our hospitals and healthcare systems, look at the availability of affordable housing, that’s going to be good for the Democratic party and it’s going to be good for the country.”

Delaware, long dominated by credit card companies and the chemical giant DuPont, remains Biden country. Rail travellers between New York and Washington pass through the Joseph R Biden Jr Railroad station in Wilmington, where he launched his first campaign for president in June 1987.

Yet Biden left office in January with a 36% approval rating and recriminations from fellow Democrats for not dropping out of the presidential race sooner. Meyer, who as a schoolboy volunteered for his first campaign in 1988, swerves past the question of Biden’s mental acuity and whether White House officials engaged in a cover-up.

But he says: “You can agree or disagree with his policies and his politics. This is a man who cares deeply for our country and has personally sacrificed so much for our country.

“He was widely seen in Delaware as a bipartisan guy who could get support across the aisle and was fighting for America first. I see it not as a sad statement of the Bidens or Joe Biden or his presidency but a sad statement of America and the state of our political spaces now that someone like that seems to be vilified by a sizable percentage of America.”

Despite this, and all the other turmoil in Trump 2.0, Meyer remains optimistic about the future. Last weekend the former teacher joined other Democrats and union members to protest against potential cuts to the Department of Education. “It’s hard to get teachers out early on a Saturday morning but I was with hundreds of teachers. People are galvanised. People have a lot of enthusiasm about getting back to the values of what makes this America.”

Thousands of people were also taking to the streets for “Hands Off” demonstrations across Delaware. From abortion to Doge, from immigration to Medicare, from Gaza to Ukraine, the protesters had myriad causes.

Meyer adds: “My guess is there was a lot of disagreement among the protests about what America should be. But there is broad agreement that it is not this, that we need a government that’s working for the American worker, not working to get crazy headlines or not pursuing a Project 2025 agenda to give benefit to the few over the majority of us.

“We need smart people coming around the table and saying, come on, America, we can do better than this and there are Democrats and Republicans who are coming to that realisation.”