Strikes and protests are performances, you know this. The 2003 Strikes and protests didn't end ICE raids.
Resistance is met with equal force, not bump stops.

What does “fighting against Trump’s executive branches” look like to you

An actual force, a militia. As in physically opposing an illegal regime.
The days of performances was a generation ago.
You're in the final gestalt of full project2025.

What should people be doing instead?

Demolishing deathcamps, destroying datacenters, uprooting fascist resources. You know, actual anti fascist actions. Not these nonfunctional appeals to public sentiments.

I'm familiar with the slogan, but that just doesn't track with the results for the working classes once they have achieved a worker state. Why is it that in countries like Cuba, where the working classes take power, we see mass land redistribution, huge literacy campaigns, an end to the old slave-based system, and a more equitable society? Why is this immense upliftment of working people consistent across all socialist states?

Ultimately, the reason socialist states deliver such starkly different results is that states do not exist outside of the class struggle. States exist to entrench and uplift the ruling class of society. When workers own and control the state, they can and do use it for mass upliftment with an expansion of democratization for the whole of society.

Hierarchy is not the problem. Class is the problem. Our social relations to ownership of the means of production play a massive role on what our interests actually are. When the state is owned and run by workers, who share the same level of ownership as the rest of the working classes, they share the same class interest in continuing to collectivize society. This isn't merely trusting ideology, but a genuine recognition of material interests aligning.

Under capitalism, the ruling class is the capitalist class. Even in the Nordic countries, where welfare is higher, welfare is both shrinking and still ultimately depends on benefiting from the system of imperialism. Socialism doesn't need imperialism, nor is it compelled to become imperialist. Capitalism must eventually turn to imperialism to continue to function, as capital needs to expand, or else it dies.

All of these critical differences hammer home that it's not enough to say "states are bad." We have to investigate why socialist states and capitalist states benefit dramatically different sections of society, and this answer returns to Marx: it's because of the differences in the ruling class.