The donk-betting problem has become pretty prominent for me recently (probably due to the holiday season!)

So my question in general is: Where to find advice reacting to leads/donks.
Specifically I need help on "strong" donks when I have a strong hand myself. A "strong" donk is defined as a person playing passively all day so their aggression (i.e. also donk bet) means strength.

The specific hands I want to share are both AK hitting TPTK in a 2/4 game.
Villains were just bad passive players, nowhere near optimally aggressive.

1. Villain limps UTG, I raise LJ to 20. He calls.
Flop Ac9c7h. He donks 30 into 46.
Turn Qc. Flush gets there. He keeps donking 80.
Question1: What do I do here with AK. No club. What if I had the Kc?
How can I ever figure out if he overvalues AJ. Seems like the only hand we beat.

2. I raise to 20. 4way pot.
Flop KJ7 all hearts. Villain donks half pot. I call with AK no heart.
Turn blanks. He keeps donking half pot.
Question 2: easy fold?

3. bonus hand
Staddled pot. I raised to 3.5x. HU. Straddle donks 70% pot on J75 rainbow and jams for 175% pot on the offsuit J turn. Which hands do we call with here? My read on him was that he would only ever be that aggressive holding the perceived nuts. Would he play JT like this on the flop given I raised UTG1?

Learn how to fold. Passive players rarely overvalue hands.

Also, learn how to read players that l/c pre with very strong hands. There are many who would never even think about raising or 3b with stuff like AJ or even QQ-TT.

Raise the first donk bet and see how they react. You'll pick up the pot enough and create an aggressive dynamic. What you don't want is to call then fold a bunch... they'll just keep donking and taking your money.

H1: raise flop

H2: idk positions or who is left to act

H3: I think you're just being passive as hell with a call or fold mentality. Raise these mfs. Also keep in mind if someone donks the flop they should be donking turn most of the time at minimum. If you're going to call the flop you need a good plan what to do on the turn.

I mostly deal with donk bets by raising them. It's often the cheapest path to showdown and gets calls from worse (ex. AJ on the A97 flop) while minimizing losses against sets, etc.

If they 3-bet the flop then I have an easy fold.

Interesting advice so far (apart from the usual berating)
Raising might work, but if the donk overrates top pair 3rd kicker, why raise him off it? Sure, we then have perfect information, but what for?

Yesterday I encountered another type of donk, the "loose" donk. They just limp-called A6 then donked 1/3 pot into 2 ppl with backdoors only. Flop J75. PFR folded his AK without much thought.

A lot of donk bets at my 1/2 game are blocker bets. They know most players won't raise with draws or anything less than the nuts. I think some of them donk because they know if they check a better/aggressive/preflop raiser will bet closer to pot and they want to see draws cheaper.

H1 - This is almost best case scenario for you to raise every time. The odds they have Ax and you have them crushed is super high.

H2 - Another spot where I like raising. Once I got over my fear of monotone boards my game stepped up a notch. The odds they flopped a flush are super low and I promise they are more scared than you, especially out of position. If the donk bet is high enough I'll just call until they check, when I can bet for value. I can almost guarantee they donk flop, turn, and then check the river if each street is a blank. If they 3 barrel, then I'd consider 2 pair or set or flush (only if they bet each street).

Well, you need an idea of what they are donking. Hopefully you get to see early on a session.

Few things we need to pick up on. If they donk in HU pots then they are going to be massively unbalanced. We need to be prepared to double barrel often their whole checking range.

Likely should call down once at least to get an idea of their donking strategy when we have Top pair.

After that we should have good idea of their ranges between betting, calling, and check raising ranges.

I absolutely love guys that donk. Saves me boatloads in useless c bets and really allows me to narrow ranges quickly and accurately.

80% of donks I see are from older bad recs who have a TPWK type hand and want to find out where they are at.

Yup. Always be raising these donks with TPTK. I also see weaker players donk with their draws.

Against everyone but the old man I typically raise as a bluff and call to trap. Donkbets are pretty much universal "feeler bets". You have to look at it from the fish's perspective; if you have a strong hand you raise right? So if I donkbet here and my opponent *doesnt* raise then I must be good. If he *does* raise then he has me beat and I lose the minimum.

Thats what they're doing, they're paying for information, so I sell them the information they're after. I just sell them a lie.

Now on occasion there's that OMC who really just donkbets top set and stuff because he has some latent understanding of building a pot and he definitely wants your stack, he just doesnt understand relative hand strength and how opponents will react. That or he's just so used to playing in loose games he expects calls from worse hands all the time anyway so he might as well start the betting. Against these guys I'll fold anything that doesnt have direct implied odds.

I dont concern myself too much with the size of the donkbet unless it's outrageous like 1/5 pot or over pot. Lets say someone donks $30 into $150, well I would normally expect a donkbet of like $75 in this situation which would trigger a bluff raise to $225 from me. So I ignore the fact he underbet and proceed to make it $225 which is what I would have committed anyway and prevents him from some sort of attempt to pot control OOP by limiting my raise threshold. If he donkbets $150 then I probably just fold my air because there's really nothing left other than to jam at this point assuming you were playing NL500.

How does this usually develop when you (as the PFR) call the donk bet.
Will they think call is weak and donk on? Or will they donk again only when beating top pair?

@miko: Yes, obviously they just throw away money donking top pair, because we never get to cbet bluff. But when we have top pair it gets tricky

@RAISING:
I would virtually NEVER raise a donk bet with TPTK,
because that will allow them to play perfectly, i.e. fold top pair, stack off with better. Only vs a total overplayer who does not even respect my raise this might be an option, but even then... calling down accomplishes the same