Does "No Kings" matter?

Over the weekend, I—and, I suspect, a lot of you—went to one of the No Kings protests around the country. For consistency’s sake, I went to the Memorial Bridge crossing in DC, the same one I went to in October, so that I could compare this weekend’s event to a few months ago.

A lot of fabulous people turned out, and the most significant thing I noticed was how much bigger—significantly, visibly larger—attendance was compared to October 2025. That appears to have been the national trend. Even before the West Coast No Kings events had ended, co-sponsor Indivisible announced that national attendance at thousands of events in the U.S. had already exceeded eight million people, making it the largest single day of protest in American history.

Over the weekend, I saw some critics asking what the point is, and what’s gained by these protests beyond some kind of self-centered satisfaction. For today’s post, I want to talk about what role No Kings might have in ending our authoritarian nightmare, explain what I think a number of pundits are missing, and suggest where dissent and resistance might go from here.

Protests everywhere

By the end of Saturday, after four people showed up to carve “NO KINGS” into snow in Antarctica, protests had spanned all seven continents of the globe. But the overwhelming majority of demonstrations took place inside U.S. borders. Along with major cities and mid-size towns, hundreds of gatherings popped up in smaller places like Utqiaġvik, in Alaska (formerly Barrow), with a population just under 5,000, and the tiny town of Thomas, West Virginia, whose population weights in around 600.

Little in the way of violence took place. And where the peace was disrupted, it was usually due to police officers. Late in the day, independent journalist Mel Buer’s reporting from Los Angeles showed LAPD officers spraying or pepper-balling a crowd of protesters outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, eventually detaining some, including members of the press and one woman dressed as Lady Liberty in chains.

Who showed up?

American University professor Dana Fisher has been collecting data on protests regularly with Trump’s return to office. Early analysis of surveys her team conducted Saturday indicate that immigration had the strongest effect in motivating people to show up this weekend (at 76%), followed by opposition to Trump (75%), and then opposition to the war on Iran (73%).

Demonstrators said they supported organizations engaging in civil disobedience at the staggering level of 98%, with 79% also endorsing movements embracing more confrontational actions against the Trump administration. Asked whether they would personally take part in those actions in the future, 69% of respondents said they would, provided the opportunity.

Participants almost universally considered themselves to be on the left politically (96%). Within that group, a little less than a third considered themselves to be “very left.” Just over half identified as “left.” And about one in seven considered themselves to be “slightly left.”

One of the results that most interested me was a shift over the last year to increasing levels of engagement elsewhere by those attending national protests. Between March 2025 and now, the surveys have shown, on average, a greater than 10% increase in demonstrators who report either contacting an elected official, attending a town hall meeting, participating in a direct action, or boycotting (or deliberately buying) something for political, ethical, or environmental reasons. People are doing more than just showing up for No Kings.

And though Fisher’s weekend data-gathering looks at the big national protests, it’s important to remember that overall, protests—including many held between these nationwide events—have been growing steadily since Trump’s return and are outpacing those from his first term at a staggering rate.

What’s the point?

Everything didn’t go perfectly Saturday. Because planning was decentralized, protests could feel a little scattered. Here in the DC area, for example, multiple events (in front of the Kennedy Center, at the Frederick Douglass Bridge, and a march at the Memorial Bridge) without a gathering connecting them at the end could be considered a lost opportunity to bring everyone together.

One person who attended the Memorial Bridge protest—their first protest in the Trump era—wondered aloud to me at what point these demonstrations would telescope their focus down to a single, irresistible demand. They wondered when a leader would rise for the movement that would carry it to electoral victory. They worried that anti-Trump sentiment was the beginning and end of it all.

It’s true that on Saturday when I stopped to ask many people why they were attending the march, defying Trump or ending his regime was often the first reason they offered. And given the multiple and occasionally inchoate demands on the signs carried by protesters over the weekend, the wish for some kind of tighter focus on messaging and goals is understandable.

Weekend pundit analysis seemed to agree with that criticism. Megan Hays, a former special assistant to Joe Biden, said on Sunday on “The Weekend” that being anti-Trump isn’t sufficient: “Democrats need to continue to focus on the economy and they need to have actual solutions.”

What matters most right now

But I think that something bigger is afoot—something that’s easy to miss. I’ve written repeatedly in this newsletter since November 2024 about the two things that have helped countries reverse course once they’ve become concentration camp societies. One is the existence of at least a partially functioning, semi-independent judiciary. The other is keeping the right to public dissent.

I’ll briefly touch on what’s happening in the courts, even though it’s tangential to the events over the weekend. The Supreme Court, of course, is deeply compromised, with an out-of-control right-wing majority. Reports of deep corruption have touched sitting justices, with no consequences. In addition, with expanding dodgy uses of the shadow docket or downright incorrect citations, the Court’s rulings are in many cases abetting the destruction of laws and institutions meant to protect democracy in the United States.

But it very much matters that lower courts are, by and large, holding the line on their interpretations of the law. A strong case can be made that U.S. laws have been flawed, tilted toward corporate interests or plagued with systemic issues when it comes to sexism, racism, and immigration. But lower courts have been helping tremendously in two ways.

First of all, judges are insisting on accountability to existing law. By doing so, they show that Trump’s second administration is no administration at all—it’s a power-grab antithetical to the concept of the republic and government itself.

Second of all, they’re showing what a functional court system looks like. When institutions fail, part of the challenge of establishing functional government again is the absence of any steady ground on which to stand and rebuild.

Our lower courts have been creating just such a base of institutional legitimacy for a post-Trump era. And the actions of a significant number of judges—many of whom are facing death threats—are heroic. By heroic, I mean as a group—these judges appear to be less about promoting themselves as saviors but instead putting democracy first as public servants. They’re preserving the best aspects of their branch of government.

A new national fabric

If that’s what courts are doing to preserve us from authoritarianism, what about the other thing that often helps countries stop or reverse mass civilian detention—maintaining the right to dissent?

I would argue that the emerging protest movement is also creating a base of legitimacy. This movement is the most visible sign of a new national fabric, our best chance to enshrine a real and lasting democracy in the U.S. This path to true democracy relies on citizens and other residents being engaged and not expecting democracy to be a self-executing concept.

Of course the current protest movement stands on the shoulders of both networks and tactics developed in preceding decades and even centuries by abolitionists, farmworkers, civil rights activists, and members of ACT up, Occupy gatherings, protesters standing up for water rights, and Black Lives Matter.

This heritage has made the current movement possible—a movement which had begun in small ways even before the 2016 election but became visible nationally from Trump’s first day in office, January 21, 2017.

A national convulsion took place that day, with a global protest happening simultaneously. It was understood from the beginning that Trump himself was antithetical to the democratic ideals of the United States. Of course, he was the culmination of a separate heritage in the country, one with its own longstanding grim vision. Trump’s presence was enough to provoke a clash between the two traditions in the country.

And protests continued even after his arrival—think of the same kind of convulsive, immediate response to the first attempts to impose a Muslim ban. Or the visceral response to family separation. Those specific policies were rejected by Americans in real time.

But those protests didn’t gather the sustained nationwide momentum we’re seeing now. In my opinion, this was due in part to the specific extremist policies the public had protested being dialed back or addressed in some way, even if the underlying issues weren’t actually resolved. It was also due to the reality that however bad those years were, the public understood that Trump was at least somewhat constrained by those around him.

Fascist cul de sac

Now, what we’re seeing is nothing short of a rejection of Trump, of everything he stands for, of his collaborators, and the system that has allowed them to rise. It’s a movement against Trump and for inclusion, for aid to those in need, in favor of community and love. My sense is that, more and more, people aren’t showing up in some generic self-congratulatory way, but with the understanding that we need one another, that we are reliant on each other, and that policies of cruelty and exclusion will only lead the country into a cul de sac of fascism.

This is an idea that protesters are helping to shape as they expand the movement. It’s a profound realization to know that millions of other humans have enough desire for a different world that they’ll make an effort on behalf of something better, even in the tiniest, reddest towns.

And when I refer to the national fabric, I mean it in an almost literal way. You have to see the bolt of cloth and know what there is to work with before you can begin stitching a new garment. What’s emerging is the base for a new kind of democracy.

It may adopt a more specific overarching slogan than “No Kings” at some point, but in my opinion, it won’t have a single policy goal or a single leader. It will have several of each, but its power will remain with the vast body of those who are standing up to the current threat, the protesters coming out for No Kings and those holding vigils at detention facilities or showing up in cities and town under attack, those speaking out against bombing schoolchildren in Iran, or working to block warehouses from being converted to concentration camps.

Against a myth of white voter reconciliation

The No Kings movement is a bottom-up force that is creating pressure for a different kind of politics locally and nationally. That process is bound to be messy and take time to sort out. But the protesters understand the assignment: the most important place they can be is right where they are. No Kings is binding together the core movements we’ve seen for a while on the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and elsewhere.

We’re seeing a massive shift in favor of the abolition of ICE, deep support for trans folks, and fury over the Iran War. Though we see the effects of public pressure on actions like the recent DHS shutdown, Democratic politicians have, by and large, had a hard time keeping up, because the movement is still evolving and moving faster than institutions can respond.

One reason why Democratic party leadership is still struggling mightily, even as they manage occasional good steps, is because they are listening too closely to the Sunday morning pundits and unhelpful consultants I referenced. While those folks surely believe they want what’s best for the country and have figured out a reliable path to get there, I would like to suggest that what they’re actually proposing is something else.

Chad Stanton has been framing an idea that I think gets to the heart of the current institutional Democratic response. Whether they realize it or not, Democratic willingness to reach across the aisle and preemptively make concessions to counterparts who embrace racism and throw vulnerable communities under the bus end up being a movement toward the rejection of a diverse and pluralistic democracy. Instead, it’s a kind of longing for what Stanton calls “white reconciliation.”

I think many reactionary centrists would be surprised and even offended to hear what they’re doing talked about in those terms—it’s likely not how they picture it. But look panoramically at the arguments, how they’re framed, and the degree to which they rely on embracing this mistreatment and exclusion of whole groups to win back reactionary white voters. In that context, framing of “white reconciliation” as the priority seems accurate. But I don’t think it’s going to work, because reactionary white voters are not going to save democracy.

Reclaiming agency

Just as some people have outsourced their thinking to AI of late in ways that are dangerous, many in the country have outsourced their authority to actors and institutions they now realize haven’t protected them, and who remain unwilling to act in critical ways to help their own constituencies, let alone the average American or groups being targeted for violence and hate.

But so many who have come out to protest seem to realize that from the founding, the times the U.S. has built democracy on exclusion and bigotry, these actions harmed and destabilized the country in ways that required massive course corrections. As we move toward another such correction today, it would be a tremendous self-own to fail in the same ways the country failed in the past, planting seeds for more discord that will bring us right back to the same place in the future. There will always be extremely wealthy and powerful people who will further racism, xenophobia, and misogyny to divide the country for their own benefit. We have to build a system that is fireproof from their arson.

The 8-million-plus demonstrators who took to the streets on Saturday also understand that public dissent is not only a performative ritual but also a direct blow to the dictatorial authority that Trump has assumed. They’re reclaiming the power that they’ve ceded to others in the past. In the same way, first-time protesters are practicing for the harder tests that may be coming. In the wake of the murders of Porter, Good, and Pretti, the risks are clearer now.

They’re girding themselves to help because we know where authoritarianism goes and how far it will stoop to acquire more power, even after having seized so much. The greater the number who stand up now, the fewer the number who will have to pay with their lives later.

Rising up

So many individuals have become atomized, isolated, and lonely. Protesting is an antidote for all that. And is also how to pull people into realizing they can play a role in building the future. No Kings is both performative and substantial. Showing up with a sign is in and of itself a powerful action to take in this moment, but it’s also a path to doing more.

We can see in Fisher’s statistics from this weekend that people are already engaging in tactics beyond the protests themselves, and they’re reporting a willingness to do even more, despite the risks. The size of the crowds and the breadth of their presence coast to coast are an important part of showing us what’s possible.

If you’re looking for something immediate to plug into, check out States at the core, your friendly neighborhood democracy defenders, which holds trainings on the specifics of organizing locally. Indivisible is hosting a call at 8pm EDT tonight to focus on next steps, from learning how to host a local meeting and organize your community election work to a national May Day event. So if you’re looking for how to translate Saturday into something more lasting at the ballot box and in your community, people are ready to train you to bring that kind of change to your hometown.

But you don’t have to follow that path; you can join a local effort already underway or make something completely new. I’ve been astounded by the ways that people all over the country have been inventing new approaches or expanding existing ones. Whether it’s tracking government flights, scouring records and contracts to help prevent warehouses being converted to concentration camps, driving immigrants to court hearings hours away, creating diaper banks for every baby, or making food deliveries to those targeted by ICE and Border Patrol, everyday people have been identifying the needs that exist close to home and meeting them.

Learning to care for one another close to home is one way to understand how successful societies function, and makes it possible to know what to ask for when we exert pressure on local, state, and national government to care for all Americans. The force behind millions of bodies at protests rejecting Trump and his servants can fuse with the depth of our willingness to transform our communities. The two together provide a blueprint for change, in which accountability is to the people as a whole, including those turning out on the streets to demand something better for America than the scraps thrown to them by corrupt billionaires and their elected servants.

 Your paid subscriptions support my work.