There is no final boss

No Kings Day last weekend was a huge success—as many as five million of you showed up across the country.

A truism in journalism says that if you have three examples, you have a trend story. In the U.S., spanning 2017, 2020, and 2025, a series of mass protests have taken place against authoritarian rule, addressing national and local repression.

Today I want to talk about what happened on No Kings Day last Saturday, how these three clusters of massive protest events came to be, and how we have already built—on the shoulders of many who labored without thanks in hundreds of locations across the U.S.—the bones of the twenty-first-century protest movement we need to liberate the country.

Keep in mind that the country is just getting started. The only mistake at this point would be to think that using political power ever falls into the category of “one and done.”

Before we get into that, I want to take a moment to address my podcast “Next Comes What” and what you’re reading now, its parent newsletter, Degenerate Art. We have several thousand reliable listeners, viewers, and readers every week. Which is great!

At the same time, fewer than three hundred of those are paid subscribers. I won’t ever include ads in the written or podcast versions of these stories. But that necessarily limits my reach, because wider audiences rarely hear about what I’m up to.

So thank you to those readers who are also paid subscribers. And if you aren’t yet one of them but but find the essays here or the audio or video of the episodes interesting or useful, I encourage you to sign up via the button at the end of this post. Your funds go not just to me but also to Jason Sattler, better known online as LOLGOP, who produces the podcast and spends a lot of time on it each week.

No Kings Day

Now, back to last weekend. What a spectacle! What a turnout! Independent data journalist G. Elliott Morris estimates, based on crowdsourced materials, that four to six million people came out in the U.S. on Saturday to stand against the repressive policies of our current president and his lackeys. Morris reported this number as a significant expansion of protests in the first year of the Trump’s first term as president, with protests doubling in 2025 over 2017, and even tripling this weekend.

Here in Falls Church, Virginia—just four miles outside Washington, D.C.—I went to both the morning and the afternoon protest. The morning one had amazing turnout, though I saw multiple parking spaces open just a block from the heart of the gathering, which meant it was pretty much town residents who had come.

Along the main road, a continuous line ran block after block, as far as the eye could see down Broad Street. (There was apparently another demonstration farther down the road at Columbia Pike.) People were waving their signs to drivers, and drivers were honking in response. A postman in a delivery truck joined in, as did the driver of a semi, who nearly leveled attendees with blasts from his horn. The whole experience was bigger and more dynamic than I expected.

One of the demonstration volunteers with Democracy Falls Church was standing on a corner of the main intersection at the center of Falls Church. She was reluctant to go on camera, because she didn’t want to make any coverage of the event about herself, but she agreed to talk to me.

I asked what the demonstration was about, and she said she was there to “stand up for democracy.”

I asked her if she had a favorite sign so far, and she surprised me by having a very definite answer.

“I do have a favorite one so far,” she said, pulling out her phone to bring up a picture. “And I’d like to read it. This was posted on the back of [a sign from] somebody who was here. Her father was in the Army. Her dad was in the Army in 1965, and he was called up by president Lyndon Baines Johnson, to be deployed to Selma. And he was sent there to protect the civil rights movement happening in Selma. He was part of the 503rd MP battalion. So that is my favorite sign.”

When I asked about how many people had registered for the event, she said that, as of Friday night, 433 people had RSVP’d. (The crowd that had gathered by then looked like over a thousand to me, and later grew even bigger.)

I came back at 4pm that afternoon for the second Falls Church event, which was a little sparser but equally spirited. Knots of people gathered on each side of the street block by block along the other main road running more or less north-south through town.

Attendees had signed up for each particular spot, so that the two-mile stretch would have people with signs all along the route. This dinnertime demonstration was not as wall-to-wall, but I traveled the length of it on both sides of the street, and people were in good spirits.

A friend who spent part of her day at the demonstration in nearby Arlington, Virginia, noted how many Latino families had taken to waving the American flag from cars instead of joining in on foot, perhaps for safety reasons.

I did see some contingents on foot, but noted the same trend overall, which was understandable. Northern Virginia was one of five areas run by Democratic politicians targeted last week for deployment of ICE tactical units.

Another observation about the cars: they wound up being an integral part of both demonstrations, with support on the road via honking being so constant it was often difficult to carry on a conversation. Instead, people mostly smiled and waved at each other. There was no actual parade in Falls Church, but with the interaction between the drivers and those lining the streets, the day had the beautiful celebratory feel of an event where the whole community turned out for one.

Subdued in D.C.

The parallel event downtown was a sadder affair. The D.C. celebration was ostensibly for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, but taking place on Trump’s birthday, it was understood to be the fulfillment of a years-long dream that he had hoped to stage during his first administration, but failed.

A day-long series of events on the national Mall, with physical fitness competitions and weapons manufacturers holding an open-tent expo, was capped by an evening parade and fireworks.

Troops marched down Constitution Avenue, marching out of step enough to leave onlookers wondering whether it was fatigue or a silent protest by troops over having their mission politicized. Soldiers in tanks or lounging atop them waved at roadside attendees like it was a small-town Shriners event—which honestly, was the most authentic part of the day.

The top brass seated next to Trump on the podium seemed bored and tired. Secretary of State Marco Rubio yawned. Thousands attended the festivities across the day, but in scattered bunches, with some parts of the parade route empty, they rarely achieved the critical mass to provide a jolt of joy or adrenaline that might evoke the sense of a national party.

What made it all seem so sad? Reportedly, TikTokkers (and some Blueskyers) had reserved tickets with no plans to attend, driving down crowd size. And for days, weather reports had threatened thunderstorms that evening, storms that wound up holding off until events had wrapped up. But maybe the prospect of being struck by lightning kept some people away or led them to leave early.

Along with these dampening effects, I suspect a lot of Trump supporters have bought the propaganda against cities in general and D.C. in particular. I know that Trump-supporting extended family members have never liked to go to the nation’s capital because of its status as a majority-minority city. This tendency has only grown under Trump.

And through minimal compliance with what was requested, or deliberate foot-dragging by troops who strolled out of step (though I remain uncertain this was deliberate) the Army seemed to refuse Trump what he wanted: a spectacle like those in police states, or like the one he saw in 2017 when France celebrated Bastille Day, marking the liberation of prisoners and revolution against monarchy. In the end, Trump’s birthday party lacked any feel of a party at all.

But the No Kings protests may well have been the largest unified nationwide protest in the country’s history. I want to talk about where that came from and what it means going forward.

Years of protests

Black Lives Matter began in 2013 in the wake of the death of Trayvon Martin. It drew more attention and response after Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed the following year.

Donald Trump has a long history of racist rhetoric and actions and direct attempts to dishonestly portray Black Americans as criminal. As soon as he emerged as a national political figure, his candidacy played out in direct opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement.

In November 2015, nearly a year before Trump would first win the presidency, a half-dozen of his supporters attacked a demonstrator at a rally who shouted “Black Lives Matter!”

“Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Trump told Fox News about the attack. The man, Mercutio Southall, later told reporters that the group that attacked him had been a lynch mob, and said that his grandparents had crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

The demonstrations that took place on Saturday nationwide sixty years after Selma reveal a movement marked by a series of massive protests of its own: first, the eruption of disapproval after Donald Trump’s first election victory in 2017, next, the grief and fury of 2020 demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd (which made it even to the West Virginia town where I grew up). And third, the events last weekend.

I would argue that the long period of time over which these have happened show that Trumpism is the dominant danger in America, and that the public is mobilizing against it in ways that are increasing over time. We now have the bones of a nationwide movement that can stop him.

It’s important to say, however, that before and between those three public phenomena, a series of smaller critical protests provided the neural network and the spine of that movement. Protests across the country in the wake of infuriating deaths were critical to keeping police overreach and killings front and center. Sandra Bland, dead in her jail cell three days after a traffic stop in 2015. Elijah McClain, detained by police and injected with ketamine by a paramedic before his death in Colorado in 2019. Breonna Taylor, shot by police at her home in Louisville a year later. People publicizing these deaths helped keep a resistance to oppression alive in America.

Disability protesters have likewise risked their lives to shame lawmakers on Capitol Hill and preserve healthcare for everyone. They did it in 2017 to save the Affordable Care Act, and they mobilized again this spring in the face of drastic proposals that would lead to cutting health care to millions of vulnerable people.

Under both Trump and Biden, Latino communities have organized to demand farmworker protections. More recently, those fighting deportations and raids have educated immigrants about their rights and funded representation of those detained. Meanwhile, there are people organizing to support drag queen story hours, and those who have long been refusing to vanish in the face of government erasure of any celebration of queerness, of difference. Immediate responses to Trump’s first attempt to impose a Muslim ban foiled that effort until the courts helped him launder it. All these responses to abuse and intolerance made it possible for the bigger events to coalesce around the country.

And of course, demonstrations in prior decades by earlier groups like Occupy, abortion-clinic defenders, and HIV activists paved the way, too, keeping protest traditions and knowledge from the twentieth century alive and passing it along.

Obstacles to freedom

Most of the protests on Saturday became community parties. Where police did not act to stir up violence, they remained rallies more than protests. But in some places, the day turned dangerous. Journalists were reportedly fired on with rubber bullets in Los Angeles. Mario Guevara, an Atlanta-based journalist reporting on immigration raids was detained and may have already been targeted for deportation.

In Culpeper, Virginia, a man drove into a crowd of No Kings Day protesters, hitting at least one person. A confusing picture emerged at Salt Lake City’s demonstration, where someone from the event’s “peacekeeping team” fired on an attendee who had a weapon, killing another attendee who had nothing to do with either of them, leaving open the question of whether their intended target had represented a threat in the first place.

Most horrific were the deliberate political assassinations that took place in Minnesota, not at any demonstration but at the targets’ homes. The gunman—a Trump supporter who had a company called Praetorian Guard—had compiled a list of Democratic lawmakers and methodically tried to kill several of them.

Showing up, over and over

A lot of people were infuriated by politicians’ responses to those deaths, which seemed to imply some overall culture of violence for which the right and left might be equally responsible, despite data showing that’s not the case.

Media coverage of Saturday’s nationwide protests frustrated observers for other reasons. New York Times coverage described “thousands” as showing up, when the number had clearly been somewhere in the millions. The paper had a map of confirmed protests with only fairly large towns and cities included, totaling approximately 100 locations. It reflected none of the three protests I had seen with my own eyes, though any small group of interns could have tracked and vetted locations and media to confirm protests at thousands of sites nationwide within hours. The Washington Post coverage of the president’s parade itself was worse, with a decidedly organ-of-the-state feel to some stories. But the paper had bright spots, too, when reporters emphasized what was really going on.

The truth is that the mainstream press tends to be far behind the public when it comes to understanding and reporting on popular protest. It’s evolved to respond to and interpret institutional actors rather than the needs of the public. Yelling at them is good and can lead to accountability, but make sure you point out the specifics of where they screwed up and how they might fix it.

In the end, however, the message of the protests is bigger than the press. What having thousands of locations of rallies and demonstrations around the country does is bring the issues at hand home to people who will never read the New York Times or perhaps any newspaper ever. Tens of millions of people in the country avoid politics entirely, and consume little or no news. But protest signs and gatherings in their communities provide a chance to focus public attention in atomized ways that can inform others.

Opposing authoritarians and reactionaries is rarely welcomed. But the more we can make it an activity that the people with the most privilege are part of, the harder it is for vulnerable groups to be smeared as undeserving of free speech and the protection of the laws.

I was talking this week to Jason about decades ago, when I took my black belt test. Of course it’s a huge moment when an hours-long exam is over, and you get that belt. And it’s meaningful who shows up to fight you that day, who shows up to be part of that event, and who is the person tying the belt on your waist.

But in the end, anyone can go online and order a belt for a few dollars, so it’s not about a strip of polyester/cotton blend fabric. It’s about what you do with the knowledge. It’s about showing up each day to do the work of maintaining skills and sharing them.

Democracy is the same, if more important. A victory in a national election or a protest that includes millions is a huge win in the face of authoritarianism, but it doesn’t eliminate the need to win the next race, or to do the work to change the system itself in between. Entrenched interests—whether they’re cultural reactionaries weaponized by corporations, institutional media deeply suspicious of popular movements, or politicians seeking to impose dictatorship—don’t just vanish or become pure moral actors.

So show up, support one another, and pace yourselves. It will get harder before it gets easier, and then it will get harder again. But what happened Saturday is huge. It shows that if we keep at it, we are really gathering the means to defeat Trumpism and the repression that came before him, with all its projects—ICE, lawfare targeting trans people, DHS overreach, politicians who would rip away the tiny bits of a safety net grudgingly built in the prior century, and more. We are bigger than all of it.

Look at all these court victories that show that even our flawed system recognizes the vast abuse being inflicted on the population. A judge who is a Reagan appointee ruled against the government on Monday, saying it was palpably clear that the current administration’s cuts at NIH were due to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”

Another judge ruled late last week that the president calling up the California National Guard was illegal. Today, a hearing was held that may well reverse that decision, But even with setbacks, we can see the tide turning against Trump’s egregious actions. We just have to keep pushing, too. Don’t wait for the next big demonstration to join in again. Do your part on the street or from a place of greater safety by supporting those who get arrested or deported.

Organize more events close to home to stand up against censorship, against your municipality collaborating with ICE, against targeting trans people, and against cutting funding for projects that benefit women or Black people.

The administration came in and started a million wars against nearly every group of Americans—even its own base—apparently in the hopes of exhausting the country into surrender. Instead, make them fight those wars they’ve started, and make them fight a battle on every front. They don’t yet have enough power to make it work.

Meanwhile, we still have more than enough freedom to resist as a country. Undoing this mess will not be the work of a single day, week, or year. There is no final boss to fight in guaranteeing democracy. But we showed this weekend that we’re stronger than they are, and we can win.

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