Boycott the White House vandals!

What’s the next step after No Kings? Something more radical, perhaps?

The resistance is growing.

As many as 7 million Americans took to the streets in small towns and big cities alike on Saturday, which would be an approximately 40 percent increase over the 5 million Americans that organizers said attended the last No Kings events in June.

But it’s not growing fast enough.

I was hoping for double the turnout. After all, things have gotten so much worse in the last five months.

So I think it’s time to change things up. To become more demanding, and more aggressive.

Resistance organizers have long said that the next steps in the resistance will involve noncooperation and civil disobedience.

Noncooperation tactics include boycotts, walk-outs, sick-outs, sit-ins, strikes, refusal to obey orders, more institutional pushback, etc.

Keep in mind that the resistance’s biggest win so far came when hundreds of thousands of people canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions, forcing ABC to reinstate late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel.

Organizers are understandably skittish about moving into the next phase -- worried that critical mass has not yet been achieved; worried about the risk of failure.

Those worries are justified. But maybe riskier action will advance and grow the movement faster than just preparing another event a few months down the line.

The Obvious Next Target

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is literally razing part of the White House to the ground in order to build a giant, gaudy ballroom, paid for by $200 million in bribe-like donations from corporations and individuals trying to curry favor with him.

The would-be funders, who attended a fancy White House dinner last week, are an obvious next target for boycotts.

Here’s a guest list of the corporate funders, as provided by White House officials. :

• Altria Group

• Amazon.com

• Apple

• Booz Allen Hamilton

• Caterpillar

• Coinbase Global

• Comcast

• Hard Rock International

• Google

• HP

• Lockheed Martin

• Meta Platforms

• Micron Technology

• Microsoft

• NextEra Energy

• Palantir Technologies

• Ripple

• Reynolds American

• T-Mobile US

• Tether

• Union Pacific Railroad

FWIW, the construction team will be headed by Clark Construction, the engineering team will be led by AECOM, and the demolition is being carried out by ACECO.

No Kings Redux

Here are some of the top protest signs from Saturday, as curated by MeidasTouch.

Here are some wonderful front pages from newspapers around the country on Sunday. They’re an antidote to the sometimes listless coverage in national news outlets.

“This was protest with purpose,” Public Citizen co-presidents Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert wrote in an email to supporters:

Donald Trump and his cronies have spread the lie that they have overwhelming support and their policies are inevitable. “No Kings” proved those claims untrue. The Trump regime wants to intimidate opponents and chill dissent. They want people to be scared and isolated. With “No Kings,” we joined together to feel, and feed, our power — in overwhelming numbers.

Politicians were watching. Just as the prior large nationwide demonstrations this year — “Hands Off!” and the first “No Kings” — stiffened their spines just a bit, what they witnessed this weekend will make them stronger in the very difficult fights ahead.

G. Elliot Morris, a data journalist who has been compiling crowdsourced turnout estimates, declared Saturday’s “No Kings” protests to be the largest single-day political protest in American history. (He excluded the 1970 Earth Day event, which drew 20 million people, as not being explicitly political.)

Morris estimated that somewhere between 5 million and 6.5 million attended Saturday’s events, compared to the 4 million to 6 million he estimated in June. That would suggest something like a 15 percent increase between the two events.

The Value of Incrementalism

Author Andrea Pitzer explains the incremental approach to resistance:

Since the weekend, many people have said, more or less, “Great! Millions of people showed up, but no one actually made any demands that had to be met. They just showed up and went home.” And in the long run, of course demands will have to be made, and specific goals will have to be pursued. But first we have to build a movement beyond the core people who have been safeguarding shards of our democracy while consistently being brutalized.

Any nationwide movement at the start is going to need to feel fun and welcoming, with low barriers to entry and some emotional rewards for showing up. For those who say this is babying people, that’s a fair criticism. But many Americans have little or no experience with political action, and wresting the entire political landscape from those in power now is going to require more of them to get engaged.

And yet she, too, expresses some impatience:

These things take time. Yet we don’t have a lot of time left to stop the administration’s power grab. This is our dilemma. And meanwhile, many thousands—including whole communities—are already being subjected to horrific violence and abuse.

Pivoting to the 2026 Elections

How do you Democrats running in 2026 harness the enthusiasm of the resistance?

Newsletter author Brian Beutler outlines a superb “No Kings agenda” for Democratic candidates, which includes:

• Release the Epstein files;

• Terminate Trump’s unilateral tariffs;

• Criminalize the use of face masks in federal law enforcement;

• Prohibit the deployment of National Guard troops into neighboring states over the objection of governors;

• Establish binding congressional review of presidential emergency declarations;

• Impede rescissions, impoundments, and the capricious and unequal treatment of states;

• Revive canceled programs created by statute;

• Defund prosecutions ordered by the president and provide restitution for persecuted individuals;

• Terminate the abuse of war powers, including extra-judicial killing in the Caribbean;

• End bailouts of foreign kleptocrats;

• Prohibit presidents from issuing, branding, or otherwise profiting from cryptocurrency while in office

• Prohibit construction of a White House palace ballroom;

• Restore the East Wing of the White House;

• Require the return, sale, or dismantling of the 747 aircraft given as a gift to the United States by the government of Qatar, and prohibit further expenditures on its care, maintenance, or retrofitting;

• Mount aggressive oversight of the Trump administration, judiciary, tech industry, other industry collaborators, and Elon Musk, including through the use of the inherent contempt power.

And that’s only the first tranche of three that Beutler recommends.

This Week in Lawsuits

• A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to “promptly disperse” $33.9 million in anti-terrorism funds to New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. FEMA had held back the funds based on the city’s sanctuary status.

• Public Citizen and others have filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to challenge a new Department of Transportation rule that threatens the livelihoods of nearly 200,000 people by prohibiting asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients from getting, renewing, or even keeping existing commercial driver’s licenses.

• Public Citizen and others have also sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for ceasing to investigate workplace policies that have discriminatory impacts even if they were not explicitly intended to discriminate.

• Back in July, Sidney Reid was filming ICE workers outside the Washington D.C. jail when she was assaulted by ICE and FBI agents -- and was then arrested and accused of assault herself. Last week, she was found not guilty by a jury in a misdemeanor trial that came after the local U.S. attorney’s office tried and failed three times to get grand juries to indict her for a felony.

A Few Words From the Archbishop of Chicago

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, has issued a new statement on the immigration raids in that city:

Families are being torn apart. Children are left in fear, and communities are shaken by immigration raids and detentions. These actions wound the soul of our city. Let me be clear. The Church stands with migrants.

We stand with a mother who crosses borders to feed her children. We stand with the father who labors in silence to build a better future. We stand with the young person who dreams of safety and a better future. Our parishes and schools will not turn away those who seek comfort, and we will not be silent when dignity is denied in the enforcement of the law, it is essential that we respect the dignity of every human being.

What Do You Think We Should Do Next?

I suspect that will be an ongoing subject here over the next few months. What do you think would work the best? Please leave your thoughts in comments.