'No Kings' and 'No Troops'

Protesting against the militarization of blue cities is urgent – and helps protect the 2026 elections, too

“No troops on our streets” is one of the most important and urgent demands of the resistance. It will hopefully be a major plank of the second massive, nationwide “No Kings” protest set for October 18.

It’s urgent because of Trump’s threat to send troops to “straighten out” cities across the nation run by Democratic mayors – using those cities “as training grounds for our military National Guard.”

Flooding troops and federal agents onto the streets of blue cities has nothing to do with crime control. It’s all about projecting power and spreading fear. It’s about terrorizing immigrants. It’s about turning the military against the people. It’s anti-democratic.

We can’t let it become the new normal.

And that’s important in the longer term, too, because of the possible impact on the 2026 elections, which could turn Congress into a redoubt against Trumpism rather than a supine tool.

Experts I trust say that of the many ways Trump may try to tip the 2026 elections for Republicans, a top concern is that he will put troops and federal agents at or near polling places in blue cities to depress the Democratic vote -- and maybe even take over the voting equipment.

So in the meantime, Trump is trying to normalize the presence of troops and federal agents on city streets. He started by sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C. – which he now says he intends to occupy indefinitely. Then he sent ICE and troops into Los Angeles. Now Chicago is crawling with ICE agents and Trump is promising to send troops there, too – as well as to Portland and Memphis.

If the American people don’t push back hard enough, and troops on the streets are considered normal when November 2026 rolls around, the damage to our democracy could be enormous.

That’s why I hope and expect to hear millions of Americans on “No Kings Day” demanding “No Troops” – as well as “ICE out of our cities.”

Sounding the Alarm

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has been warning about the danger to the midterm elections posed by troops ever since Trump first threatened to send the National Guard into Chicago.

“He’d like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections,” Pritzker said in August. “He’ll just claim that there’s some problem with an election, and then he’s got troops on the ground that can take control if, in fact, he’s allowed to do this.”

Pritzker was even more explicit last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”:

If they’ve got troops in cities and it becomes a kind of norm for people, then it won’t be abnormal for them when they’re going to vote having troops at the ballot boxes. He’ll say that he’s protecting the ballot. And if he thinks there’s some kind of fraud, and -- what I mean by that is if he thinks that his party isn’t gonna win -- then they very well could do what they suggested they were gonna do in 2020, which is take control of the ballot boxes. So I believe that is what this is about. It’s about intimidating people from going to the polls who would not vote for his party and about the ability to take control of the elections if it doesn’t go his way.

What can we do about it?

“We need to push back on the idea that troops can come into our cities,” Pritzker said. “Speak up, megaphones and microphones, however you can.”

‘No Troops’ Protests So Far

There were significant “No Troops” protests over the weekend in Portland, Chicago, and in three Tennessee cities.

The Oregonian reported that about 1,000 people attended a rally in Portland protesting against the planned deployment there. Speakers included Mayor Keith Wilson and Gov. Tina Kotek.

“We do not want military intervention in Oregon anywhere, whether Portland or any other city in Oregon,” Kotek told the crowd. “You are peacefully exercising your constitutional rights. You are working to make your voices heard, and I love you for that.”

Protesters in Chicago on Saturday marched down Michigan Avenue carrying signs that read: “National Guard Stay Out of Chicago!“; “ICE Out of Chicago!“; “No Trump! No Troops!“; “No Nazis - No Kings”; and “Rise Up! Fight Back!”

People took to the streets in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, decrying the imminent arrival of troops in Memphis, which is one of the largest majority-Black cities in the U.S.

The Tennessee Lookout reports that local leaders in Memphis have formed a group called “Free the 901” (after the city’s area code) which has set up a text alert system and “intends to provide training to residents and coordinate rapid volunteer response to law enforcement actions while advocating for policies to address root causes of violence.”

Also, the ACLU is collecting signatures for a “Tell Congress: No Troops on Our Streets” petition.

Anti-ICE Protests Continue

New Yorkers rallied against ICE on Thursday outside the main federal building and at locations throughout the city on Saturday.

Ongoing protests outside an ICE facility in Broadview, just outside Chicago, have been met with increasing violence from ICE agents, who have used tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets against protesters.

Broadview village officials have accused ICE of endangering first responders, residents and protesters near the ICE facility, and have opened three criminal investigations against ICE: for two hit-and-run incidents involving a vehicle striking a pedestrian and for firing a pepper ball at a CBS News Chicago reporter.

This Week in Lawsuits

It’s been a big week for the resistance in the nation’s courthouses.

• A Reagan-appointed federal judge delivered an incendiary rebuke of the Trump regime, ruling that it had illegally targeted pro-Palestinian students for deportation based on their speech and with the clear intent of striking fear among protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. The final 12 pages, starting on page 148, are a must read. Trump has a “problem” with the First Amendment, Judge William Young wrote. “Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with ‘retribution’.”

• A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to reduce disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding for states that refuse to comply with “vague” immigration requirements. “States cannot predict how DHS will interpret these vague terms, yet they risk losing billions in federal funding for any perceived violation,” Judge Mary S. McElroy wrote. “Such ambiguity deprives the states of the ability to make informed decisions, rendering the conditions constitutionally invalid.”

• A federal judge temporarily blocked the layoffs of more than 500 Voice of America employees. Judge Royce C. Lamberth was particularly critical of Kari Lake, the acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, writing that “her brazen disinterest in the unambiguous statutory obligations implicates her competence to implement the President’s directives in a manner consistent with fundamental tenets of administrative law.”

• Within hours of Trump beginning the process of sending the National Guard into Portland, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a motion for a temporary restraining order asking a federal judge to block their deployment. “Military rule is incompatible with liberty and democracy,” Rayfield argued. “Citing nothing but a wildly hyperbolic pretext -- the President says Portland is a ‘War ravaged’ city ‘under siege’ -- Defendants have thus infringed on Oregon’s sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and National Guard.”

• An Alabama construction worker who has been detained twice by ICE at his work site despite being a U.S. citizen has filed a class action suit claiming ICE’s practice of “preemptively seizing] everybody they think looks undocumented” violates Fourth Amendment protections again unreasonable search and seizure.

• Two government-employee unions have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s threats of a mass firing of federal employees during the government shutdown, calling it an unlawful abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress.

• The League of Women Voters is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration over its creation of a massive database aggregating personal data on hundreds of millions of Americans. The suit charges that the database could lead to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and violates federal privacy laws and the Constitution.

End Notes

• “In a backsliding democracy, it’s really public mobilization that is the guardrail,” civil resistance expert Hardy Merriman explains in a New Yorker podcast. “There’s no one tactic that’s necessarily going to turn things around. It’s going to be a lot of different people getting involved.”

• Economist Paul Krugman asks: “[I]s the Jimmy Kimmel affair the harbinger of a failed Trumpian putsch?”

• Indivisible wants you to start your own zine.

• “Did you go to Airborne just to pull security for ICE?” a billboard asks in Fayetteville, North Carolina.