What is this No Kings Day all about?

It’s about loving the America that Trump is trying to destroy

Leading Republicans are trying to cast Saturday’s “No Kings” protests as a “Hate America rally” when – as usual – it’s the exact opposite.

The No Kings Day events on Saturday will represent a massive outpouring of love for America as a pluralistic democracy, where the state serves the people rather than the other way around.

Saturday is a day not just to protest Trump’s totalitarian agenda, but to call for positive change and to celebrate the values that Trump has so violated.

“I’m expecting it to be huge. I’m expecting it to be boisterous. I’m expecting it to be joyful,” Indivisible cofounder Ezra Levin told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday. “It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be powerful. And it’s going to be part of history.”

Taking place in 2,500 locations around the country, this No Kings mobilization is expected to be even bigger than the last one, on June 14, which brought an estimated five million people out to protest.

And it will have an even greater sense of urgency, because the last four months have been so eventful – particularly when it comes to the invasion of American cities by brutal masked federal agents and by the military.

Two major calls to action will inevitably include a demand to end to the violent attacks on our communities by ICE thugs, and a demand for No Troops on our streets..

House Speaker Mike Johnson has attempted to cast No Kings Day participants as radical. “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out,” he said.

But what often gets lost in the flood of news coming out of the White House is how untethered Trump and his enablers are to the reality of what ordinary Americans believe in and want.

The No Kings message hearkens back 250 years to our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. It represents the views of a substantial majority of Americans today. Saturday is their day.

“The anger level is way higher,” than it was in June, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert told USA Today. “People are saying ‘I’ve never been moved to action before, but now I feel like I have to.’”

The No Kings “About” page explains that since the last event, Trump has “doubled down”:

His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities. They are targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education when families need them most. Rigging maps to silence voters. Ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle.

The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.

Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger and bigger. “NO KINGS” is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon. Born in the streets, shouted by millions, carried on posters and chants, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.

Can protests really make a difference right now? Moveon.org says the answer is a resounding “yes”:

• They change the narrative. When thousands show up in every corner of the country, we disrupt the Trump administration’s attempt to project inevitability and strength. We show that resistance isn’t fringe—it’s everywhere and it’s growing. As Robert Reich put it: “The Emperor has no clothes.”¹

• They bring new people into the movement. Events like this reach neighbors who aren’t yet engaged. They help people take that first step and connect with others in their community who are ready to act.

• They build courage. When people see so many others in the streets, it gives them permission to speak up in their own lives—with family, at work, in their communities. Courage truly is contagious. And right now, we need it spreading everywhere.

• They give us renewed hope. Saturday will be filled with joy—music, dance, chants, speeches, and solidarity. When you see thousands of others who refuse to accept this as normal, you remember that change is possible and that together, we still have the power to shape what comes next.

And Home of the Brave, an anti-Trump group, has launched a national ad campaign in newspapers around the country that includes a list of particulars against “our false king”:

• He has declared war on our Constitution, our rule of law, and our federal courts.

• He has sought absolute, unchecked power.

• He has proclaimed the free press to be the “enemy of the people.”

• He has invented false emergencies to seize powers that he does not have.

• He has unleashed the military in our cities without our consent.

• He has sent masked and unidentified men to abduct us.

• He has undermined vaccines and dismantled the agencies that protect us from plagues, putting American lives at risk.

• He has abused the power of the presidency to attack and prosecute his political opponents.

• He has attempted to stifle our speech and silence our dissent.

• He has exploited his office to enrich himself, his family, and his friends.

“The original No Kings protest was 250 years ago,” actor Robert De Niro said in a video distributed by Indivisible:

Americans decided they didn’t want to live under the rule of King George III. They declared their independence and fought a bloody war for democracy.”

We’ve had two and a half centuries of democracy since then, often challenging, sometimes messy, always essential. And we fought in two world wars to preserve it. Now we have a would-be king who wants to take it away, King Donald the First. Fuck that.

And here’s a reminder of why it’s so essential that the protests remain non-violent, even in the face of possible provocation from the increasingly aggressive and unaccountable federal law enforcement apparatus. Matt Gertz at Media Matters warns that the Trump administration is positioning No Kings as an excuse for crushing dissent:

The MAGA plan for Saturday seems clear. The right-wing media has spent months fearmongering about the conditions in American cities to justify Trump’s desire to deploy military and quasi-military forces on their streets. They want headlines about violence at No Kings rallies that the president can use as a pretext to target his political foes.

The Resistance Is Strong in Chicago

The New York Times (gift link) has a powerful visual report on the state of play in Chicago, where clashes between federal agents and residents are increasingly common.

[A]gents repeatedly have been observed releasing smoke bombs, tear gas and pepper balls to disperse residents who gather or capture videos on cellphones, including when the agents were making arrests in densely populated neighborhoods. Chicago police officers, who have been called to the scenes of some clashes, have been exposed to tear gas from federal agents twice in the last two weeks.

As the intensity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has risen, residents of Chicago are increasingly pushing back with fury.

In the last several weeks, Chicagoans have formed volunteer groups to monitor their neighborhoods for federal immigration agents, posting alerts on Facebook and in Signal group chats when agents are seen.

Block Club Chicago reports on the rapid-response groups that chronicle the increasingly brazen acts of violence by federal agents.

“Before, when our rapid responders showed up, you could feel the tension drop,” Veronica Castro, the deputy director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said. “They’d see the cameras, see the witnesses and leave. They didn’t want to get caught on tape…. Now, they don’t care. They’re pushing people aside, they’re grabbing whoever they came for. Even when there are cameras and volunteers there, they keep going.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the video are nevertheless essential. “This isn’t an honest government,” he told Block Club Chicago. “They fabricate reasons to send troops, they misstate what’s happening on the ground — so we have to build our own record. That’s what the videos, the eyewitnesses, the lawsuits are about.”

Not at all coincidentally, the grand jury revolt previously seen in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles has now spread to Chicago. The Chicago Sun-Times reports on the dismissal of charges against a Chicago couple arrested outside the ICE facility in Broadview, after a grand jury refused to indict them.

Pritzker also told a local TV station on Sunday that recent cell phone videos of ICE interactions could result in criminal charges at some point. “The tables will turn one day,” he said. “These people should recognize that maybe they’re not gonna get prosecuted today, although we’re looking at doing that, but they may get prosecuted after the Trump administration because the statute of limitations would not have run out.”

Speaking of Pritzker, the Washington Post writes today that he “has positioned himself among the most visible and unflinching figures of the resistance.”

Lawsuits of the Week

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard to Illinois without Pritzker’s consent. “I have seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” Judge April Perry wrote in her ruling. A federal appeals court lifted part of Perry’s order, allowing the troops to remain in Illinois as long as they are not deployed.

A federal judge temporarily blocked federal agents from using tear gas, pepper spray and other weapons against journalists and peaceful protesters in the Chicago area. Judge Sara Ellis also ruled that federal agents must wear badges or other “visible identification.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding to groups that combat domestic violence because they also promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

What’s Next?

Newsletter author Brian Beutler writes about what a “resistance that meets the moment would look like”:

I’d want someone from within this realm to communicate with the public clearly, in a signal moment—like an Oval Office address, but for an avatar of the out-party—to tell the country that history is repeating itself. Whatever we’ve said, or whatever you’ve heard or think you’ve heard about democracy, this is not hyperbole, and it isn’t about an election. It’s about what we do right now to stop our descent into the horrors we were raised to fight…

I’d want labor leaders prepared to lead citizens in mass work stoppages. I’d want governors like Pritzker and Newsom ready to lead blue-state citizens in a mass tax protest.

And, in an ultimate showdown, I’d want a color-revolution-like presence arrayed around the White House night and day indefinitely, until the regime fell.

The only group I’ve seen calling to surround the White House is Refuse Fascism, an outlier group founded by Cornel West and others. Their call to action:

Beginning November 5, the one-year anniversary of Trump’s election, flood DC in nonviolent protest. Surround the White House. Surround the Capitol. Surround the illegitimate fascist-packed Supreme Court. Come back again and again. Across the country, refuse to comply. Every person of conscience, millions of us together, grind the machinery of the fascist regime to a halt.

Don’t stop until Trump is removed.

End Notes

• Barack Obama calls on law firms, university presidents, and business leaders to stand up for their core missions and resist threats from the Trump administration.

• The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rejected Trump’s invitation to sacrifice the university’s independence in return for preference in funding.

• Ben Raderstorf writes for Protect Democracy that Trump is deviating from the script other authoritarians have followed in that he is “jumping straight to overt attempts at repression before he has consolidated power.”

• Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes that “The Portland Chicken Has a Degree in Game Theory.”

• Retired political consultant Gina Glantz writes about what to do when you’re 82 and angry.