The first two record-breaking iterations of the international No Kings protests were both pegged to major news events. The first, held last July on the same day as Donald Trump’s underwhelming birthday military parade on the National Mall, challenged the president’s affinity for corruption and governance by fiat. The second, which took place in October, was a national response to the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities amid an increasingly violent anti-immigration crackdown. It broke records as the largest single day protest in American history.
On Saturday, Americans will once again take to the streets in opposition to the autocratic policies of Trump’s government, and there’s once again plenty of reason to do so. The president has trapped the United States in a growing military quagmire with Iran, creating both a foreign policy disaster and an economic crisis at home. The war comes after ICE agents shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year, part of an intensifying immigration crackdown that includes documented abuses against migrants and minorities caught in their crosshairs.
As the nation contends with the effects of the Iran war and Trump sheds the support of large swaths of the coalition that helped propel him back into the White House, organizers at No Kings are hoping to expand their coalition into the president’s own backyard.
“I do think the success of this movement is going to be dependent on reaching out to people who ideologically aren’t fully aligned with each other,” Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible — the founding non-profit of the No Kings coalition — tells Rolling Stone. “I want Trump voters who voted for lower prices of bread and eggs and didn’t want war and feel betrayed. I want them welcomed into our coalition. It’s incumbent on us to welcome them with open arms and not be like, ‘Hey, where were you or why did you do that?”
The protest, which Levin expects will break their previous turnout record, is taking place as Trump’s approval rating hits a record low. Voting demographics that swung right in 2024 — including Latinos and young men — are pivoting away from the MAGA movement. The people vote, they send lawmakers to D.C., and in Levin’s view, they’re an important part of ensuring action and accountability are bipartisan.
“We don’t want just Democrats protecting free and fair elections. We want everybody protecting free and fair elections when Trump tries to pull some shit,” he adds. “We want people who are on our side, who pay attention to politics every day, to pay attention to this as well. We’re painfully aware that that’s inadequate. It’s not enough to just organize in the same old circles. You’ve got to jump to the cultural realm, not just the political realm.”
One of the realms the coalition is focused on is college students and young voters. Aida Mackic, national organizing director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tells Rolling Stone that the organization has tracked an increase in the participation of young people between the first and second No Kings protests. The ACLU, in partnership with Sunrise Movement, launched a campus outreach initiative, and the results seem promising.
“What we’re seeing is that these are student-led feeder marches that are being organized independently,” Mackic says. “They’re not just showing up to someone else’s protest. They’re building their own in their own campuses, in their own communities, in their own high schools.”
“This generation has grown up watching institutions fail. They watch the climate crisis accelerate and gun violence, all while being told to trust the process,” she adds. “They’re not naive about power. [Now] they’re watching their classmates get detained. Professors are getting fired. Their campuses are becoming targets. These are their lives. So it’s not a civics lesson for them.”
For young men, “regardless of how they voted,” a coalition of crises and broken promises is coming home to roost, Mackic says: “Student debt, economic anxiety, of living and watching their communities get torn apart. There aren’t partisan issues. What we’re seeing is that these are lived experiences. What No Kings offers is a concrete, non violent way to channel that frustration into something powerful.”
For many, the conflict in Iran is looming large over the events. In a way, the No Kings protests this weekend draw up the specter of the 2003 protests against the American invasion of Iraq, then the largest global protests in history. The similarities are there: an unpopular president, waging an unpopular war in the Middle East while expanding the power of the executive. Former President George W. Bush’s presidency would oversee the large-scale expansion of domestic surveillance, the ballooning of federal law enforcement agencies, and the establishment of extrajudicial torture prisons. Most of the transformations to presidential power would never be reversed, becoming part of the foundation of Trump’s own autocratic drive.
In the early 2000s there was a “moment when a generation looked up and said, ‘This is not what we consented to, and this is not who we are,’” Mackic says. “This feels like that inheritance. Young people aren’t just protesting a policy. They’re protesting a vision of America that was never put to a vote.”
Trump himself won’t be on the ballot in November, but the first two years of uniparty Republican control of the government hangs in the balance. Republicans themselves see the electoral writing on the wall, and some of the president’s once most devoted sycophants — including former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), and Lauren Boebert (R-Co.) — now regularly find themselves breaking with the president on issues ranging from funding for the Iran war, to his repeated attempts to bury the Epstein files. A series of off-cycle elections in which Democrats have managed to flip safe Republican seats foretells a potentially brutal midterm election cycle for the GOP. No Kings organizers believe the time is ripe to court disaffected Trump supporters who believed his promises of no more foreign entanglements.
Studies analyzing mass public protest movements have found large-scale, nonviolent protests have a huge impact when they take place during election years. “It makes sense, if you think about it,” Levin says. “Most people, most of the time, aren’t paying attention to politics and most things don’t break through their bubble. But if you have a massive protest where a lot of people, including their neighbors, are showing up and are pissed off about the direction of the country, yeah, you bet your ass that feeds into electoral outcomes.”
Organizers are expecting over 3,500 individual registered events this weekend, and to break the attendance record they set in October. The flagship protest will take place in Minnesota, in recognition of the state’s collective protest against ICE’s violent crackdown in the city. Singers Bruce Springsteen, Maggie Rogers, and Joan Baez are scheduled to appear at the central rally in St. Paul, along with actress Jane Fonda, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
“We can’t just wait until November to vote,” Levin adds. “We’ve got to get out the vote, and we’ve got to protect the vote, and having a No Kings protest is a great way to get your community engaged and then start training them up in the months to come.”
www.rollingstone.com
#Kings #Protests #Expected #Break #Records #Iran #Backlash
