“I guess it’s hope,” one 20-something demonstrator told me, as we took in the massive crowd. “A lot of people care.”
Trump has operated over the past nine months with the pretense of a “mandate” as he reshapes American political culture in his image. But the No Kings demonstrations served as a reminder that no such mandate exists—that his victory nearly a year ago was not a blank check, and that he is executing much of his agenda without popular support.
That’s important to keep in mind, as Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, one of the organizers of the No Kings protests, told me. “Authoritarian regimes thrive on a sense of powerlessness,” Levin said by phone. “They want you to feel like they are all powerful. They want you to feel that it is pointless to try to organize against them because you don’t have the power.”
The demonstration wasn’t just about pushing back on Trump; it was about beating back “cynicism and nihilism and fatalism,” Levin said. “You stand up to show that it is indeed possible to push back against this regime, that the current moment that we’re in is not forever.”
Republicans have pivoted from fearmongering to downplaying the demonstrations, with Johnson dismissing them as a “stunt” on ABC News Sunday morning. But the mobilization appeared to provoke Trump, who responded to protestors’ discontent with a bizarre, AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and dumping feces from a fighter jet onto protesters.
What remains to be seen, of course, is if this anti-Trump energy can be translated into real political action. Democrats are still shut out of power in Washington, and continue to lack a cohesive vision beyond their opposition to Trump.
“We’ve seen leaders in charge not deliver on kitchen table issues that matter, and we have to change that,” Mishara Davis, director of Issue and Electoral Organizing at the nonpartisan State Voices, part of the coalition behind No Kings, told me. “This No Kings protest is one way in which we can really bring the change that we’re hoping to see to the community.”
