AP (“‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to cities nationwide“):
Large crowds of protesters marched and rallied in cities across the U.S. Saturday for “ No Kings ” demonstrations decrying what participants see as the government’s swift drift into authoritarianism under President Donald Trump.
People carrying signs with slogans such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” or “Resist Fascism” packed into New York City’s Times Square and rallied by the thousands in parks in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago. Demonstrators marched through Washington and downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside capitols in several Republican-led states, a courthouse in Billings, Montana, and at hundreds of smaller public spaces.
Trump’s Republican Party disparaged the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies, but in many places the events looked more like a street party. There were marching bands, huge banners with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The People” preamble that people could sign, and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance in Portland, Oregon.
It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.
[…]
Trump, meanwhile, was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” the president said in a Fox News interview that aired early Friday, before he departed for a $1 million-per-plate MAGA Inc. fundraiser at his club.
A Trump campaign social media account mocked the protests by posting a computer-generated video of the president clothed like a monarch, wearing a crown and waving from a balcony.
NYT (“‘No More Trump!’: Protesters Denouncing the President Unite Across the Country“):
They were teachers and lawyers, military veterans and fired government employees. Children and grandmothers, students and retirees.
Arriving in droves across the country in major cities and small towns, they appeared in costumes, blared music, brandished signs, hoisted American flags and cheered at the honks of passing cars.
The vibe in most places was irreverent but peaceful and family-friendly. The purpose, however, was focused. Each crowd, everywhere, shared the same mantra: No kings.
Collectively, the daylong mass demonstration against the Trump administration on Saturday, held in thousands of locations, condemned a president that the protesters view as acting like a monarch.
[…]
Known as No Kings Day, a follow-up to a demonstration in June, the events were scheduled at roughly 2,600 sites across all 50 states. They were organized by national and local groups and well-known progressive coalitions including Indivisible, 50501 and MoveOn.
The rallies came even as Mr. Trump’s approval ratings at the polls have not changed significantly. Republican leaders denounced the protests, blaming them for prolonging the government shutdown and calling the event the “hate America rally.”
The Guardian (“Republicans mostly silent as millions of Americans protest Trump on No Kings day“):
Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.
Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.
It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.
[…]
Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.
Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.
It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.
[…]
Fox News, meanwhile, ran a report claiming that organizers embedded in the global intifada to destroy the state of Israel had moved to join the No Kings protests in New York under the organizational groupings of “UAW Labor for Palestine” and “NYC Labor for Palestine”.
The right-leaning outlet also reported on Friday that foundations connected to George Soros were funding the No Kings protests via a $3m grant to the organizer Indivisible “to support the grantee’s social welfare activities”.
The relative silence of Republican leaders on Saturday came in contrast with efforts last week to preview the second No Kings day as a “hate America” day populated by Hamas sympathizers and a reason why Democrats were delaying an agreement to end the government shutdown, now on its 18th day.
Republican leaders disparaged rally-goers as “communists” and “Marxists”, and claimed that centrist Democrats, including the senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who marched in New York, were being held political hostage by the far left.
G. Elliot Morris, former Editorial Director of Data Analytics at ABC News, provides a “median estimate” that “4.2 million people participated in a No Kings Day demonstration somewhere in the country on Saturday, with an upper bound of 7.6 million people.” While that’s a small sliver of a country with 340 million residents, or even the 152 plus million who voted in the last election, that’s a staggering number of people to take time on a fall Saturday to protest. Indeed, Morris estimates that this was “very likely the biggest single-day protest event since 1970.”
I would have guessed that the 1970 milestone was a Vietnam War protest but, no, it was the first Earth Day, with an estimated 20 million attendees. Given the vagueness of that event—who could be against the Earth and peace, in the abstract?—I’m not sure it’s even comparable. It was more festival than protest. (Then again, the U.S. population was a mere 203 million then, so it would be the equivalent of 30 million today.)
The only other contender was the George Floyd protests of 2020. An estimated 15 to 26 million attended one of those events, but they were spread over weeks. There was no single day with more than 500,000 in attendance.
So, I think it’s fair to consider this the largest single-day protest in American history. The runner-up, by the way, was the June No Kings protest, with an estimated 5 million attendees.
Unlike the Floyd protests, yesterday’s were, by all reports, uniformly peaceful. While those who get their news from Fox and other pro-Trump sources will likely not get that impression, it’s hard to paint these rallies as violent.
While I put more emphasis on data—Trump’s job approval is 6.2 points underwater and 55 percent of the country thinks we’re on the wrong track, compared to only 39 percent who think we’re on the right track—than I do things like demonstrations, rallies are surely an indicator of intensity of sentiment.
It’s noteworthy that, of all the large protests documented, all but the 2009 Tea Party Day protests (311,000) were for causes that most of us would code left. While the reflex would be to treat yesterday’s protests as left-leaning, given that one presumes the attendees overwhelmingly vote Democratic, the general tenor of them was remarkably centrist.
Looking at the rally photos uploaded to Flickr, which should be more representative than news photos, they’re remarkably focused on basic freedoms, democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the value of protest itself, and the like. The only ones with leftist themes (Tax The Ultra Rich, for example) that I’m seeing were from rallies in France. That’s a remarkable amount of message discipline for an event that was rather loosely organized.
The pushback to my post yesterday expressing skepticism that these rallies would change anything was manifold. Large protests can
- call attention to democratic backsliding, especially to those who usually don’t follow politics (@steve222)
- energize people so that they don’t just give up (@steve222)
- demonstrate that the opposition isn’t just coastal elites, but ordinary Americans across the country (@Michael Reynolds and @DK)
- remind the powers-that-be that a) we will not be bullied into silence and b) we have the numbers to burn their shit down if they push us to the edge (@DK)
- let Ds and D leaners who sat out ’24 see they’re not alone and spark them to turn out in ’26 and ’28. (@gVOR10)
- give people a chance to be part of the journey back to normalcy and decency (@al Ameda)
These are all salient points.
I still don’t think the rallies, in and of themselves, change anything. I don’t think, for example, that it will change a single Supreme Court vote or stiffen the spine of a single Member of Congress to defend their Constitutional prerogatives.
But, could this be the genesis for something bigger? Maybe. Regardless, there’s value in the communal experience of getting together to vent common frustration.
Moreover, I do think there’s something to the “normie” thing. Since the weeks-long fight over the 2000 election, the idea of Red and Blue states and Red and Blue counties has been cemented into our consciousness. But the reality is that we’re actually pretty damn purple. The fact that some 800 people showed up to the rally in Fredricksburg, Virginia—which is very much Trump country—is a useful reminder that a lot of their neighbors oppose what’s going on. Indeed, that may be more meaningful than 100,000 people showing up a few miles down the road in DC.
