We both went to the local “No Kings” protest here in New Orleans on Saturday, and were heartened by it. It is pleasant to be around people who care enough to take a stand against authoritarianism. It is a reminder that Trump’s worst outrages, including his cruel ICE raids and his militarization of the cities, are not popular. These protests buoy the spirit in a dark time. You meet good, compassionate people who want to prevent the country’s slide into full-blown fascism. 

A spirit of fun and frivolity prevailed. The signs were often jokey. (“Super Callous Fragile Ego Rapist Nazi Potus,” “Golf Course Gators: Where Are You When We Need You?” and the like). A popular sign had a picture of a butterfly and was captioned “The Only Orange Monarch We Want.” There were people in animal costumes—an axolotl, a zebra, frogs, and chickens, to name just a few. Because this was New Orleans, many of the slogans had a local flavor. (“Louis Armstrong Is My President,” “Let Them Eat Po Boys,” “No Kings, Only King Cake,” etc.) This cheerful Smash The Fascist State costume had clearly taken some work to assemble: 

(Photo by Nathan J. Robinson)

The attendance was staggering. With over 10,000 participants, it completely dwarfed the largest protest Current Affairs has covered before in New Orleans, the 2018 march against Trump’s family separation policy. A diverse crowd packed the Lafitte Greenway, all united in opposition to the present administration’s cruelty, corruption, and abuses of power. In other cities, protests were downright colossal, with awe-inspiring crowds gathering in the streets of Chicago and Boston to demonstrate that Trumpism cannot claim to speak for America.

The first No Kings rally took place on June 14th, 2025, coinciding with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. At the rally in New York City (which John attended) supporters of Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander used the event as a platform for distributing “Don’t Rank Cuomo” literature, an attempt to reach a more centrist audience to stop an incompetent sexual predator from taking office. In this respect, the event was a success. But in other ways, the event was dispiriting, with a comparative lack of interest or attention to the Gaza genocide that was raging at that very moment. The prevailing messaging looked more like this:

Love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal! (Photo by John Ross)

Some activists and commentators on the left have characterized No Kings as a kind of cringey carnival of liberalism, and they aren’t totally wrong. Chris Smalls, founder of the Amazon Labor Union, asked “No Kings Day is big ass Parades when are we going to to withhold our labor for idk maybe Genocide ??” Butch Ware, Jill Stein’s former running mate and current Green Party candidate in California’s gubernatorial race, observed that “mass mobilization without any specific demand and without any organization is actually detrimental because it wastes potential energy that could be directed into effectively organizing against systems.” Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of the Grayzone, points out that No Kings messaging “does not include opposition to US-Israeli wars” despite officially referencing Ukraine.

It’s understandable why people feel cynical. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have personally endorsed No Kings, with Pelosi posting a video of herself ripping up a paper crown, echoing her theatrical tear-up of Trump’s State of the Union speech in 2020. Cory Booker and Adam Schiff showed us what democracy looks like. Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, unironically posted a photo of himself holding a sign that reads “If Kamala had won we’d be at brunch!” Undoubtedly, many of the attendees would indeed be at brunch if Kamala had won. Notably, Emhoff currently works for a law firm that cut a deal with the Trump administration, pledging $100 million in pro bono work and agreeing to drop DEI-based hiring, to avoid a threatened executive order targeting his firm. Moreover, the “No Kings” messaging itself may backfire, because Donald Trump obviously loves that liberals think of him as a king. On the day of the rally, he even posted an AI video of himself wearing a crown while piloting a “KING TRUMP” jet, dumping shit on the protesters from above. May we suggest “No Fascists”?

He’s got to be trolling, right? Right?!?!

While No Kings protests successfully make Republicans look foolish, and provide a valuable demonstration of the scale of opposition to Trump, they are unmoored from a political program, and exemplify the worrying Democratic tendency to build an entire platform around opposing Trump. There is seemingly no greater vision or demand underlying the protests beyond getting rid of the “man who would be king.” Other protest movements had coherent demands, such as “VOTES FOR WOMEN NOW,” “NO BLOOD FOR OIL,” or “CEASEFIRE NOW.” But No Kings seemed, for many, to just be a way of blowing off steam, of expressing frustration at our inability to halt the rightward slide of American politics. 

And yet, for all its performative liberalism, Republicans and the Trump administration treated No Kings as if it were a looming act of domestic terrorism. House speaker Mike Johnson said the protesters represent the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party and “hate America.” In fact, the accusation of insufficient patriotism at the protest is absurd, given the ubiquity of American flags, Statues of Liberty, pro-Constitution slogans, and comparisons between Donald Trump and George III. Many signs emphasized the fact that demonstrators love America, aren’t being paid to attend, and are nonviolent.

Attorney General Pam Bondi went on Hannity to imply the protests were organized by “antifa,” warning that “you’re seeing people with thousands of signs that all match… someone is funding it, we are going to get to the root of antifa and we’re going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos.” Her comments were disturbing given that Donald Trump recently designated antifa as a terrorist organization, even though it is not actually an organization, but a decentralized movement that draws on the history of anti-fascist resistance to Nazis during World War II. In other words, this designation could be used by the Trump administration as a pretext to crack down on dissent, no matter how seemingly impotent or performative. This intent was also made explicit in NSPM-7, Trump’s recent national security directive which explicitly labels popular beliefs like “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality” as potential “indicators” of terrorism. Even mild liberal satire drew scrutiny from the Trump administration. Will Stancil, a former candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives, posted a sarcastic tweet before the No Kings rally reading “Hey @DHSgov, dangerous antifa terrorist gearing up here, come get me” – to which the official DHS account appeared to respond in earnest. 

For all its flaws, we on the left shouldn’t be so dismissive of those who attend events like No Kings. These rallies represent a contingent of voters who are genuinely alarmed by the political direction of the country and searching for ways to resist it. Even though the rallies were uniformly peaceful, the Trump administration has already begun treating these protesters as enemies of the state.

Nor was the protest just full of centrist liberals—in New Orleans, there was a visible presence of communists, socialists, and pro-Palestine activists. There was an entire contingent of tables devoted to Palestine advocacy, including Democratic Socialists of America, Jewish Voice for Peace (which John helped organize), the Party for Socialism and Liberation, NOSHIP (a New Orleans-based organization that works to end all aid to Israel), Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and Palestinian Youth Movement among others. Just as Zohran Mamdani’s campaign used No Kings to highlight the Trumpian qualities of Andrew Cuomo, the leftists used it to draw a parallel between Trump’s fascism and America’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and to the continued struggle for Palestinian liberation, especially since Israel has already violated the so-called “ceasefire” agreement 47 times as of this writing. JVP handed out hundreds of flyers promoting the Break the Bonds campaign, an initiative calling on local governments, unions, universities, and religious institutions to divest from Israel bonds, which directly fund the Israeli military and government. Organizers at the pro-Palestine tables had mostly positive experiences in their conversations with attendees, many of whom seemed like “winnable” voters for the socialist left.

No Kings is not a revolutionary event, nor does it pretend to be. It lasted only a few hours, and in New Orleans, organizers explicitly asked us not to take the streets. Unless protests are ongoing, there’s no incentive for the system to care. In other countries, protests don’t stop until the problem stops. During the 2023 pension reform strikes in France, millions of workers shut down entire cities for months to oppose Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64—blocking roads, halting trains, and letting trash pile in the streets—until Macron rammed his bill through the parliament without a vote (as a king might do). It’s difficult to imagine that kind of sustained outrage over something so concrete happening in the United States, but just last week, Macron’s government offered to pause the change until after the next election in 2027. No Kings, by contrast, did not make any tangible demands, which is why the left should make an attempt to fill the vacuum.

Performative resistance alone won’t change anything. Unless it is coupled with sustained organizing, events like No Kings will remain an empty spectacle that is quickly forgotten. But it’s still necessary for the left to participate in acts of performative resistance, because if we cede these spaces to Lincoln Project alumni and “independent” liberal influencers who are secretly funded by the Democratic Party, then “resistance” becomes whatever they say it is. For example, the organizing coalition behind No Kings included a 501(c)(4) nonprofit called Home of the Brave, whose advisory board features George Conway (a Lincoln Project cofounder), Bill Kristol (an influential advocate for the Iraq War), Susan Rice (Biden’s former domestic policy adviser), and Sarah Matthews (Trump’s former deputy press secretary), among others. The group poured $1 million into promoting No Kings with ads in full-page spreads in newspapers and a 60-second ad from Conway with just over 3,000 views on YouTube. The idea that a political establishment which has enabled the very militarism, corporate power, and bipartisan corruption that paved the way for Trump can credibly oppose his authoritarianism is not only absurd, but also dangerous. When these people position themselves as the bulwark against fascism while promoting lame centrists like Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom, they drain the concept of “resistance” of its meaning. 

But that’s precisely why the left must show up to challenge, contest, and redirect the narrative. Even flawed events can be repurposed into opportunities for real organizing. The lesson of No Kings isn’t that such protests are pointless, it’s that their potential is wasted when the left dismisses them outright instead of trying to redirect the energy toward concrete struggle.

And redirect it we must, because without being channeled into organizing, the energy of the No Kings protests will be squandered, and the right will prevail. Even as the No Kings rallies draw huge turnouts, the right continues its exercise of power. For instance, in Nathan’s hometown of Sarasota, Florida, there was an impressively-attended No Kings rally on Saturday. Impressive because that part of Florida is Republican territory, and Sarasota is where Christopher Rufo and the anti-wokeness brigade have been trying to turn the esteemed public liberal arts school, New College, into a conservative educational experiment. Sarasota is also currently seeing the effects of a state-level Republican law that allows for-profit charter schools to cannibalize public school campuses, moving into existing schools without permission from teachers, parents, or the school board. Even as No Kings demonstrated a sizable, mobilized constituency that rejects right-wing politics, the right is still in the ascent within the local political institutions. 

So people can demonstrate all they like, but the right still controls the state government. The right thinks in terms of raw power: can we get away with this? If we show up, hold signs, and give speeches, the question they will ask themselves in response is simple: does the protest alter our ability to get away with this? If it doesn’t affect their capacity for action, they’re just going to keep going.

At the moment, the Supreme Court appears poised to decimate Black political representation, eliminating what’s left of the Voting Rights Act and giving red states the power to take away the few Congressional seats they have that serve majority-Black districts. What determines whether the Republican state governments will do this is whether they can get away with it. If nobody is going to stop them, they’ll do it.

So the question we have to ask, once we come home from our protests, is: how are we going to actually stop them? If we just go out to protest from 10am to 12pm on a single Saturday, and then come home and wait for the next election to roll around, all the energy of the protest goes nowhere. It hasn’t been channeled into a project that actually challenges right-wing rule. Everyone who attends such a protest needs to also make sure they’re part of an organization that is working on trying to build the power to stop the right’s agenda—whether it's a labor union, a tenants’ union, a mutual aid network, a civil rights group like the ACLU, or a dozen other options.

The No Kings demonstrations cultivate a sense of solidarity. They embolden people. They show that there is a base of opposition to this sickening president and his sordid agenda. But at the end of the day, the right has to be thrown out of power. In states like Louisiana and Florida, that means working to end right-wing rule in the state government. In blue state cities, that means electing city officials who are going to effectively resist Trump’s meddling rather than rolling over or staying silent. Around the country, it means people with progressive values need to start running for office themselves. But wherever you are, it means taking the next step beyond carrying signs, and strategizing to take back power and enact more just and humane policies.