"No Kings" Protests Dwarf Trump's Parade, Flexing Pro-Democracy Power
Millions rallied at "No Kings" protests nationwide as Trump's military parade fell far short of attendance goals. The vivid split screen showcased the country's rejection of Trump's authoritarianism.
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On Saturday, we saw a vivid split screen for the history books. While the fast-moving news cycle has already moved beyond this story, I’d like to highlight just how significant this weekend of demonstrations was.
While President Trump’s military parade was sparsely attended, “No Kings” protests rallied millions in 2,100 locations nationwide to demonstrate their opposition to the Trump Administration’s authoritarian actions.
This contrast was emblematic of the core dynamic of Trump’s presidency: He’s an unpopular wannabe authoritarian, incompetently abusing power as the country rejects his delusion.
With over 5 million participants across all 50 states, according to organizer estimates, the June 14 “No Kings” protests appear to be the largest single-day mass demonstration in the U.S. since the 2017 Women’s March.
The protests were peaceful, the signs were funny, and the demonstrations joyous, with only a few instances of reported clashes between demonstrators and police. The peaceful nature of these protests was a direct repudiation of Trump’s disinformation seeking to generalize all the recent protests against his ICE raids as violent.
Just to give you an idea of the scope and size of each demonstration, there are reports of over 100,000 people in cities like Philadelphia, 75,000 people in Chicago, and estimates of 50,000 people in NYC and tens of thousands in LA. Those are just four of the 2,100 locations - you can see how the numbers stack up to millions.
In a powerful display, “No Kings” organizers say that 80,000 people showed up at the Minnesota State Capitol to protest, even after the politically motivated shooting of Minnesota Democratic Senator John Hoffman and his wife (both recovering), and the murder of Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.
You can’t get a braver display than Americans showing up to make their voices heard in spite of the threat of political violence.
On Friday, I wrote that we’ve hit a turning point in Trump’s second term. Americans, in mounting numbers, are speaking out against Trump’s abuses of power. And that the silver lining in all this madness is that Trump’s cruel authoritarian overreach is, once again, backfiring—and turning the country against him. This past weekend, we clearly saw that.
Meanwhile, Trump’s military parade fell far short of attendance goals. Trump’s team was shooting for 250,000 attendees. There are no official independent estimates, but the Associated Press reported that it was nowhere near that number of people.
One of the smartest decisions the “No Kings” organizers made was not staging a counter-protest of Trump’s parade in DC. He wanted that confrontation. Instead, millions gathered around the country while Trump’s parade was defined by videos of tanks squeaking by a silent, small crowd. Far from the show of military might and force, the event made Trump look small. Trump’s attempt to use the military as a political prop failed.
This decision to avoid Trump’s parade was deliberate. The organizers of the “No Kings” movement made a point not to give Trump the spectacle he wanted. From the “No Kings” website:
“Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else.
Instead of allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day: people coming together in communities across the country to reject strongman politics and corruption.
For that reason, NO KINGS is not hosting an event in Washington, D.C.”
While there were smaller protests organized by other groups in DC, the lack of a massive counter-demonstration robbed Trump of the conflict he wanted. His fake display of strength turned into a show of weakness and unpopularity.
This kind of peaceful defiance is exactly what the anti-Trump, pro-democracy movement needs.
According to research from Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studied a century of pro-democracy movements, nonviolent protests are twice as likely to achieve their goals as armed conflicts.
Chenoweth is also responsible for the 3.5% rule, the finding that no government has withstood a nonviolent movement involving at least 3.5% of the population actively participating. In other words, when just a small but committed portion of the public mobilizes peacefully, real systemic change becomes not only possible, but likely.
While we’re not at the 11 million threshold to hit 3.5% of the U.S. population, America is certainly building a sustained mass pro-democracy movement.
Although conventional wisdom appears to be that there haven’t been as many protests in Trump’s second term as in his first, there have actually been far more protests, just smaller in scale and in more locations.
Data-driven independent journalist,
, put together a chart with these findings. It draws from a joint project called the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) by Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut - a project Erica Chenoweth is also involved in.The CCC’s findings were notable. From Morris’s great article on the “No Kings” protests:
According to the CCC, there have been over 15,000 political protests since Donald Trump’s second inauguration this January. Over the same period in 2017, during Trump’s first term, there were barely over 5,000 protests.
If you were looking for something to be hopeful about, look no further than the success of the “No Kings” protests and the failure of Trump’s parade.
As I’ve been writing about extensively in my newsletter, the backlash to Trump’s authoritarian overreach is very real. From the special elections swinging towards Democrats to Trump’s plummeting approval ratings, the indications of a growing pro-democracy movement are everywhere you look.
Overall, “No Kings” protests weren’t just a rejection of Trump’s authoritarianism. They were a reminder that the American people haven’t given up—and won’t. When democracy is being undermined, showing up matters. And last weekend, the country showed up.
