A reflection on No Kings Day twenty four hours later.

Readers continue to send photos of No Kings Day protests from across the nation. The Comment section for Sunday’s newsletter (here) is filled with enthusiastic descriptions of larger-than-expected pro-democracy rallies in small towns, red counties, retirement communities, and highway intersections in rural America—not to mention the mammoth rallies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Nashville, St. Paul, Cincinnati, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Portland (among others).

If you would like a second jolt of positivity and hope, I recommend hearing directly from hundreds of readers who describe their rally experiences firsthand. Or watch this inspiring video by Medha Murtagh.

As I wrote yesterday, “This time, it’s different.” The No Kings Day rallies were a cultural touchstone that will be remembered as a pivotal moment in the effort to defend democracy against Trump's slow-rolling coup. Those who participated understand the power that has been unleashed. They know the path forward: Larger demonstrations, more widely disbursed, with greater energy.

Several reputable sources estimate the total turnout at approximately 5 million people. See USA Today, 'No Kings' organizers say protests drew large crowds: Here are their estimates. Counting crowds is tricky business, especially when those crowds are scattered across America. The Crowd Counting Consortium is making a concerted effort to generate a reliable total for the No Kings Day protests, and it may take a month or two to come up with an “auditable” number.

But one thing is clear: The No Kings Day protests were larger than Trump's vanity birthday parade by an order of magnitude. The low-energy, listless military parade was a disservice to the US Army. As many commentators have noted, many of the platoons1 were oddly “out of step” and their ranks were not straight, giving the appearance that the otherwise professional soldiers were shuffling into a football stadium rather than parading for their Commander-in-Chief.

See Times of India, Watch- Soldiers march out of sync at Trump's birthday parade; Netizens call it defiance. (Compare the second and third embedded videos in this article, which highlight the difference between the out-of-step soldiers in “Trump's parade” and the usual lock-step, straight ranks of US soldiers marching in other parades.)

While I don’t believe that there was an organized effort to demonstrate defiance by marching out of step, the visual effect was that of an undisciplined fighting force. See The Guardian, Trump coveted a military spectacle but his parade proved underwhelming: ‘Just kind of lame.

Perhaps Pete Hegseth believes that “marching in step” is not consistent with the “warrior ethos” that he is attempting to foist on the US military. (Remember when US soldiers were called “soldiers,” not “warriors?”)

In short, Trump's parade was a bust and an embarrassment, while the No Kings Day rallies were an incredible success. But as of Sunday, one of the largest single-day protests in American history has fallen off the pages of major media outlets.

As noted on a Bluesky post by Photoonist (@photoonist.bsky.social), as of Sunday afternoon, the NYTimes’ online edition had 38 stories—none of them relating to the No Kings Day protests, but three relating to Trump's vanity parade. See this chart posted by Photoonist:

Later in the day, the Times did add one story about the No Kings Day rallies—a story that focused on a tragic case of violence. See NYTimes, 1 Killed in Shooting at ‘No Kings’ Protest in Salt Lake City. (A person acting as “security” for the rally participants believed that a suspect was pointing a rifle at the crowd; the security person shot at the suspect but missed, killing a rally participant.)

In fairness, the Times did provide coverage of the No Kings Day protests on June 14 by running photos of protests from about two dozen locations around the nation. See NYTimes, Photos and Maps: ‘No Kings’ Day Protests Across the United States.

But there were thousands of protestsacross America—many in the reddest parts of the nation. Surely if MAGA protesters had turned out 5 million rally participants in Democratic strongholds, that would not be a one-day story for the Times. The protests on June 14 were a cultural phenomenon that deserved more than one article by the “newspaper of record” on the day of the protests.

Railing against the Times is a waste of time. For reasons known only to its publisher and editors, the Times ignores Democrats except for bad news and normalizes Trump’s criminal and unconstitutional behavior much of the time. True, it occasionally rises to the occasion, but only as part of a diabolical plan to torture us into believing that it understands the threat facing America, only to dash our hopes the next day.2

The failure of the press (generally) to report on the scale and scope of the protests makes it vitally important that you help spread the word. The demonstrations were a smashing success. The next call for national demonstrations must be at least twice as large. We need sustained, growing protests to make an impact.

Want proof? On Sunday, Trump ordered that ICE crackdowns increase in “blue” cities across the nation. See The Hill, Trump directs ICE to expand deportation efforts in Democratic-run cities. (Trump’s language was particularly offensive; I see no need to repeat it. But it’s included in The Hill article.)

As Trump is ordering increased enforcement in blue cities, he is also telling ICE to stop arresting farmworkers, hospitality workers, and restaurant workers. The net result is that there will be more arrests of nannies, school children, green card holders appearing in court, and “Hispanic looking” residents pulled randomly from the streets. See NYTimes, ‘I’m an American, Bro!’: Latinos Report Raids in Which U.S. Citizenship Is Questioned.

Sadly but predictably, the increased use of ICE as a roving paramilitary using Gestapo-like tactics (“Show us your papers”) will fuel the next wave of larger pro-democracy protests.

Readers frequently ask, “But what’s the plan? What next? Do protests matter?”

Yes, the protests matter because people who participate in protests are more likely to vote in the 2026 elections and they are more likely to convince others (especally family members and friends) to acknowledge that Trump is destroying the nation as he attempts to overthrow the Constitution. But most importantly, Trump is able to keep Republicans in line only because corporate America and hedge fund money allows him to primary any Republican who steps out of line.

Trump’s coporate overlords are watching the protests very closely. Getting five million people to show up on the same day for anything is impressive. The CEOs and marketing officers for major corporations certainly took notice of the scale and enthusiassm of the protests. And as the protests grow, the billionaires who run most of America’s large corporations will watch with growing interest.

We won’t change Trump’s mind. But his corporate supporters are susceptable to persuasion. And if they won’t budge, we will take back conrtrol of the House in 2026 and possibly the Senate—depending on how much of Medicaid, Medicare, prescription drug price negotiation, and insurance is cut in the reconciliation bill.

Concluding Thoughts.

We have seen the power of mass protests. We need only remain steadfast in our dedication and we will overcome whatever Trump throws at us. We can do that. We are doing it! Let’s do it again.

Daily Dose of Perspective

The photo of NGC 7331 is one of my favorites. The galaxy is 40 million light years from Earth and is 146 light years in diameter. And yet is looks small against the dense starfield that is typical of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

1

Veterans and active-duty readers will rightly note that the parade units appeared to be companies rather than platoons; however, most civilians would probably be confused by a reference to “companies” being “out of step.”

2

The footnoted sentence uses sarcasm. I do not mean to suggest that there is a literal diabolical plot at the Times to drive us crazy. It just feels that way.

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