Heather Cox Richardson
October 18, 2025 (Saturday)
Today, millions of Americans and their allies turned out across the United States and around the globe to demonstrate their commitment to American democracy and their opposition to a president and an administration apparently bent on replacing that democracy with a dictatorship.
Administration loyalists tried to claim the No Kings protests would be “hate America” rallies of “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed the Texas National Guard ahead of the No Kings Day protests, warning that “[v]iolence and destruction will never be tolerated in Texas.”
In fact, protesters turned out waving American flags and wearing frog and unicorn and banana costumes and carrying homemade signs that demanded the release of the Epstein files and defended Lady Liberty. They laughed and danced and took selfies and sang. City police departments, including those of New York City, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., said they had made no protest-related arrests.
In Oakland, California, Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic interviewed a man named Justin, asking him if, as a Black man, he had particular concerns about the actions of the Trump administration.
Justin answered: “You know…a lot of times I have a hopeless feeling, but…being out here today just reminds me about the beauty of America and American protests. And, you know, the fact that they tried to…stomp on this, step on this, you know, say it’s non-American, because that’s what I've been reading a lot about. No, this is the point of America right here: to be able to have this opportunity to protest…. [This] does not look like Antifa, Hamas, none of this stuff that they’re talking about…. [Y]ou know, this is the beauty of America.”
The No Kings demonstrations ran the gamut from hundreds of thousands of protesters in large, blue cities, to smaller crowds in small towns in Republican-dominated states. Together, they demonstrate that the administration’s claims to popularity are a lie. Such a high turnout means businesses and institutions that thought they must cater to the administration to appeal to a majority of Americans will be forced to recalculate.
And the protests showed that Americans care fervently about democracy.
Today, millions of Americans and their allies turned out across the United States and around the globe to demonstrate their commitment to American democracy and their opposition to a president and an administration apparently bent on replacing democracy with a dictatorship. |
