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Say what you will about Donald Trump’s effect on American civic life as a whole, but he’s done wonders for public participation. Voter turnout in the past few elections has reached record highs, for example. And after Saturday’s “No Kings” marches, three of the largest one-day demonstrations in American history have taken place during Trump’s two presidencies—not to mention the enormous, extended Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
Protests like these won’t immediately change much of anything in the country, but they matter nonetheless. Trump’s authoritarian takeover is unpopular—his approval is deep underwater, rivaled only by his first term for the worst since at least the 1950s—which means that its progress depends on despair and surrender from the majority of Americans who oppose it. The huge and energetic crowds that came out this weekend are an antidote to that. The “No Kings” slogan is clever because it is broad enough to bring together Trump opponents who disagree on many issues; because the view of the Constitution that it represents is immediately intelligible to almost everyone; and because it’s hard to challenge without endorsing monarchy.
The protests provide an outlet for citizens who are following the news with apprehension but don’t know what they can do on a daily basis to resist Trump’s policies, and they’re also a way for wavering Trump supporters to jump ship, a warning to allies and would-be allies that they might not be joining the winning team. Mass movements are slow work: It took nearly a decade to get from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. The No Kings protests are starting off with much greater public support, and they need only to maintain momentum through the 2026 and 2028 elections in order to turn the protests’ sentiment into concrete votes that could restrain Trump and remove his allies from office.
I went to observe Saturday’s march in Durham, North Carolina, because I was curious to see what the mood was like and whether the energy would match the first round of No Kings protests in June. Durham is a protest town, and if you cover enough of these demonstrations, you get to recognize the usual attendees. But this was larger than any other gathering I’ve seen, and the participants represented a diverse mix of ages, races, attire, and approaches to sign making, including wry (I like my country neat with a glass that reads ICE struck through); sincere (These people give me hope, with arrows pointing in every direction); and seasonal (a vampire-costumed man with a sign that said, Gerrymandering sucks the life out of democracy). Marchers gathered in a park downtown, where speakers addressed them through a seriously insufficient amplification system. No one could hear, and no one seemed to care: They were there for the vibes. Several people told me they just appreciated feeling a sense of togetherness and positivity.
Estimating total attendance at an event like Saturday’s march, with people in towns and cities all over the country, is tricky. Organizers claimed that nearly 7 million people marched, but the data journalist G. Elliott Morris concluded that the likeliest number was closer to 4.4 million at a minimum—which, according to his counts of other mass protests, would make it the largest single-day protest in the United States since 1970. The action was not limited to big cities and liberal enclaves, either: Smaller towns in red states, such as Billings, Montana (population about 121,000); Richmond, Kentucky (35,000); and Hammond, Louisiana (21,000), saw demonstrations too. Those anecdotal examples echo a report released last week by Harvard Kennedy School researchers who found that protests in 2025 have been “likely the most geographically widespread in US history,” surpassing records set in Trump’s first term and stretching deeper into Trump-supporting counties.
Ahead of the protests, high-profile Republicans referred to them as “antifa” gatherings, populated by “paid protesters” from the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party. (In reality, one strength of these demonstrations seems to be that they’re not being driven by the shiftless Democratic Party leadership.) Two GOP governors called out the National Guard to prepare for disturbances. Any gathering so large can be unwieldy or a little volatile, yet despite the best efforts of right-wing media to find bad actors, few notable black marks have emerged.
In the immediate term, none of this really matters politically. Trump still has more than three years left in his term. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court has consistently sided with the president. But Trump’s movement depends on the impression that it’s unstoppable and victorious. In 2016, he promised that the country would get sick of winning; he then claimed that the election was tainted, even though he triumphed, because he didn’t win the popular vote. Huge protests that demonstrate he is not invincible endanger his political success: They offer people who voted for Trump reluctantly or who have had second thoughts a feeling of camaraderie and hope, and give them a way to feel okay ditching him. That, in turn, might reconstitute the anti-MAGA majority that made itself known in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
These protests also send a message to universities, corporate executives, and other institutions that have been tempted to align themselves with Trump for expediency, reminding them that the immediate political incentives aren’t permanent. (Some public figures may already be learning that the backlash to aligning with Trump’s policies can outweigh the benefits: After telling The New York Times that he believed Trump should send National Guard troops into San Francisco, the Salesforce founder Marc Benioff faced a week of condemnation from the city’s leaders and other tech moguls; he eventually issued an apology.) The protests also remind Republicans in Congress who want to win reelection in 2026 that binding themselves to Trump could be a losing choice.
Maybe that’s why these protests seem to be getting under the White House’s skin so much. Trump largely shrugged off the June marches, but this weekend he lashed out in ways that seemed determined to prove the protesters’ point. He threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to send troops to San Francisco, saying he has “unquestioned power” to do so. (He does not.) He also posted a bizarre animated video in which he flies in a fighter jet labeled King Trump, wearing a crown—not beating the rap!—and dumping excrement on protesters. And the vice presidency might not be worth “a warm bucket of piss,” as one previous holder said, but surely J. D. Vance has better things to do than beef online with a 23-year-old Democratic influencer. Trump and his allies seem to grasp what Saturday revealed: The protests are popular, and the president is not.
Related:
Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
- The problem with minimizing Chicago crime
- The “anti-woke” tax that all Americans are paying
- George Packer: Why the “No Kings” protest moved me.
- ICE’s “athletically allergic” recruits
Today’s News
- A federal appeals court said it would allow President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard to Portland for now, overturning a lower court’s order that had previously blocked him from doing so.
- French authorities are searching for four suspects who carried out a jewel heist at the Louvre Museum yesterday that lasted less than 10 minutes, stealing several royal pieces and prompting the museum to close.
- Trump said yesterday that the Gaza cease-fire remains in place even after Israel launched strikes in Rafah early yesterday following allegations that Hamas violated the agreement. The U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today as Hamas and Israel traded accusations over breaking the truce.
Dispatches
- The Wonder Reader: Shan Wang featured some images from the Nikon Small World 2025 contest that reveal a hidden world of color and geometry. Can you guess what you’re looking at before reading the captions?
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Evening Read
The Great Ghosting Paradox
By Anna Holmes
Culturally, ghosting is a paradox. It can be something you brush off even as it lives rent-free in your head. It’s still considered rude, and people on both sides tend to feel bad about it, albeit in different ways. It’s also extremely common: 90 percent of respondents to one 2021 study reported that they had ghosted someone. Last month, the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd bemoaned the fact that online dating has become a “digital derecho, with oh so many ways” to “make and drop connections.”
But perhaps ghosting—or being ghosted—doesn’t need to be so upsetting.
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- Ukraine’s underground generation
- The risk of financial—and moral—collapse
- Trump’s next potential deal: Ukraine
- The Bolton case is not like the others.
Culture Break
Explore. Shohei Ohtani just played perhaps the greatest game in the history of baseball, Peter Wehner writes.
Watch. Sabrina Carpenter’s Saturday Night Live appearance (streaming on Peacock) played off of her reputation as a provocateur, Paula Mejía writes.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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