Millions of Americans came together on Oct. 18 to declare “No Kings.”
What could be more patriotically American? Our country was born by rejecting the rule of an unaccountable, tyrannical king. The principle that no person is above the law sets us apart from dictators and monarchies.
So does the First Amendment to our Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble. And assemble we did! News and social media showed massive crowds in large American cities as well as more than 2,700 smaller gatherings in every state.
In response to nine months of cruelty, destruction and lawlessness by a president who acts like the law doesn’t apply to him, people from all walks of life came together to defend core American principles. I was proud to be one of them, proclaiming my love for this country and my opposition to its slide into authoritarianism.
No Kings events were overwhelmingly peaceful — in New York, where more than 100,000 people took part, the police department reported zero protest-related arrests. The same was true in Chicago, Washington, and across the country.
Together, the Oct. 18 rallies made up one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history. That rankled the president, who is notoriously obsessed with crowd sizes. The next day, Trump claimed that the events had been “very small” — while every person with a smart phone or television could see that he was lying.
Trump also dismissed millions of Americans as “whacked out.” He even promoted an animated video showing a sick fantasy: a crown-wearing Trump piloting a plane and dumping excrement on protesters — a new low even for him.
We’ve come to expect Trump’s contempt for people who disagree with him. And we’ve also come to expect Republican congressional leaders to parrot the administration’s lies.
In advance of No Kings, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) smeared the rallies and people who participated in them. Johnson called No Kings a “Hate America” rally — a dishonest description that was deployed by Fox News in its relentless drive to discredit the events.
More tellingly, Johnson was still smearing No Kings gatherings as “anti-American” even after the peaceful and patriotic protests had taken place. And Johnson was not the only Republican leader spreading propaganda about the rallies and the Americans who joined them.
Right-wing politicians and outlets repeated the tired and untrue MAGA conspiracy theory that most anti-Trump protesters are paid for their activism. A couple days before No Kings, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that the events “may well be riots all across the country.”
Cruz is doing more than throwing around smears about organizers and philanthropist George Soros. Cruz is pushing dangerous legislation that would empower Trump’s corrupted Justice Department to go after Soros and other funders of what Cruz dishonestly calls “this network of left-wing violence.”
That’s on top of Trump administration moves to target progressive advocacy groups and their supporters that led Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to conclude: “Donald Trump believes he’s a king, and he’s determined to wield every agency under his control as a weapon to crush political opposition and silence free speech.”
No Kings organizers successfully urged that protests remain peaceful. Open Society Foundations leaders have made it clear that they oppose violence while funding organizations, like the one I lead, that mobilize people in defense of our freedoms and democratic values. Yet Trump and his collaborators are weaponizing the government against people and groups who dare to criticize him.
One sign that the No Kings movement is having an impact is that Trump himself has huffed in recent days that he is not a king and doesn’t like being called one.
But he sure likes to act like one, trying to rewrite the Constitution by executive order and abusing his power to punish and intimidate journalists, colleges, companies, law firms, blue states and more.
Even the White House isn’t safe. Demolition crews have torn down the East Wing to build a massive imperial ballroom. It’s an expensive monument to Trump’s ego at a time when his policies are threatening millions of families with huge increases in health care costs they can’t afford.
The Trump ballroom is nearly twice the size of the White House and will “overwhelm the White House itself,” warns the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That feels like a metaphor for Project 2025’s plan to have Trump abuse his power so quickly and on so many fronts that it would overwhelm legal and political objections to their harmful agenda.
But the size and enthusiasm of the No Kings crowds and the breadth of the coalition supporting them are welcome evidence that freedom-loving Americans will not give in to despair or despotism. No Kings in America!
Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.
