No Kings: Incoherent and a Failure

We look at the the purpose, or non purpose, of the No Kings protests.  

Transcript

Why No Kings is Incoherent - and A Failure 

April 2026

"Protest is an act of love, not one of anger." 

John Lewis, former professional protester and sometime politician

 “Distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.” 

Elias Canetti

Field research in the first months of Trump’s second term shows that participants and organizers protesting the president are more likely to be women, more likely to be older and more likely to be White than participants and organizers of other recent protest movements. 

Amanda Becker

In Tina Fey’s smart Mean Girls one of the characters tries to make the word “fetch” happen.  It’s been a while but I believe the word was supposed to connote “cool.”  I can relate to attempts to make phrases, or concepts, happen and learning to live with disappointment.  For example, forget RINO, a Republican in Name Only, which is shorthand for MAGA types to label those of ideological impurity.  My attempt was CINO, as in Conservative In Name Only.  The MAGA movement is big government, amoral, anti-Free Trade, and isolationist.  In other words, not conservative.  I have seen the use of CINO in exactly one place, on my podcast and no other.  Though hope springs eternal it will probably be my fetch.

Another of my windmill tilting applies to the No Kings protests. Here is the statement from the No Kings website. “Across the country, people are continuing to meet, organize, and take action in their own communities. Because real change is built by people like you, staying engaged and showing up again and again.”  Which brings me to the point of all of this. The No Kings site is no help, “We showed up. And it mattered. Millions of us took to the streets for No Kings on March 28th and made it clear: we don’t do kings; not now, not ever.”

Which brings me to how I would name the protests, wait for it!  “The Pro Constitution March!”

Yup, seeing it on the page and speaking it aloud is all I need to know that this term is not going to happen, alas, another CINO.  It will never stick.  But it should.  Andrew Jackson was the first president to accrue real powers to the White House.  Lincoln behaved in an extra judicial manner during the Civil War.  Benjamin Harrison pushed through programs through Congress and even Grover Cleveland, normally a paragon of constitutionality, intervened in a labor dispute in IL, against the objections of the Il governor.  And these are the just the 19th century presidents, I will get to the 20th and 21st century ones later.  

So is not No Kings really, curb these types of executive power grabs?  And again, even a detailed “about” page brings little to no coherence to the end goals of these protests, No Kings” is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon. Born in the streets, shouted by millions, carried on posters and chants, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.

Because this country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People — the people who care, who show up, and who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity. No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.” Of all the larger, more common protests, almost all have a policy prescription, an end goal, a point.  The point here, seems to be, a reassurance of Constitutional prerogatives but the is nothing on the website, nor on the street level protest about this.  

It was truly Woodrow Wilson who was the first president to see the Constitution not as a system through which a president had to operate, but as an impediment to good governance (his of course) that needed to be altered.  Wilson was the first president to see himself not as the chief executive empowered to carry out laws, but the law unto himself.  Since Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have all broken precedents to accrue ever greater power to the executive.  Yet none, not even Obama, has wielded truly kingly powers.  However if further erosions of the Constitution continue bringing power from Congress to the White House, with a Supreme Court that the left is willing to compromise through court packing, we might s till that come to pass.  

Going back to the inception of the Constitution, anti-federalists such as Patrick Henry feared an overmighty executive, “I smell a rat in Philadelphia tending towards monarchy.” And even the greatest proponent of executive power at the beginning, Alexander Hamilton, he of the energy in the executive statement, was dismissive over the anti-federalist concerns knowing the Constitution, as proposed, would curb the power of the president.  In one such matter, the critical appointment of Senators, Hamilton in Federalist 67 was clear that, “Here is an express power given, in clear and unambiguous terms, to the State Executives” and not the president.  In his defense of the electoral college system, Hamilton again noted not only that the president had to be elected, but the import of that election.  “It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture…. A small number of persons (the electors), selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”  Choice. People. Selection.  None of these are the stuff of monarchy and by the way that was what happened in 2024.  

Let’s start with the obvious.  I have studied 5,000 years of history and with very few exceptions, the standard form of government for 96% of those years has been monarchies.  Call them Pharoah, Emperor, Sultan, Khan, Caliph, Autocrat, Emir, Tsar, Shogun, Queen or King, they have been the standard.  Some of them wielded total power, others shared authority with nobles and some were figureheads.  Yet even the reign and not rule types such as the later Merovingian in turn had someone else in charge with the power to implement their directives.  Here are a few things that I have learned from these rulers.  

They did not have their trade policy abrogated by a Supreme Court.  They did not submit budgets to a Congress. They did not have others vote on whether they got to keep chosen ministers.  If there were four hour wait times at a central hub of transportation, they would not have tolerated that.  They would have issued pay to the managers and cut down the wait times.   

A president can wage war, and that power needs to be reconciled but I do not remember the protests when Bill Clinton bombed Serbia, Barack Obama intervened in Libya, or sent a seal team into Pakistan, or Joe Biden authorizing strikes in Yemen and fast tracking material to Israel after the heinous October 2023 massacres at the hands of Hamas.  

So what is the purpose of No Kings?  Jonah Goldberg compared the No Kings to the Tea Party protests but in the vein of how they are covered by the various medias, right and left.  I can see his point but think that they are different.  The Tea Party movement, as originally envisioned by one of is intellectual progenitors, Dick Armey, was about something, “I think, you talk to them, they believe that the country is in serious danger by a government that's so excessive in its spending that it threatens the insolvency of the nation and their personal liberties. So, these are -- we call them small government conservatives, constitutionally limited, small government conservatives, who think the government has strayed to the point of peril for the nation.”  

Now was the Tea Party, like many of the protest to which I was a part, end up being a dud? It sure did!  It turns out that there was an anti-Obama constituent which morphed into MAGA, and of course Trump is just fine with large government.  But that does not change the fact that the Tea Party, had it been truly successful, had a series of policies that could emanate from the movement including entitlement reform.  Ironically the Tea Partiers were, similar to No Kings, concerned about executive power.  The difference is they based their prescription in the Constitution with many even carrying around a little version of the document.  

This coherence is absent from No Kings.  The Detroit Free Press went out and found some of the protesters, “It was “a good thing,” she said, with her mom, Devita Williams, 58, of Ypsilanti, adding her thoughts on the Trump administration: “I’d like to get them all out the White House.”

“Milan Anderson-Whitfield, 19, of Northville, strolled up with her teenage little sister to see a group of drummers still playing and learn more. She held a sign she’d been given that read, “Keep your theology off my biology.” She added, I do not not have anyone to talk about this.”  

And I again ask, how is someone supposed to “get them out of the White House.” The election happened, and a presidential term is clear.  Impeachment will not happen.  I think Anderson Whitfield got closer to the point.  She wanted to be heard, regardless of who was doing the hearing or to what purpose.  We live in an era of social media in which everyone can now be heard.  Heck a middle aged guy with history obsession can buy a microphone, sign up to Zencastr and become a podcaster.  Yet this teen feel she is not heard.

Many of the signs contained various profane terminology followed by Trump’s name.  And then there was the age and gender component.  Amanda Becker, national reporter for the 19th news attended an Ohio version and noted something about the makeup of the protesters, “the graying nature of the coalition in the streets protesting Trump was visible enough that it caught the attention of local news outlets.” Becker added, A research team led by American University’s Dana R. Fisher surveyed the host organizers of Saturday’s events and found that “consistent with the Resistance to the Trump administration during its first term, the majority of hosts and participants were female, predominantly White, and highly educated.” What has changed since the president’s first term, Fisher told The 19th, is that “the people in the streets are older than they were back in the first administration.” 

It would not shock to learn that many protesters were teachers, social workers, those with graduate degrees, and in the past, had participated in anti-Vietnam demonstrations in the sixties. 

I have shared before my own protester past, albeit limited.  I marched in college against both China and pro choice (on the former, still think they are our foes, on the latter I would probably be one the pro life marchers).  And in 2010 marched in Madison to support Scott Walker against the teacher’s unions.  There is quite a dopamine hit to all of this.  You are being heard, making a difference, showing solidarity and part of a like minded crowd.  Whether it really makes a material difference is immaterial because you feel so good. 

Another aspect of No Kings is the organization itself.  An activist is defined as a person who works to bring about political or social change by engaging in direct, often collective, action, such as protests, campaigns, lobbying, or community organizing.  In the past one protested, then went home.  But a professional activist lives off of what I used to call in my marketing days as the FUD factor, fear, uncertainty and doubt.  No Kings is a culmination of over 500 progressive organization including Indivisible, the 50501 Movement, and MoveOn.  Their partner page is a who’s who of left, and far left, organizations.  All of these people want to keep their jobs.  They all survive on donations.  That only happens if they key the FUD to a fever pitch.  I am not talking about lobbyists here who wish to influence legislation to achieve a specific outcome such as a farm lobby wanting ethanol to be a federal subsidy.  That would be coherent.  Instead I am discussing groups who not really for anything, just against the other side, which is basically what No Kings is about.  It is against Trump, not for anything.   

Since I have been a voting man since 1988, I lived through the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations and all of their attendant decisions that in the hands of Trump, would look like monarchy.  I would like to believe that this new found fear of kingliness was a manifestation of American civic and constitutional pride.  But my own observations and that of history lend to me to conclude that it is Trump, and Trump policies that are the issue.  It is not about No Kings, but not having OUR king.  

When I set out to find whether protests are actually successful I found quite a mixed bag.  Of course every platform from NPR, the Guardian and The American Sociological Foundation found them to be incredibly valuable.  That is akin to the kid at lemonade stand claiming lemons are great for ones health.  However, there are several example of protesting being successful but two factors almost underlay these wins: non violence and coherence of purpose.  

And sadly, there is a goal here.  From Andrew Jackson to Grover Cleveland, the last truly small government, states rights president, whose 2nd term was destroyed by a financial panic.  Power was accrued to the executive.  Wilson jailed German Americans during World War I.  FDR jailed Japanese Americans during World War II.  Prior to that he set prices on commodities from his bed.  Nixon created the EPA and Carter the Department of Education.  Obama brought government further into healthcare and education and famously governed by Pen and Phone, not through Congress.  Biden transferred (not forgave, not cancelled, transferred) the student loans from those who took them out to those who did not, representing an extra constitutional tax.  

It is not the electorate, the benighted American people, the Democratic Party, and some AARP incented protester that will save the Republic.  It is all of these forces reestablishing the power, and adhering to, the Constitution.