This weekend, a reported 2,500 “No Kings” events are scheduled to occur across all 50 states in what is expected to be a much larger follow up to the “No Kings” protests that occurred back in April and June of this year.
Organizers describe their movement as a necessary defense against President Donald Trump’s supposed assault on America’s democratic foundations, believing that Trump’s actions are akin to a tyrannical ruler’s rather than the legitimate actions of a democratically elected president.
Activists are expecting the largest single day of protest in modern American history, citing increased organic opposition to the Trump administration’s attempts at enforcing immigration law, the attempted deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities, and even the recent government shutdown, which are all being cast as examples of authoritarianism.
But a closer look at the “partners” page of the No Kings website contradicts the “grassroots” categorization of these “anti-authoritarian” protests.
Far from a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, the “No Kings” movement is powered by a familiar network of progressive organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, MoveOn, Public Citizen, the American Federation of Teachers, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Greenpeace, among others.
Behind them stand the same constellation of progressive megadonors that have driven the “resistance” since 2016. One major No Kings partner, Indivisible, for instance, has received more than $7.6 million from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations since 2018.
Defending the Democratic Party
Seen in this light, “No Kings” isn’t a defense of democracy at all. Instead, it’s a defense of the entrenched power of the Democratic Party.
As such, when progressives say they are “protecting democratic norms” they are in reality protecting their dominance within the unelected government bureaucracy, the mainstream media ecosystem, academia, and other institutions that operate beyond the reach of American voters, all of which Trump is seeking to either reform or dismantle.
This inversion of democratic meaning has been building for decades. From the administrative explosion of the New Deal under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the rise of the modern regulatory state, liberals, on both the left and right, have long viewed the unelected bureaucracy as a safeguard against the kind of populist backlash represented by the MAGA/America First movement.
Within that liberal worldview, elections are sacred only when they affirm the technocratic and managerial consensus. When they don’t, the institutions and those aligned with the ruling regime must step in to stifle any potential changes to the system.
This vision of politics as careful management has gradually reshaped our constitutional order.
Elections now merely swap figureheads atop a vast administrative machine rather than install leaders capable of altering the steady leftward course of American domestic and foreign policy.
This is why former President Joe Biden, who clearly suffered from severe cognitive decline during his term, did not impede the functioning or direction of government, demonstrating that the system, under Democratic leadership, largely functions without the direct involvement or even need for a chief executive.
This can be attributed to the fact that most federal employees politically align with the views of the Democratic Party, as evidenced by 84 percent of all political donations from federal employees going to Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.
On the other hand, President Trump, who holds a popular mandate, must contend with a network of adversarial agencies, courts, and bureaucrats who continually attempt to stifle his agenda, all without being accountable to the electorate.
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