No Kings protests: Do they make a difference?

The No Kings rallies held on March 28 “may be the turning point we desperately need,” said David Rothkopf in The Daily Beast. Over 8 million people attended the third wave of nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations, marking “the largest public protest in American history.” At 3,300 marches in both major cities and rural areas like Flatwoods, W.Va.; Port Huron, Mich.; and Lander, Wyo., seas of people expressed their disgust with the fact that “we now have a corrupt, racist, misogynist, mentally defective would-be king living in our White House.”

The show of political force “could reverberate in the 2026 midterms and beyond,” said Susan Page in USA Today. Since No Kings rallies began in June 2025, Republicans have suffered a string of stunning electoral defeats in special elections. “The record-setting protests” in big cities and small towns in all 50 states are fueling the Democrats’ optimism they’ll take control of the House and perhaps even the Senate in the November midterm elections.

The massive No Kings crowds were impressive because they included not just activists “but also people who rarely protest—or have never protested before in their lives,” said Zeeshan Aleem in MS.now. Still, these one-day rallies are “not enough.” If the grassroots organizers want genuine change, they need to engage in “some type of refusal to cooperate with unjust policy,” as civil rights protesters did in the 1960s and activists did in Minneapolis during ICE’s brutal immigration crackdown. Economic boycotts and “a general strike,” with nationwide workplace stoppages, would more effectively show business and political leaders that Americans are emphatically rejecting Trumpism.

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In their current form, these rallies “resemble bad group therapy,” said Jonathan Alpert in The Wall Street Journal. They provide “validation, solidarity, and emotional release” for progressives who already hate Trump. Marching and chanting slogans “feels good in the moment—and accomplishes almost nothing.”

What the cynics don’t understand, said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer, is that No Kings’ real value “is psychological.” These demonstrations admittedly are broad and unfocused in the injustices they are targeting, but they function as a “hope-building exercise” that reminds us that most Americans still want to live in a democracy. “All these people coming out,” one protester outside Philadelphia said. “It gives you hope.” Seeing such loud and tangible proof of Trump’s unpopularity makes a very real difference, because “dictatorship only succeeds with a demoralized public.”