The revolution will be well attended. And it may accomplish absolutely nothing.
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of Americans will pour into city streets for the third installment of the No Kings protests, a nationwide day of action organized by the activist coalition Indivisible. Organizers are predicting that it could be the single largest day of domestic political protest in American history. Bruce Springsteen will perform in St. Paul, Minn. The American Civil Liberties Union has been hosting training sessions on how to reduce risk to yourself while protesting peacefully. Signs are being painted. Chants are being rehearsed.
And when it’s all over, Donald Trump will still be president.
That’s not a prediction rooted in cynicism. It’s a reality that follows from a simple question the No Kings movement has conspicuously avoided answering: What precisely do you want?
Browse the coalition’s official materials and you’ll find the language of a college freshman’s civics essay rather than a political manifesto. The marches are against “authoritarianism.” The organizers say they intend to “show our power, build our power, and power a democracy that advances freedom, equality, justice, and dignity for all.” The ACLU of Illinois describes it as “a nationwide collective demand for accountability, dignity, and the rule of law.” These are sentiments, not demands. And sentiments, however passionately held, do not move the levers of government.
The No Kings label is a rhetorical umbrella large enough to shelter half the country — and therein lies the problem. A demonstration against everything is, in practical terms, a protest against nothing. You cannot negotiate with a slogan. You cannot pressure a senator to change a specific vote when the ask is simply that America remain America. And you cannot pass legislation responding to “no kings” — that law was passed in 1787 and is commonly known as the United States Constitution.
Saturday’s marches risk becoming what so many well-attended American protests have become — a communal emotional release that feels transformative in the moment and registers as noise in Washington.
Consider what effective protest movements actually look like. The marches for marriage equality in the 2000s had a concrete, binary goal: legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The March for Our Lives had a specific legislative target: universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons. Antiabortion marchers spent 50 years showing up in Washington demanding the reversal of a single Supreme Court decision.
You may disagree with any of these causes, but you cannot dispute their clarity. A politician knew exactly what those crowds wanted, which meant politicians could be held to account for delivering or refusing it.
What does a politician do in response to No Kings? Trump has already answered that question by going on Fox News and saying, sensibly enough, “I’m not a king.” He’s right, technically, and that’s the trap the movement has walked itself into. When your protest is built around a metaphor rather than a policy, you’ve handed your opponent an easy exit.
Organizers have enlisted heavyweights, including the Service Employees International Union, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Education Association, MoveOn and United We Dream, among others. But it means the grievances on display at the protests will range from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to LGBTQ+ rights to federal science funding to Gaza to the cost of groceries to the war with Iran. When everyone is marching, no one is marching for anything in particular.
Researchers affiliated with the Brookings Institution have been surveying protesters at these events. They have found that the demographic composition of No Kings marches has been gradually shifting — fewer women, potentially less uniformly left-leaning, compared with the People’s March of early 2025. That’s genuinely interesting data, and it suggests these protests are drawing people who aren’t simply the usual progressive base. But broadening the coalition while narrowing the message is precisely the wrong formula. You end up with an enormous crowd of people who agree, broadly, that something is wrong but who haven’t been given a vehicle to do anything about it. Diversity is often a strength, but in this case it ends up being a weakness.
After March 28, the coalition plans to focus more on local legislative advocacy and protecting Americans’ right to vote before the November midterms. That’s encouraging, and those midterms are where this energy, if it survives the spring, could actually matter. If one opposes Trump and all the damage his preposterous band of acolytes is doing to America, the answer isn’t to throw a big party every few months — it is to do the hard work of running for school boards, for state legislatures and other local offices. Trump gets all the press, but the real work is done closer to where voters live.
Saturday’s marches risk becoming what so many well-attended American protests have become — a communal emotional release that feels transformative in the moment and registers as noise in Washington. Millions of people feeling something strongly is not nothing. But it is also not a plan. The No Kings movement has mastered the art of showing up. When it figures out what it showed up for, it might actually win something.
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