You Deserve a Real Trump Protest Today

Why ‘No Kings’ Isn’t enough to fight fascism

Again, we have No Kings protests. It is respectable to get large groups of Americans to do much in concert, so millions publicly standing against Trump is laudable. With that ablution out of the way, we can proceed with an honest discussion.

No Kings protests are in the same parks and plazas, civic centers, and intersections as before. The same group of us talking to ourselves while, in all likelihood, most Americans do not even get the joke about the name. We have to call these protests for what they are. First, therapy for the anxious. People legitimately want to act, and these protests provide catharsis. Second, exercises for list-building, activist identification, and training. Soon, all the texts and emails harvested along the way will be parsed by congressional district with exhortations to drop literature and donate. These points are useful, but we must understand ourselves, because illusions will kill us quickly.

The roots of Indivisible, the driver of No Kings protests, are in electoral politics. Their current Guide to Democracy 2.0 is an excellent primer on exactly what Democrats can and cannot do when totally out of power. This builds on their Trump 1.0 “Practical Guide to Resist”—a masterful, useful piece on developing local pressure elected officials can feel. I cannot find much to disagree with in their written works.

But No Kings is not about local pressure and moving electeds today, it is for 2026 elections. These protests catch people hesitant to take on a partisan label and keep the base motivated. But, there is only so much unfocused protest can do, even if they grow in size. This is no criticism of Indivisible. I am concerned over the progressive tendency to a “that one weird hack” mentality that promotes inaction because too many believe the problem easily solved by one thing—like minority votes against Trump. The belief that activating 3.5% of a population against a regime will end one is a myth — such numbers are necessary, but not sufficient to defeat a regime. Gathering 12 million people just to yell against Trump alone will not change a thing.

The Trump regime will not care about these protests. In fact, they are straw for MAGA scarecrows. The current regime knows most of the country dislikes them for some reason now, but they have the reins, so what do millions of people yelling matter? In chess, controlling the board’s center squares is key because doing so limits an opponent’s options. If fascists hold the broad center of our country in abeyance long enough, they can consolidate power by wearing away the ability to resist on an increasingly aggressive timetable.

This is where we are. How do we gain the center — those folks who are not our fellow travelers, but who could be repulsed by fascism if clearly confronted? Protests for real change need focus and, ultimately, clear goals. If done right, they reveal truths to the unaligned, achieve tangible victories, and apply true pressure on the ruling coalition. Trump is not Trump alone. He has a cadre making fascism possible. Each junta member can be pressed to stop the excesses. The most effective protests to date are the local ICE protests: neighbors rushing like minutemen of old when someone is taken, protesting at detention centers, and showing up at hearings. Pressure on ICE is generated because ICE prefers to operate without public scrutiny. Bring enough eyeballs and ICE will blink.

The government shutdown and the looming Republican Affordable Care Act (ACA) internment are such immediate crises requiring focused protest to disrupt our opponent’s coalition now. This is where we move from the comfortable No Kings to more confrontational acts. If we see Trump as a fascist in power, risks must be taken that reveal truths to undecideds and disrupt the Trump coalition behind this horror show. At the moment, Trump is not the correct target. He is too insulated, too sociopathic, too demented to reach easily. No — go after how things are getting done and start with the smaller fish.

I suggest Speaker Mike Johnson.

You Deserve a Protest Today

I see two ways of doing this. First is make our problems someone else’s problem. There is immense power in pressing secondary actors to get those actors to call and press their enthralled electeds and force a change.

Here is an idea I just pulled from the air after an hour of internet noodling. Grow the Majority is Johnson’s leadership PAC. Privately-held Reyes Holdings LLC, controlled by brothers Jude and Chris Reyes, gave $1 million to Johnson’s PAC in 2024. Now, a subsidiary of this LLC is Martin-Brower, a foodservice logistics company that happens to be a major distributor to —wait for it—McDonald’s.

So jam up as many McDonald’s locations as possible for as long as possible to urge the company to stop doing business with Martin-Brower because Martin-Brower supports cutting the ACA. Some artfulness is required to connect dots for the public, but the line is clear. Occupy 1,000 McDonald’s for a few days and restaurant managers call McDonald’s corporate to ask what is going on. Corporate calls Martin-Brower to ask what is going on. Martin-Brower management calls the big guys Jude and Chris and asks what is going on. Somebody will eventually call Mike Johnson to get protesters out of McDonald’s.

This form of protest could develop real pressure, if we make McDonald’s life miserable—considering how evil McDonald’s has been, this can be done with a clean conscience. Not only would an important donor be calling Johnson demanding action, this would also signal his other donors, like Liberty Media, which controls SiriusXM among other properties, trouble is coming their way.

A Less Comfortable Path

House Speaker Mike Johnson is a committed Southern Baptist.

“We’re doing what we believe God has called us to do,” he said. “The reason I came this morning is I want to say thank you. Thank you for praying for us and encouraging us and supporting us along the way because that has meant everything to my wife, Kelly, and me and our kids and the family.” — House Speaker Mike Johnson, a member of Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, said during a visit to Airline Baptist Church, Bossier City, La., on a three-stop Sunday SBC church tour.

Johnson even served on the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) — the SBC public policy and religious liberty arm. While we all know Johnson is a Christian Nationalist at heart, what is important here is his identification with the SBC.

This protest idea is gather in large groups to picket Southern Baptist churches on Sunday. I can hear the clack of pearl clutching as people read, but bear with me for a few paragraphs. These have to be respectful, non-confrontational events. People with signs and flyers that say something like “Jesus healed. He didn’t kill. Tell Speaker Johnson to save the ACA.” Probably even more powerful than people on a sidewalk would be some “spontaneous ecumenism” with liberal congregations inter-visiting with SBC churches on Sundays for a while.

SBC churches, while autonomous and not identical, have a strong shared orthodoxy as convention members. They live in a tight universe of interconnected pastors, Bible colleges, foundations, and down to even sports leagues. This protest would be the talk of their communities. And, of course, most congregants would be upset, and pundits would tsk-tsk, but connecting with those Southern Baptists in dire need of ACA subsidies would be a powerful lever on Johnson.

This SBC effort will not be easy. Congregations will be angry and congregants do have gun racks in the truck. However, the only way to change minds is to show another path forward. If people are insulated from other opinions, stuck in a self-referential loop that only reconfirms their beliefs, something must break that framing. Remember, though, progressives are guilty of self-insulation as well—so no holier-than-thou on this point—just do the work.

This protest would raise awareness, gain local to national media coverage, and make new connections. The protest carries more risk than meeting at an overpass, but if we keep using the fascist paradigm to describe Trump and today’s looming authoritarianism, what would you really be ready to do to stop it? What did civil rights activists do to fight Jim Crow?

Fascism will not fade

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” A corollary to this is people can give freedom away, a piece at a time, over decades, until they wake up one day to be oppressed, at the mercy of a government that has abandoned its obligation to the People because they elected leaders who follow Mammon and not our Law. Our freedoms are secured by the limitations on our government in our Bill of Rights—Congress shall make no law. If every branch of our government ignores these limits, our freedoms die. And since the election of Ronald Reagan, our country has dug our freedoms’ grave. Trump is just the last shovel of dirt to close it up.

Time paradox aside, if you could go back and kill Hitler before his election as chancellor. would you? Well, if we live in fascism now, we are living in the time people from the future would come back to fix. But there is no John Connor sending anyone from the future to save us from Skynet. That is our job. Now.