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Saturday saw many Americans — 8 million strong — gathering to protest what they believe is a would-be king and to acknowledge a shared animosity toward what Donald Trump is doing to America.
Why is the “No Kings” movement growing? Because the instances of illegality and autocratic rule by the Trump regime are expanding exponentially. The president’s White House delegates and other Republicans labeled the movement as “hate America” rallies. Whether you agree with those in the movement or not, the contrary is true.
Those who marched Saturday love this country deeply and are angry, even mortified, at what we’ve lost.
The peaceful protests were motivated by what the participants describe as unbridled frustration with the dangerous and draconian policies of Donald Trump. But their feelings are tempered by what the protesters see as an enormous community of like-minded Americans who have simply had enough.
On the heels of so many Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, it is a good time to remember that this is not just about the price of gasoline or unaccountable immigration police.
What follows is a brief compilation and reminder of what is motivating the widespread movement: the havoc wrought as democratic institutions and norms are destroyed by the president and his enablers in the Republican Party.
An Unwanted, Poorly Planned, and Increasingly Unpopular War
As the Iran war heads into its fifth week, the Pentagon is providing only scant information about what the American military is doing. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reaction to reporting he doesn’t like is to cancel all press conferences.
But reporters are managing to report. The Washington Post writes that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of U.S. combat operations on the ground in Iran. More than 50,000 American troops are now in the Middle East. Iran has an army of more than half a million soldiers.
Axios is reporting that congressional Republicans are considering cuts to health care to pay for the war, which costs more than a billion dollars a day. That move coupled with surging gasoline prices — the national average is almost $4 a gallon — doesn’t help to endear beleaguered Republicans to their constituents.
Turning His Back on Those Who Elected Him
The president and his administration don’t seem to grasp the mounting anger and alarm among millions of American voters, many of whom delivered Trump back to the White House. For this erroneously labeled “populist,” policy after policy has hurt rather than helped the middle class, while enriching the growing billionaire class.
Trump’s big summer spending bill cut taxes for those billionaires while raising taxes for a good portion of everyday Americans. It added trillions to the deficit and ballooned the national debt.
Those billionaire tax cuts were supposed to be offset by money collected by Trump’s sweeping tariffs. However, the tariffs were never going to be enough to balance the projected $4.7 trillion increase to the deficit over 10 years. And the Supreme Court determined the tariffs were illegal. Trump is now refusing to refund the $175 billion collected by the Treasury Department.
Trump allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) subsidies to expire at the end of 2025, causing premiums to skyrocket and pushing more than 2 million people off of the health insurance rolls, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
When Trump was running for office, he promised to deport dangerous immigrants, “the worst of the worst,” and many Americans supported that policy promise. But that is not what is happening.
Masked federal agents killed two Americans and have snatched hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, off the street and from their homes, without due process. According to the federal government’s own statistics, only about 25% of detainees have criminal convictions, yet many have been shipped to inhumane detention centers in the U.S. and notorious prisons in foreign countries. Trump’s ICE agents have separated thousands of infants and children from their parents.
Ending Protections Americans Expect
The unabashed pro-corporation president has eviscerated decades-old environmental protections, rolling back climate change regulations, weakening clear air and drinking water standards, and expanding oil and natural gas drilling.
As measles outbreaks continue to rise around the country, he has allowed his secretary of health and human services to dismantle long-standing, science-backed vaccine policies. This includes reducing the number of recommended shots for infants and children from 17 to 11.
The U.S., once considered the leader in biomedical research, has been sidelined. Billions of dollars in funding for research for everything from childhood cancer to dementia to HIV was slashed.
Trump has eliminated or weakened investigative offices throughout the federal government, which has allowed the president and members of his government to act with impunity. Not even the fox is guarding the henhouse.
Within the first week of his second term, Trump removed 17 inspectors general from federal agencies, leaving many vacancies and filling others with sycophants. He also purged the investigative offices at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Self-Aggrandizement and Personal Enrichment
Trump treats the presidency like a vanity project. He is putting his name and/or face on everything from Soviet-esque banners draping government buildings in Washington to gold coins and newly minted bills. This change breaks a 165-year tradition of only the treasury secretary’s and U.S. treasurer’s signatures on paper currency.
Without congressional approval he added his name to the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace. He is building a monstrosity of a ballroom, which he has said he will name after himself, tearing down part of the White House to make room for it.
He has brazenly enriched himself and his family with his crypto-currency schemes, including private dinners at the White House for the biggest investors. Many of those investors are reportedly foreign nationals looking to curry regulatory and financial favor.
He accepted a $400-million jet from the Qatari government as the Trump Organization entered into a deal to build a luxury resort in Qatar. He started what he has dubbed an alternative to the United Nations, called the Board of Peace. He populated it with leaders from countries with some of the world’s worst human rights records, all while charging them $1 billion each to join. No one knows exactly where that money has gone.
He is abusing his pardon power left and right. Numerous media outlets have reported a pay-to-play scheme in which people looking for pardons “donate” to Trump. He has pardoned some of the worst criminals. These include the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S. and having ties with powerful Mexican drug cartels. This on top of pardoning every January 6 rioter charged or convicted.
Last Monday, just before markets opened, Trump posted on social media that peace talks with Iran were going well. It turns out those talks were a fabrication. According to the Financial Times, 6,000 oil-trading contracts, worth more than $500 million, changed hands just before that post, making a number of unknown investors a lot of money.
Because he has defanged the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigative arm, we will likely never know who made those trades and if they were tipped off ahead of time.
Beating Up The Constitution
The Trump administration has waged a holistic assault on the Constitution. The First Amendment — freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly — has been routinely trampled. The Fourth, which protects from unreasonable search and seizure, and the Fifth, which guarantees due process and the equal protections of the 14th, are being disregarded.
The emoluments clause, which bars government officials from accepting payments and gifts from foreign governments, is clearly unenforced. Trump completely ignores the separation of powers provisions, which are supposed to limit what the executive branch can do. He has expanded his role, encroaching on Congress, funding things he wants and killing funding for things he doesn’t.
Before Trump took office even a single example from this list could have (and has) toppled a president. It strikes many people as astounding that, after all this, he still occupies the White House. Since beginning his second term, his approval ratings have gone in one direction: down. And he is finally getting a little pushback from some members of his party, though clearly not enough to stop his worst whims and inclinations.
This is no doubt an incomplete list. But it is plenty long enough to get millions of Americans to spend their Saturday letting what they see as a thin-skinned, wannabe king know just how reviled he is.
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