Saturday, October 18, 2025
Today, the second round of “No Kings” protests are taking place in more than 2,500 locations nationwide. The little town I live in is one of the 2,500+. I wish I could be there. I’m just not physically up to it.[1] “The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak“. That said, my spirit and mind are engaged. I’m watching/listening to the coverage of today’s events … and writing this article.
Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and other Republicans in Congress are calling today’s protests a “Hate America” rally sponsored by extreme leftists, pro-Hamas activists, hardened criminals, and terrorist organizations like ANTIFA.[2] Apparently, they’ve never read the first amendment to the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
In fact, the protests have been organized and sponsored by more than 200 organizations and thousands of grassroots groups including:
- American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
- American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
- Common Cause
- Common Defense
- Indivisible
- League of Conservation Voters
- MoveOn
- National Nurses United
- Public Citizen
- Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
- United We Dream
All week, representatives from these organizations and dedicated individuals have stressed the need for the protests to be peaceful and non-violent … even in the face of possible provocation by government forces and other opponents. I recall the right-wing protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It’s not surprising that those who support the current administration’s actions are talking about and, possibly hoping to foment, violent conflict.
This just in …
At about 1:15 PM, I received a call from my best friend who had attended our town’s protest. She told me that over 800 people were there. Our population was 20,092 as of the 2020 census. 800 is almost 4% of that. Of course, some of the 800 were from other little towns nearby that didn’t have their own protests, but that happens each time we have this kind of rally.
Why are so many of “We The People” protesting?
By the end of the day, more of us will have joined the protests than have ever participated in any such rally in our 249-year history. The “No Kings” title derives from the belief that President Trump and his Administration seem intent in pushing the country into authoritarianism while the other two branches of our government are openly complying or, at least, “playing dead”.
The Framer’s of the Constitution, the definition of the structure of our democratic republic and core of it’s law, created three branches of government. Each branch had it’s own function. To make sure that no one branch gave in to the temptations of power, each was designed to serve as a check on the other two. President Trump is acting as if he believes he has absolute power and that the law does not apply to him and his minions. That’s not the behavior of a U.S. President … or even of a King. It’s the behavior of a dictator.
Among his most egregious sins is breaking campaign promises, repeating any number of lies to get his followers to believe him, and ignoring any law or norm that gets in his way:
- One of the first acts in his second presidency was to pardon or commute the sentences of those who had been legally convicted for violations of the law that they had committed during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (I wonder how many of those people have taken jobs with I.C.E.?)
- He promised to reduce inflation. (He became especially fond of saying “groceries”.) Instead, he imposed tariffs on almost every country in the world. These “taxes”[3] have increased costs on almost everything and destroyed markets for a number of domestic farm products.
- The administration has attacked democratic institutions, civil rights, healthcare, education, and environmental protections.
- Using less than subtle hints and shameless orders, President Trump sent the Department of Justice to enter usually pointless charges against those he considers to be political enemies.
- Early on, the Trump Administration talked about finding, capturing, imprisoning, and deporting “the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants … gang members and other violent criminals. We still hear that from time to time. What we often see is heavily armed masked men in camouflage or similar military dress indiscriminately … and sometimes brutally … accosting anyone with dark skin and speaking Spanish … including women, children, and the occasional U.S. citizen. If you’re an observer or, God forbid, try to help the victim, you can become a victim yourself.
I.C.E. is an abbreviation for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their jurisdiction is within a “reasonable distance” of any external U.S. border. “Reasonable distance” is defined as 100 miles from any of our borders. Chicago is about 170 miles from the Canadian border in Lake Michigan. - Of even more concern is calling the military into our cities to do police work for which they are not trained. Overriding gubernatorial authority to call in a state’s National Guard is bad enough. Sending the marines into U.S. cites is illegal. It directly violates the Posse Comitatus Act. Members of the military are trained for combat; not policing.
Sunday, October 19, 2025
Yesterday’s “No Kings” protest was one of the largest in our country’s history … and it was incredibly successful.
Organizers have upped the count of locations participating to over 2,700. About 7 million people participated. Every age, race, religion, economic level, political party, and sexual orientation was represented. It was a true representation of who “We The People of the United States” really are. The 2,700 locations exceeded the original prediction by more than 7%,. The 7 million participants exceeded the original estimate of 5 million by 40%. (7 million is also about 2% of the total population of the U.S.)
Arrests were minimal and only peripherally related to the protests. In spite of participation in the hundreds of thousands, Boston, Massachusetts, New York City, New York, Washington D.C., Austin, Texas, San Diego, California, and Charlotte, North Carolina all reported no arrests at all.
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Notes
[1]
WARNING: If you don’t really care why I can’t attend the protest … and don’t want to read an old guy’s whining, scroll down a screen or so to the return link and get back to the subject of this article.
It’s been a rough few months. The 3 buildings of my condo association were built in the ’70s. Because copper was needed for the Vietnam war, we have aluminum wiring. After more than 50 years, our insurance company decided that every outlet, wall switch, ceiling light, thermostat, and baseboard heater had to be crimped with a copper wire connection. I had to move furniture to provide the electricians access to almost every outlet, heater, and a few wall switches. After living in the same unit for more than 32 years, I have a lot of heavy furniture. I also have a bad back. I was able to get one or two pieces of furniture on sliders and move them each day or two. That took part of July and all of August.
The electricians did their work on my unit on September 8th and 9th. I planned to take a day off and begin moving everything back to where it belonged on the 11th. On September 10th, I hurt my left hand and wrist. That added to my bad back made it especially difficult to get around for the rest of September.
Now, my hand is OK. My wrist still hurts a bit, but it’s useable if I’m careful.
[2]
ANTIFA is not an organization. It’s an idea; an abbreviation for Anti-Fascist. This political cartoon says it well.
[3]
TARIFFS ARE NOT PAID BY THE COUNTRY EXPORTING GOODS. THEY ARE PAID BY IMPORTERS WHEN THE GOODS REACH OUR SHORES. Importers are us … the U.S. companies that purchase the goods from the other country. If the domestic buyer is big enough and the tariff small enough, they may be able to absorb the difference. Small businesses cannot. They have to pass the cost along to us.
President Trump keeps saying that he’s eliminating foreign competitors, thereby helping domestic producers. It doesn’t seem to bother him that foreign countries retaliate … ruining the markets of U.S. exporters … like farmers who sell soy beans to China. Similarly, he doesn.t seem to understand that there are some products that we can’t produce. (Hawaii is the only state with a climate that can grow coffee. They don’t have anything close to the capacity to meet U.S. demand.)
Finally, some of his tariffs make absolutely no sense. His first round of tariffs included the Heard and MacDonalds Islands. Did he think the penguins … the islands’ only residents … were cutting into our hamburger production? Recently, he’s placed tariffs on Brazil … a major coffee grower … and Argentina because he doesn’t like their governments. To say that he’s “as dumb as a stump” would be an insult to stumps everywhere.
My Less Than Humble Opinion 
Superb!! (Sorry about the electrical issue … if it’s not one thing, it’s another.)
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