No Kings, No Limits

As millions prepare to march, Trump shrugs, the media dozes, and democracy wonders if polite protest is still enough. The next phase may have to make ignoring us impossible.

Good morning! The week began with a missile strike and ends with a march, and in between, the president bombed a boat, lost an admiral, flirted with Putin, and branded dissent as terrorism. America, meet your new normal: the crown fits, the conscience doesn’t.

In the Caribbean, the U.S. military managed to turn a suspected drug bust into a maritime massacre. Twenty-seven dead so far, and for the first time, survivors. Whether they were rescued, captured, or simply left floating is anyone’s guess, the Pentagon’s press office has gone full performance art. Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of U.S. Southern Command, took one look at the situation and decided retirement sounded like paradise. Two years early, no less.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists it’s all perfectly routine. Of course, so is bypassing your own combatant command to hand control of the Caribbean to a Marine task force in North Carolina. It’s a little like firing the police chief so your cousin Vinny can run the SWAT team. Senator Jack Reed tried to sound diplomatic, “This administration is ignoring every hard-earned lesson of past wars”, but what he meant was: we’re winging it with warplanes again.

And then, as if juggling wars wasn’t enough, Trump picked up the phone and dialed Moscow. Two hours later, he told reporters he’d asked Putin how he’d feel if America sold Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. “He didn’t like the idea,” Trump said proudly, as though that were the diplomatic benchmark now, personal feelings. He worried aloud about running out of missiles, which is a fair concern given how freely he’s been firing them. Today, he’ll host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House to discuss whether America can sell weapons to one enemy without upsetting the other. Call it the Trump Doctrine: weapons first, consequences later.

Russia has been busy pounding Ukraine’s energy grid into darkness. Trump still hasn’t reimposed sanctions, claiming he wants to “see how it goes.” It’s the same phrase he uses when asked about hurricanes, indictments, or democracy.

The real battle isn’t overseas, it’s right here, on the streets that refuse to bow.

Tomorrow, millions are expected to march in the “No Kings” protests, a mass outpouring against Trump’s immigration raids, election manipulation, and the slow militarization of everyday life. Organizers say it’s about protecting democracy; the White House calls it “a hate America rally.” Press secretary Abigail Jackson’s entire statement on the protests was two words: “Who cares?” Which is also the administration’s energy policy, health policy, and general governing philosophy.

Speaker Mike Johnson, that slippery little pedophile-enabling sycophant who confuses obedience with patriotism, and has ceded all Congressional authority to the executive branch, had the gall to call the “No Kings” rallies anti-American.
How dare he.

How dare a man who bows to authoritarianism, who treats democracy as a nuisance and cruelty as a virtue, lecture anyone on love of country. Some of us still cry when we write about what’s been lost, about Indigenous Peoples Day, about the land and lives this nation has already taken, because we still care enough to mourn. That’s patriotism.

Johnson’s version of America doesn’t love anything; it just demands applause. And so the Guard will roll out this weekend, not to protect the people, but to perform the illusion of control. Rather than security, it’s choreography in the regime’s reality show programming. Tanks as props, soldiers as stagehands, and an administration testing whether it can make freedom itself look dangerous.

Into this cauldron comes Trump’s newest domestic crusade, the Antifa Terrorism Case. Two Texans were charged this week under his new “antifa equals terrorism” doctrine. Prosecutors now describe the movement as a “militant enterprise” rather than an ideology, which is bureaucratic code for we’ll arrest you for what you believe. It’s the first official terrorism case under Trump’s domestic crackdown, and it just happens to drop on the eve of a nationwide protest movement. Funny how justice always arrives right on cue.

But this isn’t just about a few overzealous prosecutors in Texas. It’s part of a much bigger campaign to throttle dissent at its source. The Guardian reports that Trump has ordered federal prosecutors, intelligence agencies, the IRS, and the Treasury Department to investigate George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the network that funds hundreds of nonprofits working on democracy, voting rights, racial justice, climate action, and Palestinian human rights. His memo calls Soros “the top of everything,” which is both the language of a conspiracy theory and, coincidentally, the plot of every dictatorship’s second act.

From the ACLU to Indivisible, from Jewish Voice for Peace to the Sunrise Movement, Soros-backed organizations are being smeared as “terrorist-supporting entities.” Ted Cruz is doing his part with the “Stop Funders Act,” which would let the Justice Department revoke nonprofit status from any group officials claim is “supporting violent riots.” The definition of “violent,” naturally, will depend on whether you’re chanting Build the Wall or Save the Planet.

The people being targeted aren’t cowering. “We will not be intimidated,” the Open Society Foundations said in a statement that reads like the opening lines of a resistance anthem. Indivisible’s Ezra Levin was even blunter: “You’re safer the more out there you are. If they can quietly come after you, they absolutely will.”

Aru Shiney-Ajay of the Sunrise Movement called the campaign “textbook authoritarianism.” She’s right, Trump has simply skipped ahead to the part where philanthropy becomes sedition and peaceful protest becomes pre-crime.

And yet, from across the nonprofit world, the message is defiant. Climate groups, voting-rights advocates, immigrant-rights lawyers, they’re all locking arms, refusing to back down, and reminding the world that even the most sophisticated autocrat can’t subpoena an idea. “Because Soros fights back,” one activist told The Guardian, “everybody else stiffens their spine.”

Tomorrow, those spines will be on the streets.

The president who once promised to end “endless wars” now fights them on every front, against immigrants, against dissent, against meaning itself. He’s managed to turn the Justice Department into a political weapon, the Pentagon into his personal toy chest, and the word “terrorism” into a partisan branding tool. And now, with millions preparing to march under the banner No Kings, he’s about to discover the one thing he can’t bomb, indict, or buy off: the collective refusal to kneel.

I’m thrilled that people will turn out tomorrow, millions showing up matters, but I refuse to kid myself that polite weekend rallies alone will move a president who answers dissent with a shrug of “who cares.” Trump is already packing for Palm Beach; his attention is elsewhere, and if the press buries the best pictures and the best stories, nothing much will change. That’s why polite protest must be the opening act, not the finale. If this movement is serious about protecting democracy, the next phase has to be strategic disruption: escalation that is visible, legally accountable, media-savvy, and relentless enough to force a response. Show up, document everything. Tie marches to targeted pressure on power, from advertisers and elected officials to corporate sponsors and bank accounts, so that the cost of ignoring us becomes greater than the cost of listening. If the administration wants to treat dissent like terrorism, then let our answer be disciplined, civic, and unavoidable: a democracy that won’t be placated into silence.