{"id":362265,"date":"2026-03-28T06:01:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T06:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/362265\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T06:01:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T06:01:26","slug":"no-kings-protests-expected-to-break-records-amid-iran-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/362265\/","title":{"rendered":"No Kings Protests Expected to Break Records Amid Iran Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe first two record-breaking iterations of the international No Kings<\/a> protests were both pegged to major news events. The first, held last July on the same day<\/a> as Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s underwhelming birthday military parade on the National Mall, challenged the president\u2019s affinity for corruption and governance by fiat. The second, which took place in October, was a national response to the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities amid an increasingly violent anti-immigration crackdown. It broke records as the largest single day protest in American history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Saturday, Americans will once again take to the streets in opposition to the autocratic policies of Trump\u2019s government, and there\u2019s once again plenty of reason to do so. The president has trapped the United States in a growing military quagmire with Iran<\/a>, creating both a foreign policy disaster and an economic crisis at home. The war comes after ICE<\/a> agents shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year, part of an intensifying immigration crackdown that includes documented abuses against migrants and minorities caught in their crosshairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the nation contends with the effects of the Iran war and Trump sheds the support of large swaths of the coalition that helped propel him back into the White House, organizers at No Kings are hoping to expand their coalition into the president\u2019s own backyard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do think the success of this movement is going to be dependent on reaching out to people who ideologically aren\u2019t fully aligned with each other,\u201d Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible \u2014 the founding non-profit of the No Kings coalition \u2014 tells Rolling Stone. \u201cI want Trump voters who voted for lower prices of bread and eggs and didn\u2019t want war and feel betrayed. I want them welcomed into our coalition. It\u2019s incumbent on us to welcome them with open arms and not be like, \u2018Hey, where were you or why did you do that?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe protest, which Levin expects will break their previous turnout record, is taking place as Trump\u2019s approval rating hits a record low<\/a>. Voting demographics that swung right in 2024 \u2014 including Latinos and young men \u2014 are pivoting away<\/a> from the MAGA movement. The people vote, they send lawmakers to D.C., and in Levin\u2019s view, they\u2019re an important part of ensuring action and accountability are bipartisan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t want just Democrats protecting free and fair elections. We want everybody protecting free and fair elections when Trump tries to pull some shit,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe want people who are on our side, who pay attention to politics every day, to pay attention to this as well. We\u2019re painfully aware that that\u2019s inadequate. It\u2019s not enough to just organize in the same old circles. You\u2019ve got to jump to the cultural realm, not just the political realm.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the realms the coalition is focused on is college students and young voters.\u00a0 Aida Mackic, national organizing director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tells Rolling Stone that the organization has tracked an increase in the participation of young people between the first and second No Kings protests. The ACLU, in partnership with Sunrise Movement, launched a campus outreach initiative, and the results seem promising.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is that these are student-led feeder marches that are being organized independently,\u201d Mackic says. \u201cThey\u2019re not just showing up to someone else\u2019s protest. They\u2019re building their own in their own campuses, in their own communities, in their own high schools.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis generation has grown up watching institutions fail. They watch the climate crisis accelerate and gun violence, all while being told to trust the process,\u201d she adds. \u201cThey\u2019re not naive about power. [Now] they\u2019re watching their classmates get detained. Professors are getting fired. Their campuses are becoming targets. These are their lives. So it\u2019s not a civics lesson for them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tFor young men, \u201cregardless of how they voted,\u201d a coalition of crises and broken promises is coming home to roost, Mackic says: \u201cStudent debt, economic anxiety, of living and watching their communities get torn apart. There aren\u2019t partisan issues. What we\u2019re seeing is that these are lived experiences. What No Kings offers is a concrete, non violent way to channel that frustration into something powerful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor many, the conflict in Iran is looming large over the events. In a way, the No Kings protests this weekend draw up the specter of the 2003 protests against the American invasion of Iraq, then the largest global protests in history. The similarities are there: an unpopular president, waging an unpopular war in the Middle East while expanding the power of the executive. Former President George W. Bush\u2019s presidency would oversee the large-scale expansion of domestic surveillance, the ballooning of federal law enforcement agencies, and the establishment of extrajudicial torture prisons. Most of the transformations to presidential power would never be reversed, becoming part of the foundation of Trump\u2019s own autocratic drive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the early 2000s there was a \u201cmoment when a generation looked up and said, \u2018This is not what we consented to, and this is not who we are,\u2019\u201d Mackic says. \u201cThis feels like that inheritance. Young people aren\u2019t just protesting a policy. They\u2019re protesting a vision of America that was never put to a vote.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump himself won\u2019t be on the ballot in November, but the first two years of uniparty Republican control of the government hangs in the balance. Republicans themselves see the electoral writing on the wall, and some of the president\u2019s once most devoted sycophants \u2014 including former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), and Lauren Boebert (R-Co.) \u2014 now regularly find themselves breaking with the president<\/a> on issues ranging from funding for the Iran war<\/a>, to his repeated attempts to bury the Epstein files<\/a>. A series of off-cycle elections in which Democrats have managed to flip safe Republican seats foretells a potentially brutal midterm election cycle for the GOP. No Kings organizers believe the time is ripe to court disaffected Trump supporters who believed his promises of no more foreign entanglements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStudies analyzing mass public protest movements have found large-scale, nonviolent protests have a huge impact<\/a> when they take place during election years. \u201cIt makes sense, if you think about it,\u201d Levin says. \u201cMost people, most of the time, aren\u2019t paying attention to politics and most things don\u2019t break through their bubble. But if you have a massive protest where a lot of people, including their neighbors, are showing up and are pissed off about the direction of the country, yeah, you bet your ass that feeds into electoral outcomes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tOrganizers are expecting over 3,500 individual registered events this weekend, and to break the attendance record they set in October. The flagship protest will take place in Minnesota, in recognition of the state\u2019s collective protest against ICE\u2019s violent crackdown in the city. Singers Bruce Springsteen, Maggie Rogers, and Joan Baez are scheduled to appear at the central rally in St. Paul, along with actress Jane Fonda, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe can\u2019t just wait until November to vote,\u201d Levin adds. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get out the vote, and we\u2019ve got to protect the vote, and having a No Kings protest is a great way to get your community engaged and then start training them up in the months to come.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first two record-breaking iterations of the international No Kings protests were both pegged to major news events.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[90416,54,42,4073,87,43,63602,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-362265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-2026-midterms","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-ice","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-no-kings","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}