On June 14th, 2025, Trump-hating Americans gathered across the nation and marched in demonstration against the current administration. Billed on the event website as a "nationwide day of defiance," organizers claim the movement to be an extension of the '3.5% principle,' which suggests that authoritarian regimes can be overthrown if just 3.5% of the populations they govern engage in nonviolent resistance. While this statistic is understandably tantalizing to Team anti-Trump and mobilized many of the No King's Day participants, it is not particularly accurate nor applicable to the current context. The data used to derive the figure examines governments that were overthrown entirely, not reformed or rebuked, and success rates in relevant uprisings have steadily declined since the 1990s, skewing the data. Additionally, 3.5% of the United States population is 12 million people, whose ongoing participation would be almost impossible to facilitate.
The protests occurred on June 14th, the same day that the United States Army celebrated its 250th anniversary with a military parade in Washington, D.C., also known as Flag Day. Supporters of No Kings claim that Donald Trump has politicized our armed forces and usurped a national holiday to serve as a self-indulgent party for his birthday, which happened to fall the same day.
A 39-year-old man was shot and killed during one of the No Kings demonstrations, which took place in Utah by so-called 'peacekeepers' associated with the protest. He was unarmed. While the remainder of these specific protests appear to have been nonviolent, the day came at the end of a long week of anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, which included massive property damage and aggression, including the use of homemade bombs. The optics are obscene, and it seems like a long time since a Democrat has done something positive for the United States outside of a sound-bite opportunity.
While the participants claim to rally against tyranny and a perceived monarchical movement unfolding in the United States, the method in which they opt to do so reads ignorant. When one chooses to speak out against so-called self-indulgent excess, orchestrating your own parade involving street closures and campaign speeches is parallel play. Instead, a day of service within the Hispanic community, expressing unity and compassion would have served as a foil to the event they claim to oppose.
It is worth noting that during Biden's administration, outraged members of the GOP had no such day. Rather, they spent four years working to ingratiate themselves with enough voters to the Trump team to flip the White House. How any party leader or consultant believes closing down cities and mocking the opposition with cartoon signs and childish language will turn votes is laughable. Further alienating patriotic Americans is no way to win elections, as was demonstrated in the 2024 general election.
How did you feel about the DNC leading no King's Day protests? Do such demonstrations serve to change voters' minds or only deepen the divides in communities?
Hilary Gunn is a Connecticut native with a degree in Criminal Justice from the George Washington University. She works for a nonprofit and has previously collaborated with the CT GOP as an activist, political campaign manager and field director, and social media organizer. She is currently serving in her fourth term of municipal office and has previously acted as a delegate on the Republican Town Committee.