Saturday, September 27, 2025

Trump’s UN Address Was a Tragedy of Shakespearian Proportion

Trump’s UN Address Was a Tragedy of Shakespearian Proportion  
President Donald Trump speaks during the 80th session of the U.N. General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Sept. 23, 2025. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
 
"To describe the speech as insane, while accurate, would distract from just how extraordinarily packed with lies it was. How profoundly ignorant it was. How much damage it did to the United States’ standing in the world." 
 

Instead of a traditional public address from a world leader, U.S. President Donald Trump tilted back his badly-dyed hair-sprayed coif and howled at the moon for the better part of an hour during his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday morning.

Well, not the better part. Definitely not the better part.

To describe the speech as insane, while accurate, would distract from just how extraordinarily packed with lies it was. How profoundly ignorant it was. How much damage it did to the United States’ standing in the world—it clearly marked a low point in America’s relationship with the United Nations and the international order we helped create in the wake of World War II.

From a purely U.S. political perspective, emphasizing how haggard and low-energy our rapidly declining president was is key. He made a point to note that an apparent mechanical issue with a UN escalator was an insurmountable problem, for example—most of the rest of us who are in fairly reasonable shape might have noted a stalled escalator is actually just a stairway that we could have walked right up.


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Trump and first lady Melania Trump ride an escalator as they arrive to attend the 80th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

But it would nonetheless, be a mistake, to ignore just how crazed the speech was. It was apparent from Trump’s opening moments when he railed about the UN’s broken teleprompter to the point later when he brought it up again in his broader condemnation of the UN as also broken, highlighting what he saw as its uselessness in not coming to his assistance in solving the famous seven global conflicts that we all know he did not solve. It was apparent in the fact that he argued that he deserves the Nobel Peace prize while noting he also takes great pride in discussing the attack he authorized on Iran, and those he has ordered against boats he claims without evidence were trafficking in drugs on the high seas.

The speech contained the most extensive condemnation of green energy and what Trump considers the climate change hoax that we have ever heard from a public official since possibly the invention of the steam engine. Science be damned. Oligarchs love fossil fuels or what Trump noted that he demands White House staffers refer to as “beautiful, clean coal.” Windmills, windmills on the other hand, are the pinwheels of Satan. (Someday we will get to the bottom of Trump’s anemomenophobia. Clearly, he had a bad experience with something that blew him the wrong way as a child. Or more recently.)

He defended his irrational, lose-lose global trading system destroying tariffs which in and of itself will soon be listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as an extreme symptom of economic psychosis. He downplayed civilian casualties in Ukraine and explained this war wouldn’t have happened if there had been good leadership in the country—in front of President Volodymyr Zelensky, no less.

He continued to argue that he could have solved the conflict were it not that Vladimir Putin had, inexplicably, let him down—so now it’s the Europeans who should take the lead in stopping the Russians, or else the US would have to take strong action…sometime…in the near future…or maybe never…who knows.

(It should be noted that, underscoring the degree to which Trump was making up foreign policy on the fly, later on Tuesday he posted on social media a statement seeming to reverse his prior positions: “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” it read. He also said NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft approaching their airspace. All of which sounds good. And if that is his new position, well done.)

One of his most detailed perorations was devoted to the perils of immigration. Trump told his audience that immigration was destroying their countries. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now,” he asserted. He exclaimed, in an epic soundbite that will be replayed around the world tonight in its embodiment of the entire speech, Trump’s narcissism, delusions of competence and contempt for his audience, that “I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”

Name an area and Trump lied about it. Name a global issue and he laid out a US position that was at odds with reason and most of the world. (With the exception to his welcome if totally out-of-character call for an end to the development of biological weapons. He also appeared to call for ending work on new nuclear weapons but that riff is almost certain to be walked back soon given Trump’s regular calls for modernizing our nuclear arsenal.) He personally attacked the mayor of London, asserting erroneously that he wanted to impose sharia law in the English capital. He attacked the green movement in Europe even as one of its leaders was presiding over the meeting. He attacked Joe Biden.

Did I mention the aside about how once upon a time when Trump was, in his own words, “a very successful real estate developer in New York,” he offered to remodel the UN? He did not get the gig and, as a result, the UN now has terrazzo floors instead of the marble ones he would have installed. Yuge scandal!

He said, “I am a man more sinned against than sinning” likening the UN to a “great stage of fools.” He warned that people should fear his wrath saying, “And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!”

Oh, wait. That was King Lear. But face it, listening to Trump today, the one clear message was that Shakespeare got it exactly right when it comes to the lunacy of aging rulers. Of course, “King Lear” was fiction. But sadly, today’s performance by Trump out on the heath of the international community was not.

Instead, it was a low point for American diplomacy, a moment at which the world realized the nation that had been a cornerstone of its stability for eighty years has slipped its moorings. You could see the shock of those in the great plenary hall as they took it in. And we all had to worry when we saw them from time to time nervously applaud Trump remarks. Would any among them be strong enough to offset the reality of an America gone rogue, led by a man like Trump?

As Shakespeare also wrote in Lear, “Tis the times plague, when madmen lead the blind.”

A cartoon by Clay Jones.
“Hate on an escalator” by Clay Jones/Daily Kos 

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

SECESSION, ANYONE? How blue states are joining together to save themselves from America’s slide into idiocracy

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom
 
Colorado, Illinois only blue states not linking up with the others.  Where are you, Jared and J.B.? 

With the federal government not just abdicating its public health responsibilities but actively working to harm Americans, blue states are stepping in to safeguard their own.

California, Oregon, and Washington have banded together to preserve access to life-saving vaccines.

“California Governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson announced they will launch a new West Coast Health Alliance to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics,” the states announced in a joint press release. “The alliance represents a unified regional response to the Trump Administration’s destruction of the U.S. CDC’s credibility and scientific integrity.”

And over on the other coast, blue states are doing the same thing. All of New England—excluding New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—met in Rhode Island to discuss coordinating vaccine recommendations.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, center, is joined by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., left and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., right, as she speaks during a Massachusetts Congressional Delegation press conference regarding the impacts of the Trump administration's actions on communities across Massachusetts, Tuesday, March 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is joined by Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren during a press conference about the impacts of the Trump administration.

The only two solid blue states missing, for the moment, are Colorado and Illinois.

I’ve always thought it made sense for a blue state compact to arise as a counterweight to the barriers erected in Washington, where even the unelected and unaccountable Supreme Court stands ready to stymie any hint of progress.

By itself, California is the world’s fourth largest economy, trailing only the United States, China, and Germany. So why couldn’t it—along with the rest of a blue state compact—have its own universal health care system, coordinated climate action, clean energy grids, stronger gun safety standards, joint infrastructure projects, worker protections, science-based education standards, and guaranteed abortion access?

The reason much of this could not be easily implemented, of course, is that the money needed is paid to the federal government. And red America does not survive without that revenue from blue states subsidizing their low-tax, low-effort, ignorance-embracing lifestyle. 

Who do you think will pick up the tab for Florida’s inevitable health care crisis as it ditches all vaccine mandates in schools? For all their braying about “heartland values,” they sure aren’t giving up that sweet, sweet blue-state cash.

But the work around vaccines and public health advocacy is a great first step. And if this sounds like groundwork toward a potential future secession, that’s not the worst thing. There is too much ingrained ignorance around the role of blue states in keeping this country running. 

There’s a fiction that cities and immigrants are leeches on federal coffers, when in fact they’re the very economic engines that power this country’s greatness.

Liberals never had a problem subsidizing rural America and less productive states, but that free ride needs to come to an end. In the words of Vice President JD Vance, “Have you said ‘thank you’ once?”

Quite the opposite. 

Conservatives demonize blue states and cities, and it’s time to end that. That’s why it’s been so refreshing seeing Newsom strongly defend blue America from that skewed conventional wisdom. 

“Nine out of the ten dependent states—welfare states—are Trump states. The donor states disproportionately are the blue states,” Newsom said on Shawn Ryan’s manosphere podcast. “Seventy-one percent of the country’s GDP comes from blue counties—these same cracked-up counties with all these crazy liberals.”

This has to be repeated over and over again until it finally seeps into the mind of the body politic. A blue state compact—coordinating science- and reality-based policy around critical public health and other issues—would be a start to countering the nation’s slide into idiocracy.

If you can't lick 'em, leave 'em.

Monday, September 22, 2025

'You are envy, you are hatred': Kirk memorial turns into unhinged rally

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PRAISE THE LARD, KING DONALD: "It was hard to tell whether this was a memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk or a MAGA rally."
 
"Speakers ignore Kirk’s long record of hateful, bigoted comments."

President Donald Trump used his speech at the memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sunday at 63,400-seat State Farm Stadium in Arizona, to continue obscuring Kirk’s long record of hateful and bigoted comments and views. Other speakers were also a part of the process of using what was billed as a memorial service instead as a political rally for the right.

“He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them,” Trump said. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie; I hate my opponent.”

Hate was central to Kirk’s career as a political organizer for the right and as a political pundit. From his platform, Kirk preached bigotry against multiple groups of Americans. He struck out against transgender people, in January referring to the “trans mafia” and the “purple haired jihadis” who he praised as “being run out in decent society.” Years before that he said a trans student in Wyoming should be bullied and imprisoned.

Kirk also called for former President Joe Biden to be executed and argued that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is Black, did not “have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously” and “had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, also brushed past her husband’s incendiary rhetoric in her speech, instead alleging that “the greatest cause in Charlie’s life was trying to revive the American family.”

By contrast, figures like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have condemned Kirk’s killing while also speaking out against efforts to whitewash who he was.

On Friday, while speaking in opposition to a congressional resolution honoring Kirk, Ocasio-Cortez noted, “We can deeply disagree and come together as a country to denounce the horror of this killing, and it is not a license for the abuse of power and whitewashing of American history.”

The measure passed the House with the support of 95 Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The right and the Republican Party have chosen to weaponize Kirk’s death and to use it as an excuse to go after the left in America. The killing is being used as a flimsy cover for attacks on free speech and the First Amendment, most notably the decision to use the FCC to pressure Disney/ABC to sideline host Jimmy Kimmel.

At the memorial, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has a history of supporting white supremacy, continued the crusade.

Miller falsely claimed that the political left supported Kirk’s killing, adding, “You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred, you are nothing.”

The rally was billed as a memorial to a slain political figure, but ultimately it was a full-blown political rally, another moment in which the right decided to lie about who Kirk was while using the moment to push their censorious political agenda.

Donnie brags about his own hatred at memorial service...right after Kirk's wife forgives her husband's assassin. 

Friday, September 19, 2025

Boycott Disney. Reinstate Jimmy Kimmel.

Indivisible Team info@indivisible.org


 Cowardly companies putting self interest above stopping fascism must be confronted

The Trump regime’s campaign of authoritarian repression took a major step forward this week with the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.

Like a third-rate mob boss, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair issued a public threat to “take action” against stations airing Jimmy Kimmel for a joke that offended the regime. His actual words: “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

Within hours, ABC/Disney execs (specifically, CEO Bob Iger) chose what they thought was the easy way. They silenced Kimmel because they believe caving to authoritarian censorship is best for their bottom line. It’s on us to prove them wrong and show there’s a price to sacrificing our First Amendment rights at the altar of corporate profit.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the greed, corruption, and cowardice at play here -- and then let’s get to work protecting our First Amendment rights. That means boycotts, protests, and demands of our representatives. More on that below.


The state of play

Trump and his cronies are rapidly working to consolidate power and use the full might of the federal government to squash peaceful dissent -- bending media companies, business leaders, universities, and so many other institutions to Trump’s will.

Silencing Kimmel is just one example of how our institutions are putting their own shortsighted self-interest first and choosing to give in to fascism instead of fighting back. Here’s a brief review of how we got here:

  • December 2024: ABC/Disney caves to a frivolous defamation lawsuit by Trump, paying $15 million to his presidential library rather than going to court to defend the freedom of the press.
  • July 17: CBS announces that it will cancel the late-night show of Trump critic Stephen Colbert. The move comes as CBS’ parent company, Paramount, awaits FCC approval of an $8 billion merger.
  • July 18: Trump takes to Truth Social to post that “Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
  • July 24: The FCC approves Paramount’s merger just one week after Colbert’s cancellation.
  • September 10: Charlie Kirk is murdered. Trump administration officials and other Republican leaders begin calling for a massive crackdown on the left.
  • September 15: In his show’s opening monologue, Kimmel notes that Trump and his allies are “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
  • September 17 (morning): In an interview on a far-right podcast, FCC Chair Brendan Carr openly threatens to revoke the broadcast license of any stations airing Kimmel’s show.
  • September 17 (afternoon): Within hours of Carr’s threat, Nexstar Media Group -- a TV conglomerate that (like Paramount) wants FCC approval of a merger -- says its local ABC affiliates will not air Kimmel's show. Another TV conglomerate with FCC business pending, Sinclair Media Group, rapidly follows suit.
  • September 17 (evening): ABC/Disney announce that they are pulling Kimmel's show off the air entirely.

Appeasing a tyrant only leads to more tyranny. If ABC/Disney refuses to reverse their decision, the regime will only become more emboldened to target comedy, opinion, and even news they don’t like. None of us will be free to dissent. None of us will be able to speak our minds.


How we’ll fight back

We need to pressure ABC/Disney to reinstate Kimmel’s program, cease their political collusion with Trump and his FCC lapdogs, and commit to defending free speech.

That means fighting back with our voices and our wallets -- because no wannabe king can match the power we wield when millions of us take action together. Here are some things you can do right now:

❌ Cancel your Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ subscriptions until Jimmy Kimmel Live! is reinstated. Then, use the customizable sample posts in our social toolkit (or create your own!) to let Disney and your network know with the hashtag #BoycottDisneyABC.
💬 Use this contact form to send a message to ABC/Disney that we won’t stand for cowardice and corruption. If you’re canceling Disney services, postponing a vacation to a Disney theme park, or taking some other action in response to their corporate cravenness, let them know.
🔥 Email your representative to demand an investigation into government censorship. Carr’s threats may violate the First Amendment and other federal law, but an attempt to subpoena Carr is being blocked. Let’s turn the heat up to demand that Carr, ABC/Disney execs, and their partners be hauled before Congress to testify under oath.
📣 Protest in person. We’ve already heard of dozens of locally led events popping up outside ABC/Disney offices and studios across the country. Get out to one if you can, and make a plan to join us on No Kings Day, as well.

We’re working with partners nationwide to plan additional actions that push ABC/Disney towards putting free speech over the whims of a wannabe king. We’ll share those as they develop, but for now, let’s use our voices, our dollars, and our people-power to show Disney that they’re standing on the wrong side of history.

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

P.S. Boycotts like this one are most effective when we move swiftly and uniformly to take our business elsewhere. Please take a moment to cancel that subscription right now, and then forward this email to other folks, especially Disney+/Hulu subscribers, who may join our efforts.




Tuesday, September 16, 2025

MAGA’s Canonization of Kirk Is Truly Monstrous

Why MAGA’s Canonization of Charlie Kirk Is Truly Monstrous  
"If Kirk was a victim of a pernicious culture of violence in America, it must also be acknowledged that he was an author of that culture." (image: Daily Beast/Reuters)
 
"He mercilessly attacked those with whom he did not agree. He was an enemy of truth and of equity." 
 
David Rothkopf / The Daily Beast  
 

It is one thing to condemn, as we all should, the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk or, for those who cared about him, to mourn his death.

It is quite another to turn Kirk into a MAGA saint, or to use his death as a Reichstag fire-like justification for increasing Trump’s authoritarian chokehold on America.

I am sure that Kirk and his family are grateful for the outpourings of support from the president and vice president of the United States, the cabinet, members of Congress, the media, and the public.

But at this point, it appears that we as a country have lost our minds.

The president of the United States has ordered all flags in the United States to skip out on 9/11 observations—among the most solemn on the federal calendar—to be with Kirk’s family.

He then called Kirk “a martyr.”

As if Charlie Kirk were some kind of American hero.

But Kirk was no hero. The record is clear. If Kirk was a victim of a pernicious culture of violence in America, it must also be acknowledged that he was an author of that culture.

His primary accomplishment in life was to acceptable cost for that culture.

However, what is happening is far worse than simply devoting our national resources or devaluing our national reputation by elevating an unworthy individual.

In tributes from across the political spectrum, Kirk is being praised as a champion of “free speech.” He was not. He mercilessly attacked those with whom he did not agree. He was an enemy of truth and of equity. Kirk perverted the idea of our First Amendment rights to suggest they required universities to embrace lies, as though there were some obligation to present unfounded idiocy and malice simply because some special interest or political group supported them.

Much of his political identity was tied up in the dangerous promotion of white Christian nativism and its alliance with the most corrupt president in American history—a felon, a sex offender, a man who incited an insurrection against the United States government.

This president has already revoke visas or deny them to people who might have commented on Kirk or his death in ways they did not approve of.

What a fitting tribute to a fake First Amendment warrior.

The right in America has also sought to use similar criteria—posting or sharing views of Kirk they felt were critical of him, even when those views were entirely fact-based—to cancel media commentators and even social media posters.

How do we reconcile that with the assertions that Kirk “did politics right” or promoted free speech?

Easy.

These tributes are bulls--t. Furthermore, many of those on the far right who are elevating Kirk to a lofty pedestal that he does not deserve are doing so to help them justify precisely what they claim he stood for.

Trump, and Vance, and Hegseth, and Rubio, and Patel, and Loomer may be truly shocked and appalled by Kirk’s murder—as we all should be—but they also instantly saw it as an opportunity to accelerate their campaign to attack our democratic institutions and to demonize all those who do not agree with them.

Kirk’s supporters are the ones promoting memes depicting him as leading a battle against American cities. The war against their opponents, using the resources of the federal government to suppress dissent, gut democracy and solidify their rule on this country was their priority all along.

Now, the death of Charlie Kirk, and the elevation of Charlie Kirk, and the lies about who Charlie Kirk was are all being used as weapons in that war, as part of a new offensive against those who believe in the values and ideals on which this country was founded.

This is not merely about an outpouring of emotion and over-the-top responses to the grief of a horrible moment.

Nor are they the usual spin of partisans. They are something far more dangerous—the monstrous opportunism of those who have been planning for a moment like this all along, a moment that rather than making America great again, is seized in the hopes of making the America we once knew, an America for all of us, the America that guys like Charlie Kirk have long sought to undermine, cease to exist. Once and for all.


Saturday, September 13, 2025

Charlie Kirk in His Own Words: ‘Prowling Blacks’ and ‘The Great Replacement Strategy’

 
The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events
 
GAZETTE BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is in no way intended to justify the heinous murder of Charlie Kirk.  Violence is never, ever the answer.  But we do not even know at this time that his assassination was politically motivated.  The following is, however, intended to demonstrate in his own words that Kirk is not worthy of deification. 
 
Chris Stein / Guardian UK 

ALSO SEE: If You're Wondering What Charlie Kirk Believed In, Here Are 14 Real Quotes


Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. 

Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

On race

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

On debate

We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.

– Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

Prove me wrong.

– Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.

On gender, feminism and reproductive rights

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

On gun violence

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

On immigration

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

On Islam

America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.

– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025

On religion

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

Dani Anguiano contributed reporting.

However you vote, let that be your political statement.  But don't ever be afraid to exercise your right to express your views openly and peacefully.  Fear is no more the answer than violence.

Thursday, September 11, 2025

‘No Kings’ Unveils a Big New Trump Protest, and the Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

‘No Kings’ Unveils a Big New Trump Protest, and the Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

“No Kings” rallies spanned the country in communities big and small earlier this year. (photo: Salwan Georges/WP)

Only known solution to creeping authoritarianism is broad-based, peaceful, geographically dispersed mass engagement by every day Americans.

Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone  


America’s pro-democracy movement is gearing up for what may be its biggest mass-demonstration yet against the increasingly militaristic Trump administration — which has sent armed troops to occupy the nation’s capital and is threatening to do the same in large cities from Chicago to New Orleans.

Popular resistance in Trump’s second term has snowballed, in an organic fashion, from a large President’s Day protest in February, through mass demonstrations in April, to the first “No Kings” protest on Trump’s birthday in June — which drew millions to counter the president’s tin-pot military birthday parade.

After a series of smaller summer protests, the movement will be back in the streets and squares and center cities of America, en masse, in October for No Kings 2 — a sequel organizers are expecting to outshine the original, amid revulsion to Trump’s brutal campaign of mass deportation led by masked agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and an increasingly lawless president who claims “a lot” of Americans would “like a dictator.”

No Kings 2 is being organized by a big tent of grassroots and advocacy organizations. One of the most prominent players is Invisible, the activist group that sprang to life in the early days of the first Trump administration, and which now counts 2,500 distributed, local chapters nationwide.

Rolling Stone spoke to Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin last week, in advance of No Kings 2 unveiling on Monday. The protest is planned for October 18 — in the aftermath of an unpredictable showdown over government funding that could lead to a partial government shutdown by the end of the month.

Levin says the stakes of the protests have never been more urgent, and that organizers are expecting record numbers of protesters to raise their voices for democracy and against the threats of dictatorship.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the organizing principle of No Kings 2?

The only known solution to creeping authoritarianism is broad-based, peaceful, geographically dispersed mass engagement by everyday Americans. That’s it. That’s what works. We’ve been building the movement to bring in more people, to build a sense that in America, we don’t do kings.

This movement has turned out giant protests, as well as some smaller outcroppings, most recently on Labor Day. What’s your hope for No Kings 2?

I expect No Kings 2 to be the largest protest of the year. We had 5 to 6 million people across 2,169 communities turn out for No Kings 1. It was wildly successful. People who might have been on the sidelines for No Kings 1 probably had some FOMO. And the good news is: We’re doing it again. We’re going to pull out even more people.

Why are mass protests important to blocking Trump’s strongman ambitions?

Experts in authoritarianism tell us, based on research, that you need 3.5 percent of the population engaged, in a sustained way, to successfully push back against an authoritarian regime. In the American context, that’s about 11 or 12 million people. For No Kings 1, we got about halfway there. And we have funneled a lot of those people into our trainings around strategic non-cooperation. But we need to come together again.

Trump has now passed his bill that provides $171 billion for a secret police force and a support structure for that force. And he’s occupying American cities. First it was L.A., then it was D.C. Now we see saber-rattling at Chicago, and he’s threatening other cities. It’s what you would expect to have from an authoritarian. 

The question is: Do we stand up and fight back like [Illinois Governor] J.B. Pritzker is doing, or do we welcome the occupiers like [mayor] Muriel Bowser is doing in D.C.?

I hope to see these protests explode on the national scene — and demonstrate that the public is not with this regime, that the public wants free-and-fair elections, that the public wants the overreach of the federal government out of their cities, and that they don’t support terrorizing forces in their communities. It’s not rocket science.

Looking back to No Kings 1, the national situation has become more dire — we’ve gone from a military parade in June to troops in the streets today. We’ve reached the armed occupation phase of Trump’s authoritarian project. Top governors are warning we may find ourselves in a situation where Trump is invoking emergency powers to disrupt state and federal elections.

The first No Kings was scheduled because Trump was staging this military birthday parade, a ridiculous celebration that smacked of authoritarianism. It did not feel like an American event. It felt like something you would see in a dictatorship. We wanted a demonstration to show him that he could have his pathetic parade — but that we would be everywhere else. And we succeeded.

No Kings 2 is responding to the escalation from the regime. You don’t throw a military parade just because you want a military parade. You don’t occupy cities just because it’s fun. This is all ratcheting up. Ultimately, the goal is to concentrate power in Trump’s hands — maybe not to end elections entirely, but to make elections functionally meaningless.

It’s not that military occupations, or secret police on their own are the end of American democracy. But if you wanted to prevent the public from expressing its views and exercising its constitutional rights through elections, this is how you would set up the fight for next year. By sending the military to blue states and places that are going to have competitive elections, you are setting up the dominoes to fall come election day.

This is why I have such a negative response to politicians who say, “Yeah, this is really bad. That’s why we’ve got to go vote next year.” My response is, “That is 15 months away. If you wait that long to get politically engaged it might be too late. You’ve got to stand up and fight right now!”

This is why it’s important for No Kings 2 to show up. Because if you don’t do that, you might not be able to push back come next November.

The Pritzker example is illuminating. Last week he called for his constituents to “be loud” and he’s even rattled his saber back at Trump and red state governors who might think of invading Illinois. We have seen times where Trump gets punched in the nose, he thinks about a different plan. Suddenly he’s musing about sending National Guard to New Orleans instead of Chicago.

Exactly. We say courage is contagious. Trump is a bully, and bullies often change direction if you stand up to them. And look: The attacks coming from this regime don’t come from a place of strength. Trump does not have popular support for occupying American cities. He doesn’t have popular support for secret police.

Even the issues where he traditionally has the most popular support — immigration and crime and the economy — he’s underwater on all of those issues now. There were very quote, unquote, “smart” Democratic politicians, at the beginning of this year, that said, Well, we shouldn’t talk about immigration; we shouldn’t talk about ICE; we shouldn’t talk about Abrego Garcia or the El Salvadorian gulag. We should just focus on Medicaid. We should just focus on inflation every day. 

That is misguided. It’s politics taken from a different era. Trump might maintain some of the same policies, but he isn’t running politics the same way Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich or George W Bush did. It’s an entirely different ecosystem. And Pritzker’s recommendation — get loud — there’s nothing more American than that. It’s baked into our democracy that the population gets loud in response to authoritarian overreach.

Credit to Pritzker. He’s been on the right track since the election. He didn’t wait to join the fight-back faction of the Democratic Party. It’s been inspiring. I would give credit to somebody like [California governor] Gavin Newsom, who has woken up, and is now a leader in the fight, with redistricting. We should be welcoming in politicians who weren’t with us at the beginning, but now are fighting the good fight.

But there’s another category of politician. They woke up to the fact that their constituency wants to see a fight — so they engage in the aesthetics of opposition, but they don’t actually follow through with real action. We saw Adam Schiff the other day posting that Donald Trump is taking billions in crypto money that appear to be bribes. But he is complaining about this a couple months after he voted for a crypto bill that allowed Donald Trump to take in bribes. Or Cory Booker gives a brilliant, inspiring speech on the Senate floor — and then turns around and votes for Trump nominees.

No Kings has never been an arm of the Democratic Party. We expect our leaders to lead. We expect Democrats to be part of the fight-back faction. And I hope one of the outcomes of No Kings is that we send a clear message that there is political opportunity to show up and fight back.

The federal government can’t be everywhere. Trump has to go after specific hot spots and then rely on the media to amplify that into a national story. I saw this in Portland in 2020. We’ve seen it now in L.A. and D.C. and maybe Chicago is next. Can you just talk about the value of Inpisible’s distributed model of organizing — of people showing not just in big cities, but out in the sticks — as a counter to that?

The regime wants you to believe that you are alone, powerless. They do that by puffing out their chest, picking these indivdual, localized fights, and then using their vast media and propaganda operation to nationalize it, and make you feel like their power is overwhelming.

But what they were doing in L.A., what they’ve done in D.C. is relatively small and minuscule in comparison to the opposition that you can build up in those places.

This hits at the soul of how Invisible started. Under representative democracy, we parcel out power geographically. Cities and counties and congressional districts and states have little parcels of power. You as an individual have very little power on your own. 

But you, combined with a lot of folks in your community, can actually move mountains if you do your part. And if folks in rural communities do their part. And if folks in the suburbs do their part. If we all organize the mass of pro-democracy Americans, it’s very difficult for the regime to maintain control.

Fundamentally that means: If you are not physically joining together with other people in your community — in large rooms or on street corners — you’re not doing the real work. This is why we are a group-based movement. We are made up of 2,500 local, Indivisible groups.

The No Kings 2 events will not just be in the deep-blue areas of the country, but also rural and red areas. Tiny, little towns as well as big cities. It sends a strong message to the regime that this is something big — and not limited to traditional hot spots of activism.

I would highly recommend to folks looking to participate in No Kings: Don’t travel more than an hour. If you’re having to travel more than an hour to get to your local No Kings protest, start your own.

This summer you guys organized a series of activist trainings. Can you talk about how that process is working?

Our democracy is not just made up of Congress and the courts, it’s also made up of institutions that either can support — or decline to support — democratic norms. These are big institutions like the media or universities or law firms or businesses.

If those institutions push back against authoritarian overreach, the authoritarian regime has a hard time implementing its policies and concentrating power. The point is to have our movement push those pillars to stand strong.

We’re currently running a campaign to push Avelo Airlines to stop working with ICE. Businesses are not used to this kind of organized public pressure.

We’re also working with groups to build community-level pushback against ICE. You can do that by working with local businesses to make clear that ICE is not welcome, but that immigrants are welcome. The idea is to make people who aren’t watching politics every day aware there is a fight going on, that there is growing opposition, and that other people share their concerns about members of their community being disappeared.

Part of the challenge of leading a mass movement is just capturing and channeling its energy. Can you talk about how ideas are bubbling up from the grassroots?

We are encouraging Inpisible groups to experiment — try new advocacy, protest, and organizing tactics, and see what catches fire. A lot of the best ideas are going to come from local folks. In fact, “No Kings” itself is a great example of that. We didn’t dream up the No Kings slogan. We saw it on signs, in the streets, in the early part of the year. And we thought: “That is really smart. That is a great, simple message that everybody can get around. That should be the banner.”

This protest is more than a month away. Do you have thoughts about the political context you’ll be engaging in?

One reason No Kings Day 2 is in October is because we know that there’s going to be a big funding fight this month. Back in March, the Democrats completely caved to the Republicans on their funding bill. The Republicans were threatening to shut down the government, and Chuck Schumer led a sufficient number of Democrats to surrender on it, and there was no shutdown. That was a six-month funding bill, and that ends at the end of this month.

The last funding battle added definition to the struggle within the party, between Democrats that were treating this as a politics-as-usual moment and those looking to fight back. The backlash after Democrats caved was massive. It significantly drove down the approval ratings of Democrats who led that surrender.

Democrats are in the minority, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities where they have real leverage. So it’s often hard to identify who is really fighting — and who is just giving speeches. This new funding fight is a rare, big opportunity for them to actually use the power that they’ve got — because Democratic votes are going to be necessary to keep the government running.

I don’t know how the Democrats are going to fight. They currently are talking a big game, but they did that last time as well. It’s conceivable that the Republicans will shut down the government and No Kings 2 will happen in the middle of that.

That probably means that the Democrats are unified in opposition, and what they will see are millions of people coming out in historic protests. And a big flavor of that protest is going to be: “Hell yeah. Keep fighting. We’re with you.”

It’s also conceivable that Democrats will cave and No Kings 2 will happen in the wake of that surrender — and there will be a lot of negative political ramifications for those Democrats who did. Either way, the people coming out to No Kings 2 will not be there to cheer-lead Democrats because they’re not Donald Trump, or because they say mean things about Donald Trump. They will be showing up because they want to find leaders who are going to fight back.

Time for all of us to turn out.  All of us, including you!
 

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