The Blue Country Gazette is the successor to the Rim Country Gazette, reflecting our evolution to a nationwide political blog for readers who identify as "blue," liberals, progressives, and/or Democrats. Our mission is to provide distinctive coverage of issues during a time of extreme polarization in the U.S. We strive to provide side-stories and back-stories that provide additional insights and perspectives conventional coverage often doesn't include.
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."
David Rothkopf/The Daily Beast
25 September 25
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.
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.”
California Gov. Gavin NewsomColorado, Illinois only blue states not linking up with the others. Where are you, Jared and J.B.?
by kos
Daily Kos Staff
Monday, September 08, 2025
at 7:30:11a MDT
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 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.
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 wascentral 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 Januaryreferring 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 Bidento be executed andargued
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 havechosen 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 notablythe decision to use the FCC to pressure Disney/ABC to sideline host Jimmy Kimmel.
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.
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.
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.
"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 Beast15 September 25
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
“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.
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!
