‘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  

10 september 25 

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!

 

California, Oregon and Washington Ally on Vaccines in Rebuke to Trump’s CDC

  

Gavin Newsom speaks in San Francisco, California, on 22 August 2025. (photo: Getty)

 

“Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives."  

 

Lauren Gambino / Guardian UK 04 September 25

 

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines, amid growing turmoil at the nation’s top public health agency under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr.

In a joint press release, Governors Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Bob Ferguson of Washington said the CDC had become a “political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science”.

“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the Democratic governors said in a joint statement, adding: “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”

The move comes days after the White House forced out the newly confirmed director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, who had clashed with Kennedy, Trump’s secretary of the US health and human services department (HHS), over his efforts to reshape federal vaccine policies in ways that contradict established scientific research. 

Her firing, just weeks after her confirmation, prompted several senior officials to resign in protest and has led to rising calls from lawmakers, scientists and former agency employees for Kennedy to step down. Monarez was replaced by a Trump loyalist with no medical or scientific background.

He argued that the organization’s “dysfunction” was responsible for “irrational policy” during the Covid pandemic, leading to a disproportionately large number of deaths recorded in the US compared with the global average.

In a statement, an HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon, blamed Democrats’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic for undermining public trust in vaccine policy, and said federal immunization recommendations would continue to be “based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic”.

“Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the Covid era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies,” he said.

The newly formed West Coast Health Alliance will coordinate health guidance across the three states, including evidence-based immunization recommendations. Officials say the effort is intended to provide residents with access to consistent and credible information about vaccines in the absence of reliable federal leadership.

According to the announcement, the alliance will release a set of shared principles in the coming weeks. While the states will share immunization recommendations, they will also pursue independent strategies based on their “unique laws, geographies, histories, and peoples” and with respect to Tribal sovereignty.

The three states registered their concern over Kennedy’s leadership in June, when they jointly condemned his abrupt removal of all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – a group long considered central to vaccine safety oversight. 

In announcing the new alliance, the governors said they were acting to protect the health of the tens of millions of residents across California, Oregon and Washington, pledging that public health guidance would be shaped by “science-driven decision-making”. Without consistent, evidence-based leadership from the federal government, they warned, the nation’s health security was increasingly at risk.

Their action comes on the same day as more than 1,000 past and present HHS employees published a letter calling for Kennedy’s resignation. It comes two days after nine former CDC officials wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Kennedy’s leadership, and ousting of Monarez, months after he appointed her, was “unacceptable” and “unlike anything we have ever seen”.

It also marks a stark departure from some Republican-led states that have moved to loosen – or eliminate entirely – certain vaccine mandates. On Wednesday, the Florida state surgeon general announced that children will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis. And earlier this summer, a new law took effect in Idaho removing the requirement for children to be vaccinated to attend schools in the state.

Public health officials in California, Oregon and Washington warned of an erosion of trust in vaccines.

“Our communities deserve clear and transparent communication about vaccines – communication grounded in science, not ideology,” Sejal Hathi, the director of the Oregon health authority, said in a statement. “Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives. But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most.”

It it quacks, it's probably a quack.

Look on My Works, Ye Mighty: Labors of Destruction and Creation

   

American historian Timothy Snyder. (photo: Ukrainian World Congress)

"Trump and Vance brag about destroying what others have created."

Timothy Snyder / Substack 01 September 25 

ALSO SEE: Timothy Snyder: Thinking About (Substack)

 

Labors of Destruction and Creation

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

No thing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Labor Day. I thought of these lines, from Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”, as I contemplated the poster of Donald Trump that now decorate the Department of Labor in Washington, DC. I thought of labors of creation, and of destruction.

To a historian of the twentieth century, such banners recall similar representations of Department of Labor. His kind of politics only destroys institutions. He can take a day off for Labor Day. But he would never have created a holiday for those who labor.

Ozymandias was the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. And in fairness to Ramses II, we should recall that he won battles, built temples, and ruled for decades. He led a state that lasted for millennia, of such fame that Percy Shelley and his friends could write poems about it millennia after its end.

Shelley reminds us that even the mightiest of rulers and of states come to an end, and that this final, unavoidable reality is what makes vanity of every boast.

That wisdom is the beginning of the understanding of our predicament. Americans are facing a more extreme situation. We are living through a regime in which there is no creativity between the boasting and the vanity. It is not that Trump is building great things and boasting about them, and that only time will reveal the inherent tragedy of human achievement. He is bragging about destroying what others have created.

Trump and Vance seem to believe that the United States will go on forever, regardless of what they do. But no political order is eternal. It is one thing to build things and imagine that all must bow before them indefinitely – the mistake of the poetical Oyzmandias. But it is a less forgivable mistake to believe the destruction can go on forever.

My worry is about the integrity of the United States as such. It is not arrived at lightly, or expressed hastily.

For the last couple of decades I have been thinking and writing about the alternatives to democracy, the failures of democracy, about where modern politics can take us and where it might yet take us. On Freedom was about other, better futures, ones that can be possible if we understand liberty in the right way and build the right kind of institutions around it. It is a philosophy book but also a book about America, and so it assumes the continued existence of the United States.

In the present circumstances, the future of the United States cannot be taken for granted. The negative scenario in On Tyranny, and I think the negative scenario most often imagined, is that the entirety of the United States will undergo a regime change towards an authoritarian order, without the rule of law, without checks and balances, with permanent repression of dissidents, with informational control via technology, with programmed ignorance through decimated and humbled schools and universities, with an economy controlled such that social advancement is impossible and wealth remains with the regime-friendly oligarchs. That is the goal of those in power, and we are right to fear it, and right to work against it – more right, I think, than we realize.

We use the phrase “regime change” too often. That idea imagines that the land, the people, the institutions do not matter much, and that all that matters is what happens at the top. One kind of regime goes, another comes, and the country remains. 

But that is not what history teaches. Attempts to change the form of government at the center can lead to dissent in the center, stress on the periphery, and change calculations about the sense of the entire endeavor. This is always true, regardless of what kind of alteration in the center we are talking about, or what country we have in mind. The integrity of a political system rests on certain foundations, and an attempt to change everything from the center, especially a heedless, ignorant attempt, can undermine those foundations.

Trump takes his example from Orbán in Hungary and Putin in Russia. But Hungary is a small country with an economy about a third the size of that of Boston, Massachusetts. Russia is a large country, but its power base rests in two cities and in control of the hydrocarbon industry. 

Both of these countries are very poor compared to the United States, and neither of them has a meaningful tradition of federalism, neither of them has any decentralization of wealth and power. 

The Putin regime survives on endless war, the Orbán regime on EU transfers of money. The memes used and the tricks played in Budapest and Moscow have a certain utility in the United States, and they are all the more tempting for an American president who wants to be able to do what Hungarian and Russian leaders have done: redirect flows of wealth to himself and his immediate environment. But those regimes will not last forever. And the attempt to imitate them in the United States is not only authoritarian but destructive.

What holds the United States together? Let me hold back for a moment on the loftier ideas of the Constitution and the history for a moment, and stay focused on those flows of wealth. It is the money, as transferred by institutions, as justified by political convictions.

The blue states pay taxes to the federal government, which redirects them to the red states. Voters in red states take advantage of this redistribution, while claiming (in their majority, not the whole population, of course) both that they are against such a redistribution and that they are being cheated because they do not get enough. 

Governors of red states (not all, but several) push the logic of the federal system to the limit, treating themselves (not the Constitution or the law and certainly not the taxpayers in blue states) as the final arbiter of what can be done with taxes. This is an arrangement, when looked at from the outside with a cold eye, can hardly be seen as natural and sustainable. 

It only works because of certain assumptions about the nature of the federal government as a whole, assumptions that are now being challenged. It depends on blue state politicians and voters acting in the name of something beyond narrow self-interest.

It is one thing, as a blue state voter, to know that your taxes are being spent elsewhere in the country. But it is quite another to worry that they will simply disappear into a sinkhole of corruption, such as that which is now being created in the White House. 

It is one thing to believe that federal taxes are worthwhile because they are being spent to redress inequalities in health care or education. It is another to watch the federal government spread disease and ignorance. It is one thing to pay taxes every year, in the knowledge that eventually the power in the White House will change every four or eight. It is another to be confronted with a president who talks about third terms. 

It is one thing to believe that the Constitution will ultimately preserve the country. It is another to recognize that those in power scorn it.

Trump and Vance can destroy what others have built. They can push the Constitutional regime of the United States past the breaking point. But they lack an alternative to replace it. They want fascism, and they don’t mind death of others, but they do not want to take responsibility for the death. 

To get what they want, on the fascist model, they will have to, at some point, fight a major foreign war in which they manage to send off young people who oppose them to die, or they will have to use government forces to kill Americans. I don’t think that either of these will actually work; Vietnam and the Kent State shootings had the opposite effect.

I also don’t think, though I could be wrong, that Trump and Vance would try this; since they themselves believe in nothing, it will be hard for them to take that next step of direct killing to generate political meaning. Historical fascists believed that their nations should be subjected to a bloody competition for world superiority. Trump and Vance just think that Americans are idiots. That is not the same thing. It is also not clear that the armed forces would go along with such a major undertaking: think of the military parade.

The death that Trump and Vance prefer, and cause, and need is indirect and passive-aggressive: by destroying government functionality, they generate unnecessary suffering, which they then blame on migrants and African Americans. They have funded ICE and deployed the National Guard to deter those of us who see the logic. That is their sadopopulism, their safe space.

This can work for a while, but can it work forever? One of the reasons for concern about the future of the country is that Trump and Vance seem to believe that it can.

If you are a successful grifter, you do not really see beyond the boundaries of the grift. Why would Trump think that he needs to do anything besides grift on indefinitely? He has parlayed a set of entertainment skills into the presidency. 

Why would Vance think that he needs to go beyond grift? He rose to his easy life as angry-straight-rich-white-male-almost-in-chief thanks to a book which women of color helped him to write, and thanks to political donations from a gay billionaire. No wonder he thinks that we can be fooled endlessly.

But at the bottom of apparently bottomless cynicism always rests a certain naiveté. Grifts can only work by consuming resources that are created from outside the grift. The better the grift works, the fewer resources remain. 

The United States exists thanks to material exchanges grounded in institutional arrangements based in political faith. Trump and Vance create none of this; their grifts consume it all. But from inside the grift they cannot see this. And so they will push on, with ever greater boastfulness and vanity, until they get to the end.

Every country can come to an end. The 250 years of the American Republic, for which Trump takes credit on those banners, is an impressive figure, longer than most states, no doubt. But it is a far cry from forever, and believing in forever, acting is if forever belongs to you, is a certain way to summon doom. Trump and Vance will not learn from Ozymandias or from history.

But for the rest of us there are two important lessons.

One is that resistance is patriotic. Everything that we do to oppose American authoritarianism we do not just in the name of defending freedom, but in the name of preserving America as such. In the swirl of destruction that is underway, it is impossible to know what will crack first, and how the collapse will begin. But what we do know is that the thing that comes next, the better America, can rest only on the labor that we perform now, on the good that we do now.

The other lesson is that resistance is constructive. It can seem difficult to resist merchants of calamity such as Trump and Vance. No one action seems to stop them. But every act of resistance creates the possibility that the country itself can survive, and every moment of hope creates the foundation for a better republic. The actions we take have to be actions against, against what is being done to us now. But by their nature every strike, every protest, every act of organization, every act of kindness and solidarity are also actions for, for a future in which the United States continues to exist, and in which the learning from resistance becomes the politics of freedom.

Nearly 1,000 ‘Worker Over Billionaire’ Actions Planned for Labor Day in US

   

Care workers protest proposed cuts to Medicaid in Washington DC on 23 June 2025. (photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty)

Rallies from Alaska to Hawaii will highlight cuts to wages, unions and social safety nets under Trump policies

 Michael Sainato The Guardian

Nearly 1,000 “worker over billionaire” protests are being planned in all 50 states starting this weekend as part of a Labor Day week of action organized by labor unions and advocacy groups in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.

The actions include marches and rallies in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a Labor Day parade in New York City, rallies in Palmer, Alaska, Freeport, Maine, and a planned protest at the state capitol in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The protests are organized by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and dozens of partner organizations, including Public Citizen, Indivisible, Democracy Forward, MoveOn and Patriotic Millionaires.

“This is about organic, grassroots organizing, and we intentionally wanted it to be outside of Washington DC, because that’s where the impacts are being felt,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said.

“Whether it’s teachers or nurses or construction workers, they’re all determined to stand up and fight back, because they’re experiencing the cuts, they’re experiencing the change in policies, they’re experiencing the attacks of this White House on their unions, and so they’re determined to make their voices heard and mobilize to fight forward regardless of what’s happening around us, no matter the obstacles.”

Among the policies being protested are the Trump administration’s attempts to rescind collective bargaining rights from 1 million federal workers, the largest single act of union busting in US history, a cut to minimum wage requirements for federal contractors from $17.75 an hour to $13.30 an hour, a proposed rule to eliminate federal minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million childcare and home care workers, and the rescission of a minimum wage requirement for disabled workers.

The actions come as public support for labor unions remains strong. A national poll conducted by the AFL-CIO and David Binder Research found trust in labor unions is at 55% – larger than the 36% of respondents who said they trusted the Democratic party and the 35% of respondents who said they trusted the Republican party.

“People are waking up to the fact we don’t have to just sit back and take it and the labor movement is the place to go to channel that activism, to build what’s next and we’re putting forward a vision for what the economy can be,” added Shuler.

“When people see tanks rolling into Washington DC, when we were promised lower costs, they’re like, this makes no sense,” said Shuler. “We’re getting billionaires standing up at the front row of the inauguration, basically taking over agencies, our economy and our country. So I think that no matter what party you belong to, that is a unifying thing that everybody wants, the freedom, fairness and security that all working people deserve.”

“The billionaire agenda, the corruption we’re seeing, is changing the way government is functioning. It’s leading to real-time and impactful ramifications for regular people,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “The gutting of Medicaid, all the firings we’ve seen of federal workers, the ravaging of families through Ice raids. It’s just all coming together to cause people to stand up and say, ‘we are the people of this country. It is workers over billionaires.’”

Gilbert noted they currently have 984 events scheduled, with the aim to reach over 1,000 by Labor Day, a mass organizing effort that has been weeks in the making.

“We’ve been standing together over and over again to talk about the authoritarian slide that this administration is ushering in in our country. We expect a lot of energy this weekend. This is really just the beginning of an ongoing fight against what’s being taken away from regular people,” she said.

EVIL: GOP just can't stomach a taste of its own map-rigging medicine

House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, and National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson.

Decries Newsom's attempt to counter naked Texas power grab 

by Emily Singer

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday, August 24, 2025 at 1:00:05p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.

---

Multiple GOP lawmakers this week accused California Democrats of corruptly trying to redraw their state’s congressional districts, even though the Golden State is moving to redraw its maps only to counter the naked power grab Republicans pulled off in Texas with their mid-decade gerrymander.

House Speaker Mike Johnson—who supported the Texas redraw that could boot as many as five Democratic House members—said California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s planned redraw is "a slap in the face to Californians who overwhelmingly support the California Citizens Redistricting Commission."

"Gavin Newsom should spend less time trampling his state’s laws for a blatant power grab, and more time working to change the disastrous, far-left policies that are destroying California," Johnson wrote.

Funny, you could say basically the same thing about Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who was more focused on rigging the midterms for Republicans and his dear leader, President Donald Trump, than helping his state recover from devastating flooding that killed dozens of people.

Other House Republican leaders also slammed California’s redraw while ignoring Texas’.

Texas state Sen. Juan Hinojosa, right, looks at a protester dressed as death standing outside of the House Chamber where Democratic Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier refuses to leave due to a required law enforcement escort on Aug. 19.

“The NRCC is prepared to fight this illegal power grab in the courts and at the ballot box to stop Newsom in his tracks,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson said in a statement, accusing Newsom of “disenfranchising voters to prop up his Presidential ambitions.”

But when he was asked earlier in August about Texas’ gerrymander, Hudson demurred.

“Well, it’s up to the states. I mean, I have nothing to do with it. I found out about it when you all wrote about it,” Hudson told reporters, adding later that he was “not “concerned” about California’s redraw. 

“Some of the states, they can do what they want to do,” Hudson said—before it was clear just how serious California was about countering Texas’ power grab.

Other Republicans cooked up their own criteria to claim that Democrats gerrymander more often than Republicans do, when the opposite is true.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who comes from the state that fired the first shot in this latest redistricting war, also slammed California without taking a look in the mirror.

"Newsom & Obama are lying and they are hypocrites," Cruz wrote in a post on X. "The most egregious gerrymanders in the country are virtually ALL Democrat."

Cruz then made up a metric he thought would prove his point, asking Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok to "Examine states with six or more congressional seats. Compile a list of the five most egregious gerrymanders, defined as the biggest delta between the percentage of the congressional delegation a party wins & the percentage that party wins statewide."

"Which party is it?" Cruz asked Grok.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, shown in 2022.

But Grok's response showed that Republican-run states also have gerrymanders that are "egregious" based on Cruz's metric, including Tennessee and Wisconsin. Not to mention, Cruz limiting the list to states with six or more districts leaves out a number of Republican-run states that heavily gerrymander their seats, including Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah, and Iowa, among others.

Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley, whose House seat would be nuked if California voters allow the state to redraw its congressional map, also made the rounds on cable news shows to whine.

"When elections are fair, Republicans win. That's why we should end gerrymandering and establish Voter ID nationwide. And it's why Newsom is trying to permanently rig our elections by making himself Gerrymanderer-in-Chief," Kiley said.

Of course, Democrats would love to end gerrymandering nationwide. It's why it was in the first bill House Democrats introduced in 2019 after they took back control of the House in the 2018 midterms. Not a single Republican voted for the bill, and the GOP controlled Senate never brought it up for a vote.

Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who would also be drawn out of his House seat in the California plan, also complained about California's redistricting effort without complaining about what Texas did first.

"There is zero transparency as Sacramento Democrats scheme to eliminate the power of the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission," Calvert moaned.

At the end of the day, Republicans are merely getting a taste of their own medicine in the redistricting wars. And it looks like they don't like it.

Best way to score a job with Trump? Be a racist internet troll.

President Donald Trump gives his best "poor me" WTF gesture as he speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One in Pennsylvania on Aug. 3.

"Foursome from hell" latest to ride Donnie's Clown bus - and the joke is on us

 

by Lisa Needham

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 6:01:04p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Did you hear about the guy who had a racist and conspiracy-ridden online life before joining the Trump administration? No, not that guy. The other guy. No, the other, other one.

You’re forgiven for being confused about which Trump administration hire we’re talking about, given that Monday saw two separate stories break about their repulsive online presences. 

From the news outlet NOTUS, let’s learn all about Eric Lendrum, a speechwriter for the Department of Homeland Security. Before Lendrum apparently started penning propaganda for Secretary Kristi Noem, he had a rich, grievance-filled online life. NOTUS unearthed a December 2021 piece attributed to Lendrum where he moped extravagantly about Trump supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and how:

American conservatives are, right now, on course for being every bit as ostracized and alienated from broader society as Jews were in the years leading up to Nazi Germany. Children are actively indoctrinated in our education system to turn against their own parents, Soviet-style, if they feel their parents’ views are outdated or backwards.

Buddy, your kid having to learn about the mere existence of transgender people or perhaps that slavery was less than great is not the same as being rounded up and put in camps, but sure. 

What Lendrum really grooves on, like so much of this administration, is watching people in pain from Trump’s actions. Hence, his incredibly low-rated podcast lovingly dwelling on how much he loved watching members of Congress running for their lives while his cult leader’s followers overran the seat of American government. So fun! He also had the obligatory endorsement of the racist “great replacement theory”—which claims there is an ongoing effort to use immigration to “replace” white Americans—and equated asylum-seekers with “scum.” 

When asked for comment by The Independent, DHS shared a link to the First Amendment. Huh. Neat that they occasionally remembered that it exists, what with the Trump administration regularly trying to jail and deport students for the content of their speech. 

Also on Monday, Wired reported about a now-deleted Twitter account linked to E.J. Antoni, whom Trump nominated to cook the books at the Bureau of Labor Statistics ever since the job numbers made him sad. It was already known that Antoni was also an insurrection enthusiast.

The deleted account that Wired uncovered is a neatly comprehensive list of conservative fixations: COVID-19 denialism, hating Black Lives Matter, retweeting conspiracy crank Jack Posobiec—you get the picture. Also neat: joshing about how cool it would be to drop a nuclear bomb on China if conspiracy nuts “determined” China “created” COVID:

Antoni’s social media presence was wide-ranging. Think of a renaissance man if “renaissance” means “spewing Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories, misogyny about Kamala Harris, and violent rhetoric about the 2020 election”:

Of course, both of these accounts fit right in with other high-level Trump administration employees. Perhaps Lendrum and Antoni can get together with Paul Ingrassia, whom Trump nominated to run the Office of Special Counsel after a rich career as a far-right podcaster and fanboy of white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Heck, call Darren Beattie—expelled for being too racist for the first Trump administration but now running the U.S. Institute of Peace—and make it the foursome from hell. 

Trump's despicable appointees continue to do their business on America.

"DISGUSTING": Trump shows the world that war crimes pay

   

Collage of Putin and Trump walking on a red carpet amid the corpses of civilians killed by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha in 2022. Shared by Bucha’s mayor Anatolii Fedoruk in response to the Putin-Trump meeting

Putin left Alaska knowing genocide is rewarded. Every dictator was watching.  

 

Euromaidan

Fedoruk in response to the Putin-Trump meeting 

17 August 25 

Disgusting.

That’s the word watching American soldiers drop to their knees, unrolling a red carpet for the man who killed Ukrainian children yesterday and will kill more tomorrow.

While Putin posed for photos in Alaska, Ukrainian parents were pulling their kids from rubble.

While he grinned in Trump’s limousine, Ukrainian mothers were digging graves.

While an Orthodox bishop exchanged gifts with a war criminal, 19,000 stolen Ukrainian children remained in Russian camps.

What really happened Friday: America told the world that genocide pays. War crimes get you red carpet treatment. Russia’s Foreign Minister showed up wearing a USSR sweatshirt. Russian state media served “chicken Kyiv” on Putin’s plane while actual Kyiv burns nightly from Russia’s drones.

The message was clear: We own you now.

The truth Trump abandoned

Putin didn’t just get legitimacy in Alaska; he got proof that the West has abandoned truth itself.

Genocide became “diplomacy.”

War crimes became “peace talks.”

Child killers become “partners.”

Here are the truths they’ve abandoned:

Truth 1: Peoples have the right to exist. They call this a “territorial dispute” when Russian officials openly admit genocidal intent.

Putin isn’t after land—he’s after eliminating Ukraine itself. But reality doesn’t bend to political convenience. Our right to exist isn’t negotiable.

This is bigger than Ukraine. Russia is fighting against existence itself—the principle that different peoples should exist, should grow, should contribute their own gifts to the world. Every time a people is erased, the world becomes smaller, darker, less human.

While America rolled out the red carpet for our destroyer, Ukraine stood up for the right of all peoples to flourish in this world. Because when the powerful are allowed to erase the weak, you’ve destroyed the only thing standing between civilization and chaos.

Once might makes right, there’s always someone mightier.

Truth 2: Truth and justice make civilizations great, not strongmen. Trump thinks Putin is powerful. He said Russian troops “retreated” from Kyiv because they got stuck in the mud, not because Ukrainians stood and fought.  He looks past Zelenskyy, thinking Ukraine doesn’t have the cards.

But he has it backwards.

Ukraine’s strength doesn’t come from tanks. It comes from standing for truth and justice—the very foundations that once made the West great.

Trump promised to “Make America Great Again.” He could have done exactly that by supporting the nation fighting for the very things that make America great. Instead, he chose a perpetrator of genocide.

Truth 3: Unconfronted evil grows. Politicians say: “This war needs to end, it’s cost thousands of lives.”

The lie is that giving Putin what he wants will make him stop. It won’t.

Putin didn’t stop after Georgia or Crimea, and he won’t stop after Donetsk. Evil doesn’t get satisfied when fed. It gets hungrier.

The choice before us

This is the West’s war being fought with Ukrainian blood. Putin isn’t just trying to erase Ukraine—he’s testing whether democratic civilization will defend itself. Friday gave him his answer.

The West can abandon Ukraine today and face Putin’s tanks in Warsaw tomorrow. America can sell us out now and watch its own children conscripted later.

What must happen now

Friday was America’s test. America failed.

But Ukrainians are still fighting. Still dying for the principles democratic civilization claims to believe in. Still holding the line that Western leaders are too weak to defend.

The West has one chance left:

• Send every weapon Ukraine needs. Now.
• Freeze every Russian asset. Today.
• Cut every pipeline, every bank, every trade deal that feeds Russian aggression.

Ukraine still fights for existence itself. The only question is whether the West will fight for its own.

If what we witnessed in Alaska isn't enough to arouse every American to stand up and be counted, then shame on us.  If you as an individual are not personally involved in this battle, then shame on you.

Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness

A still from Wednesday night's episode of "South Park" depicts Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as she pulls her firearm to shoot a service dog in the audience of a live "Dora the Explorer" stage show.

Trump bootlicker incredulously says president would never make fun of how women look

 

By Emily Singer 

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, August 11, 2025 at 10:30:08a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog 

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show "South Park" mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.

"It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that," Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. "If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that."

Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem's looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she's one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump's evil immigration plan. 

But more than that, Noem claiming that only "liberals" make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.

Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher's plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler "ugly," said Angelina Jolie is "not a beauty," said Rosie O'Donnell has a "fat, ugly face," and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of "bleeding badly from a face-lift," just to name a few.

In 2018, The New York Times published an article laying out some of the other times Trump made fun of women's appearances: 

Mr. Trump has accused women of having “fat, ugly” faces and of repelling voters because of their looks. He called one woman a “crazed, crying lowlife” and said another was a “dog” who had the “face of a pig.” He said Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during a 2015 presidential debate was “too disgusting” to talk about. He has repeatedly mocked women for being overweight.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, he also made fun of then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly for having “blood coming out of her wherever." (Kelly now debases herself daily to lick Dear Leader's boots because she can make more money in the right-wing grift-o-sphere by doing that.)

But leave it to Noem to play the victim amid authentic criticism of her horrific behavior.

“Imagine working for Donald Trump and saying ‘it’s only the liberals’ who make fun of women’s looks,” journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in a post on X. “They have no shame whatsoever.”