The founders would have loved this. Not the powdered wig cosplay or the “Don’t Tread on Me” truck decals that confuse tyranny with speed limits—but the idea that millions of Americans could, in 2025, look at a would-be monarch and collectively say: nope.
This October 18, No Kings Day returns. And if June was the dress rehearsal, October is the encore America didn’t know it needed—a nationwide reminder that power in this country still flows upward, from the people, not down from a gilded podium wrapped in executive privilege and imported gold leaf.
Last time, we drowned out the President’s self-funded “birthday coronation parade” with the sound of democracy—horns, drums, chants, and homemade signs reading “YOU’RE NOT KING, JUST BAD AT GOLF.” The world watched as his motorcade drove past empty bleachers, protesters flooding the streets from Tulsa to Tokyo.
Now, he’s doubling down.
The Gospel According to King Donald I
In the months since, the administration has leaned hard into royal delusion. Masked agents patrol the streets like extras from The Handmaid’s Tale: Homeland Edition. Immigrant families are raided without warrants. Voters are redistricted out of existence.
We’re told it’s all “for security.” Of course. So was the Patriot Act, the TSA shampoo ban, and every colonial crown tax that sparked the first revolution.
He’s gutted healthcare. Slashed environmental protections like they personally offended him. Declared teachers “lazy radicals” while approving billionaire tax breaks that could pay every public-school salary twice over.
And when questioned, he waves a hand and says, “I can do whatever I want.”
Which, historically speaking, is the exact moment every tyrant loses the plot—and, eventually, the crown.
Why We March (Again)
Because America was born from the refusal to kneel.
We don’t have thrones here. We have folding chairs, backyards, and kitchen tables where arguments turn into organizing. “No Kings” isn’t just a protest slogan—it’s our national operating system.
In June, we saw what that looks like: streets overflowing not with chaos but clarity. Nurses, veterans, grocery clerks, teachers, teenagers—all shoulder-to-shoulder declaring what the Constitution already said in plain English.
The press called it a “movement.” They were wrong. It’s a reminder.
The founders didn’t write “We the Rich,” “We the White,” or “We the Well-Armed.” They wrote We the People, because the country was never supposed to bend to one man’s ego.
And yet here we are, debating whether an orange-tinted emperor can weaponize federal agencies to raid cities that didn’t vote for him.
Spoiler alert: he can’t. And he won’t. Not if we keep showing up.
The Royal Family of Denial
Every wannabe king needs a court of jesters.
Trump’s cabinet now resembles a particularly cursed Mad Libs game: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose “common sense press restrictions” made North Korea Today blush; Attorney General Pam Bondi, starring in her own procedural called Law & Order: Authoritarian Victims Unit; and a rotating cast of billionaires who treat tax loopholes like family heirlooms.
Meanwhile, his cronies in Congress bow low, praising each decree like courtiers afraid of losing the gravy train.
But power worship always ends the same way: the courtiers get trampled, and the crowd writes the next constitution.
A Movement, Not a Moment
October 18 isn’t about pageantry. It’s about persistence.
“No Kings Day” started as a hashtag. Then it became a march. Now it’s a living, breathing act of civil faith—the idea that democracy can be louder than propaganda, and more disciplined than chaos.
Across fifty states, local organizers are building networks to keep the flame alive: voter-registration drives, mutual-aid funds, legal clinics for families targeted by ICE raids.
The point isn’t just to protest. It’s to govern ourselves from the ground up when the top starts to rot.
Think of it as democracy’s immune response.
The Coronation That Wasn’t
June 14, 2025. Remember that date. The day the President tried to throw himself a birthday parade that made Louis XIV look modest.
Trump Tower-branded floats. Gold-plated MAGA hats. A marching band spelling out “TRUMP 47” on Pennsylvania Avenue.
And then—nothing went according to script.
From Washington to Wichita, protesters filled the streets shouting, “No Kings!” Drones captured aerial shots of city grids turned into checkerboards of resistance. In London, crowds unfurled banners reading “America, We’re With You (Again).”
Even Fox News cut away from the empty parade route to cover the global uprising. The ratings tanked, but the footage didn’t lie: the coronation collapsed into a constitutional reality check.
For a single weekend, democracy out-trended celebrity gossip.
That’s not just symbolic—it’s seismic.
The Propaganda Machine Fights Back
Since June, the administration has waged a propaganda war to reframe No Kings Day as “antifa-adjacent chaos.”
State TV (formerly known as the press briefing) airs montages of peaceful protesters edited to look like riots. The same footage of a tipped trash can has been replayed so many times it now has an IMDb page.
Online, bot farms flood hashtags with “order vs. anarchy” rhetoric, trying to pit neighbors against one another.
But the footage they can’t fake? Parents marching with strollers. Veterans carrying American flags upside down—not as disrespect, but as a distress signal. Communities bringing water, food, and care to strangers in the streets.
Authoritarianism always mistakes compassion for weakness.
That’s why compassion wins.
The Authoritarian Playbook, American Edition
Every strongman follows the same 12-step program:
- Declare enemies within.
- Claim divine or electoral mandate.
- Weaken oversight.
- Reward loyalty over competence.
- Control the press.
- Rewrite the map.
- Blame minorities.
- Erode the courts.
- Privatize everything.
- Militarize dissent.
- Rewrite history.
- Call it patriotism.
The brilliance of No Kings Day is how it interrupts that cycle—nonviolently, publicly, humorously. There’s no violence, no vandalism, just the simple power of refusal.
We don’t need to storm palaces. We just have to stop pretending the throne exists.
We the People, Rebooted
The genius of the original revolution was that it didn’t need royalty to validate it. The genius of this one is that it doesn’t need permission.
From farmers in Kansas to coders in California, from nurses in Detroit to teachers in Tallahassee, this is a movement built on participation, not personality.
It’s not a liberal thing or a conservative thing—it’s a reality-based thing.
Because at the end of the day, fascism isn’t a political ideology. It’s an infection that spreads when good people stop believing they matter.
No Kings Day is the antidote.
The Power of the Absurd
Every protest has its soundtrack, and this one’s no different.
Somewhere in Portland, a brass band called The Constitutionals is rehearsing “You Can’t Always Crown Who You Want.” In Texas, drag performers are leading voter-registration drives dressed as the Founding Mothers. In Ohio, a community choir is rewriting “God Save the Queen” into “God Save the Dream.”
And online? The memes are brutal. My favorite: a photoshopped image of Mount Rushmore with Trump’s head replaced by a Magic 8 Ball reading “ASK AGAIN LATER.”
When tyranny grows predictable, mockery becomes resistance.
The Global Echo
The world is watching again, and not with pity this time—with recognition.
From Poland to Brazil, from Hungary to the Philippines, every democratic backslide starts with the same lie: “The people want a strong hand.”
But the people don’t want a hand—they want a voice.
No Kings Day resonates far beyond our borders because it’s the same story everywhere: ordinary citizens refusing to disappear beneath the weight of one man’s delusion of grandeur.
And if the U.S. can prove that even a self-proclaimed monarch can be peacefully checked by millions of voters and protesters, then maybe democracy isn’t dying after all—it’s just clearing its throat.
No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.
That’s the chant that’s already shaking across social feeds and city streets.
No Thrones—because we won’t be ruled by ego.
No Crowns—because leadership isn’t inherited, it’s earned.
No Kings—because America already fought this war once, and spoiler: we won.
October 18 won’t just be another day of protest; it’ll be a declaration that democracy isn’t passive. It’s kinetic. It moves, marches, and refuses to kneel.
When the history books write about this era—and they will—it won’t be the dictator’s decrees that endure. It’ll be the sound of millions shouting the one truth he can’t tweet away: America has no kings.
Final Section: The Crown That Never Fit
Every empire falls the same way—under the weight of its own absurdity. Trump’s attempts to rule by spectacle may fill airtime, but they can’t fill the moral vacuum of corruption and cruelty.
Because the real strength of this country has never been found in its palaces or parades. It’s found in its people—loud, flawed, stubborn, compassionate people who show up when it counts.
So on October 18, when the chants rise again and the cameras turn toward the crowds, remember this isn’t chaos. It’s choreography—the oldest American dance there is.
The one where the people take back the floor.
And if he’s still listening, somewhere behind his gold drapes, let this message echo loud enough to rattle every empty crown in the room:
There are no kings in America. There never will be.