Milwaukee—Donald Trump’s increasingly chaotic assault on American values, ideals, and practical governance left Alice Thompson with a conundrum as she prepared to join Saturday’s No Kings! protest in Milwaukee. She thought about referencing her father’s service in World War II on a sign that read, “They Fought for Democracy Then, We Fight for it Now!” As a wetland scientist, she certainly had things to say about the Trump administration’s war on research and the environment. She’s got a daughter living in the Los Angeles area, so she considered a sign opposing Trump’s decision to override California Governor Gavin Newsom and put members of the National Guard and Marines on the streets of a great American city. Or maybe something about the threats to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. “And I haven’t even mentioned women’s rights,” she said, with a sigh.

“There really is too much to fit on one sign,” explained Thompson. What to do? “I finally decided to go with the preamble to the Constitution,” she said, holding up a poster board with the words, written in colorful bold letters, “We the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Thompson had highlighted the words “justice” and “general welfare,” added the date that the Constitution was signed, September 17, 1787, and attached a small American flag at the corner of the board. She gathered up flowers to place at the foot of Milwaukee’s Immigrant Mother statue, along with a jar of peanut butter to contribute to a food drive, and headed with her sign to Milwaukee’s Cathedral Square Park.

There, on a sunny Saturday, she was gathered with at least 10,000 other people who had the same idea. American flags waved in the sky, and many of the handmade signs in the crowd featured references to the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, 1776, 1787, and other historical touchstones of a nation that was founded almost 250 years ago in a grand rejection of monarchy, “the divine right of kings,” colonialism, and empire.

Current Issue

July/August 2025 Issue

Thompson and the Milwaukeeans were part of a national—and even international—outpouring of opposition to Trump and his regal self-absorption. The No Kings! protests drew millions into the streets of American cities and towns on the same day that the nation’s embattled ruler presided over a military parade in Washington, which had in classic authoritarian style been scheduled for the same day as the president’s 79th birthday.

The manufactured event in Washington cost tens of millions of tax dollars; yet, by most accounts, it fell dramatically short of the president’s expectations. At the same time, the more than 2,100 No Kings! parades, marches, and rallies nationwide turned into precisely the festive celebrations of patriotic dissent that the organizers with the 50901 movement, Indivisible, and allied groups had hoped would reveal the emptiness of Trump’s latest attempt to pump up enthusiasm for a flailing presidency.

So it was that, on June 14, 2025, Americans answered the call of Thomas Paine from Common Sense, the 1776 rejection of King George III and the British monarchy, which declared, “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”

They stood forth, as patriots, and trumped Trump.

While the president and members of his bedraggled cabinet sought to stifle yawns in DC, Americans filled the streets of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other great cities; they marched to town squares and stood along country highways, in an outpouring of opposition to an administration that is so at odds with the basic premises of democracy that one of its cabinet secretaries stood by on Thursday as a United States senator was thrown to the ground and handcuffed because he dared to perform the oversight responsibilities that are implicitly conferred by the Constitution and have historically been understood by legislators of both major parties.

The No Kings! events—many of which paused for moments of silence in response to the horrifying assassination of the Democratic former speaker of the Minnesota State House—were so widespread, and so large, that estimates of the turnout varied. But organizers could report, before the day was done:

With hundreds of events still underway, today’s No Kings actions have already drawn more than 5 million participants—nearly 2 million more than the Hands Off protests on April 5.

They brought joy, drums, banners, and faith. They came not to clash—but to claim what is ours: the right to gather, to speak, and to rise. And rise we did—with dignity, love, and powerful resolve. Turnout was overwhelmingly more than initially anticipated. Organizers and local law enforcement reported over 200,000 in New York, over 100,000 in Philadelphia, and…Pentwater, Michigan saw 400 people join in their small town with a population of 800.

The enthusiasm from Pentwater was echoed in towns and villages across the country, including Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts, where patriots raised signs recalling Paine’s declaration, “In America, the law is King!” As the crowds filled the streets of the historic communities that Paul Revere rode through 250 years ago—on a modern day that was supposed to belong to Donald Trump—Longfellow’s poem came to mind, especially the section that recalled Revere’s “cry of alarm…

To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken…