Where are the ‘No Kings’ protesters now?

OPINION:

As King Charles III and Queen Camilla stepped onto the South Portico of the White House this week for a four-day state visit hosted by President Trump, one question came to mind: Where are the “No Kings” protesters now?

A month ago, on March 28, organizers of the third nationwide “No Kings” rallies claimed it was the largest single-day protest in American history: 8 million to 9 million participants across more than 3,300 events.

Previous rounds in June and October 2025 drew roughly 5 million and 7 million, respectively, according to their own tallies. Indivisible, the 50501 Movement, MoveOn and their coalition turned out upside-down flags, cardboard crowns and “No Kings” chants. The spectacle was undeniable.

Yet today, with an actual monarch being welcomed to the White House by the president whom they spent March 28 denouncing as a tyrant, the streets are quiet. No crowds. No faux crowns. No chants.

The irony is thick.

Protest is a constitutional right, but if “No Kings” was ever meant to defend the American republic and the Founders designed it to prevent one-man rule by fiat, then the March 28 marchers walked right past the actual throne. It wasn’t in the current White House. It occupied the Oval Office from January 2021 to January 2025.

A king rules by divine right or raw force, above the law. Mr. Trump’s actions remain subject to judicial review, congressional oversight, midterm elections and the ballot box.

What protesters call tyranny is the lawful exercise of Article II power: enforcing statutes Congress passed and unwinding the regulatory thicket that previous administrations used as a shadow legislature.

Dark money powered the machinery. Roughly 500 activist groups drawing an estimated $3 billion in combined annual revenue, anchored by George Soros-backed Indivisible and fueled by Neville Roy Singham’s reported $278 million pipeline from Shanghai into openly Marxist organizations.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation prepared preprinted red signs reading, “NO KINGS. NO WAR.”

A genuine “No Kings” protest would have confronted this record of executive overreach:

• The Democratic National Committee’s elevation of Kamala Harris without a competitive primary.
• Nationwide COVID-19 vaccine mandates infringing personal liberty and Bill of Rights protections.
• Federal pressure on social media to censor conservative viewpoints and suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
• Billions in taxpayer dollars diverted to overseas liberal causes, including gender ideology programs.
• Routine labeling of mainstream conservative positions as “disinformation” or “hate speech.”
• Repeated executive efforts to restrict Second Amendment rights, including bans on commonly owned firearms.
• The absence of diplomatic urgency on the persecution of Christians across North Africa and the Middle East.
• The embrace of radical Islamist ideologies in schools and government agencies under the guise of “diversity.”
• Unilateral attempts to forgive more than $430 billion in student loan debt.
• Department of Justice and FBI guidance treating parents protesting school policies as potential “domestic terrorists.”
• The rollback of border security that produced record encounters — more than 10 million nationwide — millions of gotaways and a fentanyl epidemic claiming over 100,000 American lives annually at its peak.
• The catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal that abandoned U.S. citizens and allies, gifted the Taliban roughly $7 billion in equipment and cost 13 American service members’ lives.
• Mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion ideology across federal agencies, the military and public education.
• The weaponization of the IRS, Justice Department and intelligence community to target political opponents while shielding allied scandals.

It seems like we should have been protesting the Biden-Harris administration.

The organizers’ own “No Kings Host Toolkit” insists that Mr. Trump governs through “fear, intimidation and hoarding power,” while “masked agents [are] ripping parents from children and terrorizing Latino, Black, and Asian communities.”

They cite contested incidents and lump in dozens of custody deaths — mostly medical or self-inflicted — as proof of “brutality.” In their telling, routine enforcement of immigration statutes is Gestapo terrorism, while four years of open borders were compassionate governance.

They never protested the administrative state’s accretion of power under Presidents Obama and Biden (lockdowns, DEI mandates, IRS targeting, governance by decree).

They discovered “kingship” only when executive power began restoring constitutional order.

James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47 that tyranny arises when “all the powers of government … [are] united in the same hands.” Mr. Trump is doing the reverse: devolving power back to Congress, the states and the people by repealing rules unelected agencies never should have made.

The Founders built a republic void of crowns because power corrupts, and the surest way to lose liberty is to excuse royal behavior when it comes from your own side. Until protesters apply that lesson consistently, “No Kings Day” will remain less a defense of liberty than a convenient alibi for its erosion.

• Bethany Miller is the managing editor of “The Conservateur,” a fellow at Concerned Women for America and director of Communications at NRB.