No Kings, again

It's incredible how easy it is to get some MAGA people wound up these days. All you have to do, it seems, is take to the streets to exercise your First Amendment right to assemble, speak freely and protest, and suddenly you've become an ignorant clown who is suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome for a laughable cause.

 

We add our First Amendment voice.*

Some of that blowback came our way after about 200 of us participated in the utterly peaceful No Kings demonstration held at the Old Courthouse on the Square Saturday. While the local crowd appeared to be a bit smaller than the Hands Off/No Kings demonstration held in June – an estimated 300 folks took part in that one – yesterday's event was tied to the larger national protest that drew an estimated seven million participants.

Seven million. It was the second largest political demonstration in American history. The largest gathering was the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million citizens gathered to create awareness of the Earth's fragile ecology. Earth Day was soooo woke that it appeared to us in an era before wokeness was a MAGA target of derision. In fact, Earth Day was so woke we didn't even know we were woke back then. It took Trump Republicans to tell us what wokeness is. And diversity, equity and inclusion, too. The old hippie in me thought wokeness and DEI were good things – righteous things, Christian things – to be, but apparently not in Trump world, where the cruelty is clearly the point.

A sample of No Kings day in Lexington.

 Why else would you separate immigrant children from their parents (an estimated 1,300 children are still missing from the first Trump administration's attempt to discourage asylum seekers from entry into the country)? Why else would you create concentration camps and deportation centers in America? Why else would you create a paramilitary agency like ICE to literally sweep brown people off the streets by denying them due process? When did that become the American way?

Why are we picking a fight with Venezuela? Why is Argentina getting $20 billion from us but we can't fund healthcare? Why are National Guard troops encamped in peaceful American cities when state governors – under whose control they belong – have not asked for them? Why are we blowing up boats (and killing people) in the Caribbean without the Coast Guard boarding them with due process?

When did we become lawless? 

MAGA tried its best to downplay No Kings day, responding mostly with retorts that we don't have a king in this country and so what exactly are you protesting, fool?

That response misses the point of the symbolism behind No Kings day, of course. Trump, the convicted felon who has been given a free pass from sentencing (and perhaps prison) by his buddies on the Supreme Court, has been busy centralizing the power of the presidency in his second term per Project 2025. Among numerous other violations, Trump has:

• Invoked capricious tariffs, which by Constitution only Congress can do.

• Impounded congressionally appropriated funds from federal agencies in violation of the law.

• Fired federal employees in violation of the law.

• Signed unconstitutional executive orders.

In other words, Trump is trying to seize the powers of Congress. As envisioned by the Founding Fathers, a president can make treaties with the approval of the Senate; veto bills and sign bills; represent the nation in talks with foreign countries, enforce the laws that Congress passes; act as Commander in Chief during a war, and call out troops to protect the nation against an attack. Those are the constitutional powers of the presidency.

Any other perceived powers Trump has of the presidency actually make him more like a monarch than an executive with limited powers. Hence, a king – exactly what we rebelled against in 1776.

The Founding Fathers struggled with the idea of a president as leader. They didn't want an all-powerful individual in charge, which is why we are a federal democratic republic with a division of power that is theoretically protected by a brilliant combination of checks and balances which gives the power to the people. If they can keep it. If they want it.

I want it. I want to keep it. It's why I protest against a king governing this country. 

*Photo by Kristi Thornhill.