All across America, in big blue cities and small rural red towns Americans turned out on Saturday, March 28th, to peacefully protest Trump and this administration. Even in Florida’s MAGA stronghold, The Villages, more than 6,750 protestors attended “No Kings” rallies at two locations, as part of nationwide demonstrations. The event in the heavily Republican retirement community broke its own record for turnout.
There were over 3200 NO KINGS rallies held across the country. Over 8 million Americans showed up for these rallies to express widespread nationwide dissatisfaction with Trump and his administration. This rally was the biggest one in the history of the United States. Ever. Trump’s approval rating is at its lowest point ever. 33% in the latest U Mass poll.
Dissatisfaction with the brutal immigration actions of ICE and border patrol was front and center at these rallies.
TRUMP IS FAILING ON IMMIGRATION
Minneapolis was ground zero for this No Kings protest on Saturday. 200,000 people gathered there. Governor Tim Walz and Lt Governor Peggy Flanagan, Bernie Sanders, and others gave impassioned speeches. Bruce Springsteen sang a song he wrote about Alex Pretti and Renee Good. The overly aggressive immigration raids carried out by ICE and border patrol in Minneapolis led to their deaths.
Federal immigration agents weren’t enforcing the law, they were ignoring and breaking the law. They created damage, terror and chaos wherever they went. The image of a young Latino boy, Liam Ramos, being arrested in his bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack, went viral as an iconic image of innocence pitted against the forces of pure evil: Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino. Other stories went viral as day care teachers, mothers, fathers and pastors were violently manhandled and arrested without due process.
Minneapolis was not the only place where excessive force hardened Americans against Trump. Chicago, LA, and other blue cities and suburbs came under attack from these federal agents. ICE and border patrol arrested many people who were in fact American citizens or had obtained their green cards, paid their taxes, were showing up for their immigration hearings, and had been contributing members of their communities for decades. Ordinary people, soccer moms, and fellow Americas living in those communities rose up, armed with whistles and cell phones, to protect their neighbors, nannies, landscapers, small business owners, construction workers and friends. ICE and border patrol agents were filmed flagrantly breaking the law and beating up American citizens who tried to intervene to help other Americans.
These federal agents even violated traffic laws, driving the wrong way down streets, abruptly stopping their cars to cause accidents on purpose so that they could arrest the drivers, and racing down alleys in hot pursuit of people to kidnap them for the crime of looking Hispanic.
Immigrants and citizens alike got arrested based on the color of their skin- which is still illegal in our country. Skin color is not a probable cause basis for arrest. Although Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh seemed to give cover to agents in a Supreme Court decision footnote saying that agents could factor in skin color as part of the reason for the stop. The stops were then dubbed “Kavanaugh stops”. But as it became clear that these illegal stops were being excused using the language from that footnote in his opinion, Kavanaugh walked back his blessing for them in a footnote in a different opinion. Nonetheless, some people were still illegally kidnapped, imprisoned and expelled from the country without probable cause or due process based on their skin color.
As I have written about before, this level of brutality doesn’t do what Trump and Stephen Miller expects it to do. Instead of resulting in higher approvals for Trump, it hardens Americans against him and his regime.
The backlash that resulted from these abominations caused Kristi Noem to be the fall guy. She lost her job and there was a reduction of ICE and border patrol in Minneapolis as well as other places. Noem had probably been chosen for this job based on her willingness to shoot her puppy dead. Trump must have figured she was heartless enough to be in charge of immigration.
She has been replaced by former Republican senator, Markwayne Mullin. He was recently confirmed by this Republican led congress. Will Mullin do a better job of following the law? We don’t know yet. Mullin called Alex Pretti a “deranged individual” but after the truth came out (thanks to cell phone footage from bystanders showing Pretti trying to help a woman being attacked by federal agents and then getting murdered by ICE and border patrol agents), Mullin at least expressed regret and said he would not jump to conclusions like that in the future.
Maybe. But maybe he said that to get approved by Congress.
This administration is still retrofitting (and way overpaying for) a lot of huge warehouses across the country to be prisons for immigrants. Since only 7% of the people currently being detained by ICE and the border patrol in their immigration sweeps have any criminal records at all, this project looking more and more like the detention camps of Nazi Germany or the Japanese interment camps in our country during World War II. There are not enough criminal immigrants to fill those warehouses. If ICE and border patrol are forced to maintain Stephen Miller’s 3,000 a day arrest quotas, these agents will be detaining innocent people.
Americans don’t want this. They want criminals removed from the country. Yes. But that does not include people who immigrated here, have lived here for years, contribute to their communities, are law-abiding and want to become citizens if only there were a realistic path to citizenship. In other words, most Americans are not white supremacists or as racist and prejudiced as Trump is. Most Americans accept multiculturalism. To the extent that Mullin continues to engage in a Kristi Noem/ Greg Bovino level of ethnic cleansing, that will accelerate the growing backlash to Trump and this administration.
Recent polling shows a shift in the thinking of Americans when it comes to immigration. A record 79% now see immigration as a positive for the country, while approval for hardline enforcement techniques has fallen, with roughly two-thirds of Americans saying ICE has “gone too far”.
WHAT I SAW AT THE NO KINGS RALLIES
I was at the third No Kings protest in Sarasota, Florida this past Saturday. I was in California for the second No Kings protest. For the first protest I was in Chicago. The participants at all of these protests tend to be older Americans who show up with signs saying things like: Hate Never Made America Great, Bring Back Kindness, Elect a Rapist Expect to be Fucked, Let’s Hope Trump Takes His Medical Advice From RFK Jr, The Difference Between Iran and Viet Nam is that Trump Knew How to Get Out of Viet Nam, Follow the Money, War Crimes Won’t Hide Sex Crimes, Democracy Has No Kings.
People show up with friends. There is often dancing and singing and some participants dress up in big puffy costumes: chickens, frogs, and giant big baby Trumps that cavort around as well as costumed Handmaidens. These protests are mostly a walk with good friends and allies as people in cars honk and wave thumbs up (mostly) or some give the marchers thumbs down. Everyone at the rally is ready to talk about how worried they are about what is happening to our country and our democracy, which is reflected in the signs they put together. There are so many reasons these Americans are protesting, some of the signs I saw read: “I am protesting for too many reasons to fit on this sign!”
Why are older Americans the ones who are mostly out there protesting right now? I think it’s because we were raised in a country that taught civics in public schools. We learned about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Many of us protested the Viet Nam War.
I believe that as the war in Iran continues to expand and our soldiers die, as Trump uses our military to try to get a “win” by taking over Kharg Island or some other location to get his “Iwo Jima Mission Accomplished” images for social media, more young people will decide to join the protests. Just as with Viet Nam, the fear of being forced to fight in a wrongheaded war is, I think, already creating a backlash with younger men who voted for Trump because he promised peace and lied about it.
Most Americans including MAGAs understand how important American values and freedoms are, including free speech, the right to vote, faith in the rule of law, and the need to compromise in a democracy. “You don’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need.” That’s how a true democracy works, y’all.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement grew out of a Republican-led effort to make Americans more cynical about government and the country more divisive. After Obama was elected president, Republicans helped to create pessimism and anger about our government by imposing congressional deadlock. They did this by refusing to compromise with Democrats and by blaming the Democrats for whatever went wrong instead of taking responsibility for their contribution to the impasse they themselves created.
Trump’s approach, just like all autocrats world wide, was, is, and always will be: to divide and conquer: divide the electorate using culture war issues like trans women in girls sports, and conquer (win) by getting the most engaged and outraged voters to the polls- i.e. THEIR voters.
But the outrage is shape-shifting. The Dems have the momentum and energy, and Republicans know it. I think Republicans are planning to cheat, lie, rig and steal the next election to “win” it because they know Americans are turning against them.
Since Trump was elected in 2024, Democrats have flipped 30 state house seats and Republicans have flipped none. Trump’s own district, Mar-a-Lago, was just won by a Democrat. And Brian Nathan, who is part of a new group of blue collar Democrats running to flip state legislatures, also won a Florida state senate seat in a Republican district in West Tampa.
THE FORCE IS WITH THE DEMS
The power of outrage used to belong to Tea Party Republicans, then the MAGAs were the bearers of that standard. But today, thanks to Trump, the rising power in America is anti-Trump. Trump came in with three big promises: No new wars, lower groceries and gas prices, and exposure of the Epstein elites. He has failed miserably with all three promises.
Backlash is powerful. Trump, with his ugly, indecent, warped values, rampant destruction of government and health care, toxic masculinity, his rejection of the truth and imposition of a whitewashed version of history, his alternate universe, his “I alone can fix” everything approach which has gotten us into another Middle East war now, all of this is and more is creating monster backlash in America. Some of Trump’s own MAGA voters are joining the backlash to him as the MAGA base splits over Epstein, the cost of living and the war.
BACKLASH OF TRUMP’S OWN DOING
Americans elected Trump without understanding how important character, basic values and personality matter in a president. We are going to learn, the hard way. that giving a rogue president a huge amount of power can be bad for our lives.
Trump has the character of a mob boss- lawless, cruel and self-centered. If you elect a man who is malignant narcissist (he enjoys brutalizing others), is self-centered, is resentful, has no moral core, and wants to be adored and beloved by the rich guys and broligarchs, but refuses to listen to others who might know more (I alone can fix it), that is a recipe for disaster. Even the rich dudes who benefit as the rich grow richer will eventually be negatively affected. Trump’s businesses went bankrupt six times. Now Trump may be bankrupting the global economy.
The war in Iran has the potential to devastate our global economy as Iran wages relatively cheap asymmetric warfare: drones, blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, and information warfare. The disaster might start out not affecting you right away, but as this man’s bad judgement affects more and more in the world, we will all be affected.
A telling recent YouGov poll shows that Americans understand who Trump is and are (finally) connecting the dots about how he is damaging the country because of who he is.
A new YouGov survey asked Americans which descriptors apply to Donald Trump, which issues they trust him to handle, and how democracy is functioning in the U.S. The survey also found that many Americans see economic collapse and civil war in the not-too-distant future for the U.S.
The description Americans are most likely to say applies a lot to Donald Trump — from 22 options — is arrogant (65%). Majorities also say opportunistic (57%), reckless (56%), dishonest (54%), and corrupt (54%) are descriptions that apply a lot to Trump.
Which words do Americans say don’t apply to Trump at all? Majorities say the words compassionate (57%), inspirational (57%), honest (54%), and likable (54%) don’t apply to him at all.
Americans are more likely now than they were in March 2025 to say the following words describe Trump a lot: ineffective (46% now vs. 36% in March 2025), corrupt (54% vs. 46%), dishonest (54% vs. 47%), and hypocritical 53% vs. 46%).
America is at a tipping point. Trump has created a Big Beautiful Backlash to himself in our country.