On the finish of per week when President Donald Trump sent Marines and the California National Guard to Los Angeles to quell protests, Individuals across the country turned out in huge numbers to protest Trump’s makes an attempt to increase his energy. In rallies on June 14, 2025, organized below the banner “No Kings,” millions of protesters decried Trump’s immigration roundups, cuts to authorities packages and what many described as his rising authoritarianism.
The protests were largely peaceful, with comparatively few incidents of violence.
Protests and the interactions between protesters and authorities authorities have a long history in the United States. From the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights movement, LBGTQ Stonewall rebellion, the Tea Party movement and Black Lives Matter, public protest has been an important side of efforts to advance or shield the rights of residents.
However protests can even produce other results.
In the last few months, massive numbers of anti-Trump protesters have come out within the streets throughout the U.S., on events just like the April 5 Hands Off protests in opposition to security internet price range cuts and authorities downsizing. Lots of these protesters assert they’re defending American democracy.
The Trump administration has decried these protesters and the concept of protest more generally, with the president just lately calling protesters “troublemakers, agitators, insurrectionists.” Just a few days earlier than the June 14 navy parade in Washington, President Donald Trump said of potential protesters: “that is people who hate our nation, however they are going to be met with very heavy pressure.”
Trump’s present response is harking back to his harsh condemnation of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summertime of 2020. In 2022, former Secretary of Protection Mark Esper stated that Trump had asked about shooting protesters collaborating in demonstrations after the 2020 capturing of George Floyd.
As co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium, which compiles data on every day’s protests within the U.S., I perceive that protests typically can advance the targets of the protest motion. Additionally they can form the targets and habits of federal or state governments and their leaders.
Alternative for expressing or suppressing democracy
Protests are an expression of democracy, bolstered by the precise to free speech and “the precise of the individuals peaceably to assemble” within the First Modification of the U.S. Constitution.
On the similar time, clamping down on protests is one method to rebut challenges to authorities insurance policies and energy.
For a president intent on the additional centralization of government energy, and even establishing a dictatorship, protest suppression provides a number of opportunities and pitfalls.
Widespread, well-attended demonstrations can symbolize a mass motion in favor of democracy or different points in addition to function a possibility to increase participation even additional. Giant occasions usually result in vital press protection and loads of social media posting. The protests could heighten protesters’ emotional connection to the motion and improve fundraising and membership numbers of sponsoring organizations.
Although it’s not an ironclad legislation, analysis reveals that when at least 3.5% of the total population is concerned in an illustration, protesters often prevail over their governments. That included the Chilean movement in the 1980s that toppled longtime dictator Augusto Pinochet. Chileans used not solely huge demonstrations but additionally a wide array of creative tactics like a coordinated slowdown of driving and strolling, neighbors banging pots outdoors houses concurrently, and singing collectively.
Protests are hardly ever solely about protesting. Organizers often search to contain individuals in lots of different actions, whether or not that’s contacting their elected officers, writing letters to the editor, registering to vote or operating a meals drive to assist susceptible populations.
On this mind-set, participation in a significant avenue protest like No Kings is a gateway into deeper activism.
Dangers and alternatives
After all, protest leaders can’t management everybody in or adjoining to the motion.
Different protesters with a distinct agenda, or agitators of any kind, can insert themselves right into a motion and use confrontational techniques like violence in opposition to property or legislation enforcement.
In a single distinguished instance from Los Angeles, somebody set a number of self-driving cars on fire. Different Los Angeles examples included some protesters’ throwing things like water bottles at officers or partaking in vandalism. Cops additionally use coercive measures corresponding to firing chemical irritants and pepper balls at protesters.
When leaders wish to focus government energy and set up an autocracy, where they rule with absolute power, protests in opposition to these strikes may result in a mass rejection of the chief’s plans. That’s what nationwide protest teams like 50501 and Indivisible are hoping for and why they aimed to end up thousands and thousands of individuals on the No Kings protests on June 14.
However whereas the Trump administration faces dangers from protests, it additionally might even see alternatives.
Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images
Misrepresenting and quashing dissent
Protests can function a justification for a nascent autocrat to additional undermine democratic practices and establishments.
Take the latest demonstrations in Los Angeles protesting the Trump administration’s immigration raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Autocrats seek to politicize unbiased establishments just like the armed forces. The Los Angeles protests supplied the chance for that. Trump despatched troops from the California Nationwide Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to comprise the protests. That home deployment of the navy is uncommon however not unprecedented in U.S. history.
And the deployment was ordered against the backdrop of the president’s partisan June 10 speech at a U.S. navy base in North Carolina. The navy personnel in attendance cheered and applauded lots of Trump’s political statements. Each the speech and viewers reactions to it appeared to violate the U.S. navy norm of nonpartisanship.
This deployment of navy personnel in a U.S. metropolis additionally dovetails with the growth of government energy attribute of autocratic leaders. It’s uncommon that presidents name up the Nationwide Guard; the Guard is historically below the management of the state governor.
But the White Home disregarded that Los Angeles’ mayor and California’s governor both objected to the deployment.
The state sued the Trump administration over the deployment. The initial court decision sided with California officers, declaring the federal authorities motion “unlawful.” The Trump administration has appealed.
Autocrats search to unfold disinformation. Within the case of the Los Angeles protests, the Trump administration’s narrative depicted a chaotic, gang-infested city with violence everywhere. Reviews on the ground refuted these characterizations. The protests, largely peaceable, have been confined to a small a part of the town, about a 10-block area.
Extra usually, a robust government chief and their supporters usually wish to quash dissent. Within the Los Angeles instance, doing that has ranged from the navy deployment itself to targeting journalists covering the story to arresting and charging prominent opponents like SEIU President David Huerta or shoving and handcuffing U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.
The distinction on June 14 was hanging. In Washington, D.C., Trump reviewed a parade of troops, tanks and planes, leaning right into a show of American navy energy.
On the similar time, from rainy Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to sweltering Yuma, Arizona, thousands and thousands of protesters embraced their First Modification rights to oppose the president. It completely illustrated the dynamic driving deep political division at present: the manager concentrating energy whereas a large section of the individuals resist.
