Commentary by Jerry Lanson
I confess. While millions marched and protested nationwide Saturday, many beneath dark and drizzly skies, I was putting up streamers, filling ice chests and arranging flowers and food for our granddaughter’s high school graduation party.
My brother, niece and friends picked up the slack and assuaged my guilt a bit by joining rallies before we gathered at our house. But I won’t fully right my equilibrium until I am out protesting again next week, and the week after and for many more to come.
Saturday clearly was cathartic. It energized the resistance and dwarfed Trump’s Flag Day birthday parade. Still the challenge is to sustain that energy for the long haul. And it will be long.
It seems clear that No Kings Day made a difference. In my state, two US House representatives, Seth Moulton and Ayanna Pressley, held town meetings Monday in its wake, sharply criticizing President Donald Trump’s actions, The Boston Globe reports. After his event, Moulton acknowledged to The Globe, “there is a degree to which some Democrats seem to be afraid to speak up or to speak out.”
Pressley told a separate gathering, that “this administration is lawless, and we are trying to beat them with the rule of law.”
Though many judges have stood up to Trump, their rulings and injunctions are temporary and often put on hold as they slowly make their way up the ladder of federal courts. Citizens, however, are not constrained as to how quickly or frequently they can mobilize and exercise their rights to protest peacefully. And the mass protests of citizens, in turn, could motivate more Democratic representatives like Moulton and Pressley to find their voices and pressure Republican representatives to at least temper their open-ended, rubber-stamp approval of whatever Trump and his most heinous staffers want.
This will demand stamina, week to week and month to month, as the headlines in just the last few days since the weekend rallies demonstrates. Here is a cross-section:
On health
• “A Senate Bill Would Make Deep Cuts to Medicaid” – The New York Times, June 16.
• “Dismissed Members of CDC Vaccine Committee call RFK Jr.’s actions ‘destabilizing.’” Associated Press, June 16.
On immigration
• “Trump Officials Reverse Guidance Exempting Farms, Hotels from Immigration Raids,” The Washington Post, June 16.
• “L.A. ICE Raids Leave People Scared to Leave the House …,” Los Angeles Times, June 17.
• NYC Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander Arrested by ICE: City Officials Demand Release.” Fox News, June 17.
On Consolidating Power
• “Trump Fires Democratic Commissioner of Independent Agency that Oversees Nuclear Safety,” Los Angeles Times, June 16.
• “White House Eyes Rarely Used Power to Override Congress on Spending,” The New York Times, June 17.
On International Relations
• “Trump Renews Embrace of Putin Amid Rift with Allies,” New York Times, June 16
On Corruption
• “’I Have Never Seen Such Open Corruption’ Trump’s Crypto Deals and Loosening of Rules Shock Observers,” The Guardian, June 17
This, of course, is a snapshot. They headlines come fast and furious.
Perhaps the most ominous and hideous has been the reaction of Trump and some other Republicans to the cold-blooded murders in their home of former Minnesota Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband just hours before the No Kings protests and Flag Day parade in Washington began to gear up. Though Hortman has been ulogized as a special legislator, even by some of her Republican state colleagues, her death was dismissed in a blizzard of social media lies by some nationally elected Republicans.
And the president? A headline in the political journal The Hill today read, “Trump says he won’t call ‘whacked-out’ [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz after Minnesota lawmaker shootings.” (Walz described Hortman as “the most consequential speaker in state history.” She reportedly frequently worked across the aisle with Republicans.)
Also today, according to The Washington Post, U.S. Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota pushed back against Senate colleague Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, for spreading lies about Hortman’s murder. “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on Social Media. In fact, police have arrested a suspect whose roommate identified as a Trump supporter. He allegedly had a long list of Democrats in multiple states he sought to assassinate.
The Post reported that Smith confronted Lee in person in the Senate, a rarity in today’s bitterly divided chamber, and said later, “He indicated that he, of course, meant no harm. But, of course, these things do cause harm. They hurt people.”
With the world teetering near the brink of widespread war and the Trump Administration doubling down on its violent and often masked immigration arrests, it’s difficult to assess where we are, let alone where we are heading.
It is clear, however, the public has begun to awaken and that harmful economic measures such as Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and tariffs likely will hasten disenchantment with his presidency.
As a Washington Post headline stated today, June 17,”GOP Budget Bill Faces Nearly 2-to-1 Opposition, With Many Unaware: Poll. (For the unaware, this is the bill that among other things will take away the health care and food stamps of millions of Americans, and sharply increase tax breaks for the rich.)
Staying visible in the streets in peaceful protest will help alert the unaware, often isolated in their personalized social media worlds. It may be the best way to counter alternate realities and ignorance.
For those who participated for the first time on No Kings Day, welcome. I hope to see you out there again soon. As one of my signs reads: “Democracy is Under Assault: Join Us!”
Lanson’s commentary first appeared in his Substack From the Grassroots.