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This Flag Day, Find a 'No Kings' Protest Near You
American colonists revolted against George III, the “mad king” who governed them, 250 years ago. This year, a new mad king plans to celebrate his birthday on Flag Day with an expensive, over-the-top military parade, paid for by you the taxpayer. Don't stand for it.
Jun 09, 2025
“Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.”
I’ve lived in the Upper Delaware Valley for five years, first in Pike County, Pennsylvania, and now in Sullivan County, New York. My county went 58% for Trump last November, and several of my pro-Trump neighbors made remarks like that in the lead-up to the election. Deep down, they know Trump is a liar and con artist, even if they find him entertaining and thrillingly transgressive.
They didn’t take his bombast and grandiose promises seriously. Like establishing high tariffs. Abolishing the Department of Education. Arresting diverse “enemies,” including a federal judge, a congressional representative, a mayor and a student journalist. Or slashing funding for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and the National Institutes of Health. Or demolishing federal government agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Board, Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, National Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Federal Drug Administration, Occupational Safety and Health Administration or Environmental Protection Agency. Who’s going to warn you if a wildfire, tornado or hurricane is headed our way? Who will bring emergency relief if you’re unlucky enough to be in its path?
It wasn’t only my upstate neighbors or people like them elsewhere—small business owners, farmers, service sector employees, teachers and retired workers—who declared, “Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.” Sophisticated Wall Street titans wanting tax cuts and deregulation muttered the same thing and then freaked out when Trump imposed tariffs that tanked the stock market. Republican members of Congress have stood idly by and let Trump run roughshod over the limits of executive power, insisting that he is “only joking” when floating ideas like running for a third term. This may be a way to “flood the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon once put it, but such jokes often have serious consequences.
“I don’t know.” That’s what Trump responded when NBC reporter Kristen Welker asked him whether he was obliged to uphold the U.S. Constitution. They were talking about due process for migrants, but Trump’s ignorance of and contempt for the Constitution go way beyond that. Accepting the Emir of Qatar’s gift of a $400 million jet plane, for example, violates Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution, which states that “no Person holding any Office … shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” The Emir of Qatar, formerly a prince, is now a king, and is the personification of a foreign state.
Since his inauguration Trump has issued nearly 200 executive orders. Some are brutally cruel, like invoking an “invasion” to remove migrants with no criminal record to prisons in third countries, or dangerously shortsighted, like withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. Others are peevishly petty like promoting plastic drinking straws, discontinuing minting pennies or demanding higher water pressure in showerheads. As of May 23, 177 court rulings had at least temporarily paused some of these initiatives.
It’s not just that Trump is reveling in Qatar’s gift of the opulently appointed Boeing 747 (which will have to be torn to pieces if it is to be brought up to Air Force One’s security standards). It’s that Trump too aspires to be like the emir, a king with all the dictatorial powers that absolute monarchy implies. In December 2023, when Trump remarked to Sean Hannity that he would only be a dictator on “day one,” his aides dismissed the comment as a joke. Fast forward to February of this year, the White House posted a mock TIME magazine cover that showed Trump wearing a golden crown. In place of the magazine’s name was “TRUMP” and below the words, “Long live the king.”
Many of those people who used to say, “Nah, he wouldn’t really do that” will continue to insist, “C’mon, he’s just joking.” But is he?
“Make America Think Again” is what I hoped for in the days before the 2024 election. What I’d say to my neighbors today is: If you’re having trouble finding affordable housing, low-income immigrants doubling up in substandard apartments aren’t screwing you as much as those private equity firms that snapped up so many foreclosed properties following the 2008 crisis and jacked up rents and sales prices.
Like most rural counties, Sullivan County, in the western Catskills where I live, receives far more in federal funds than we pay in taxes. In our county, 37.2% of the population is on Medicaid, the third highest proportion of any county in New York State. Federal cuts to Medicaid affect not just Medicaid beneficiaries, who lose medical insurance, but also the solvency of local clinics and hospitals. When nurses and physician assistants are laid off, or health care facilities close because of falling reimbursements, the diners where employees bought their meals will also suffer.
Effects like these cascade through entire regional economies. Farmers are already complaining that the USDA’s cancellation of contracts they signed for reimbursement of infrastructure and conservation improvements on their properties has saddled them with massive debt, having spent money for planting or infrastructure and conservation improvements expecting reimbursement from the government. USDA also halted procurement programs that sourced fresh, local foods for school cafeterias. Together with the cuts to SNAP and dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), both programs that purchased huge amounts of food, farmers are reeling—and will be spending less at our region’s businesses. The kids in school will be eating less nutritious food. It’s hardly Making America Healthy Again.
At the same time that the administration is abandoning rural America, it is fighting tooth and nail to get Congress to pass enormous tax cuts for the rich, and promoting influence-buying scandals like the $TRUMP meme coin and its gala gazillionaires’ dinner. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and the DOGE boys have eviscerated entire federal agencies with impunity. Do people remember that Trump and his cronies once yapped incessantly about “Drain the Swamp”?
Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago the American colonists revolted against George III, the “mad king” who governed them. This year, a new mad king plans to celebrate his birthday on Flag Day with an expensive, over-the-top military parade, paid for by you the taxpayer.
On June 14, citizens throughout the land will take to the streets in large cities and small towns to celebrate “No Kings Day.” We will remind the Trump administration that no one is above the rule of law and declare: no thrones, no crowns, no kings.
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Could the Left Actually Win Back 'Trump Country' in West Virginia?
Oct 08, 2023
I spoke with Troy Miller, executive producer of the Zero Hour, in his capacity as a member of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia Democratic Party. We discussed the party’s recent adoption of an updated version of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.
Could it revive their political fortunes? Here’s a clue, from something I wrote several years ago and never published. It concerns McDowell County, WV, the state’s poorest county, which I researched as Bernie Sander’s speechwriter for a speech he gave there in 2016.
Troy N. Miller: WV Democrats Adopt 21st c. Economic Bill of Rights!youtu.be
The Invisibles: McDowell County, WV
Coastal journalists view rural people as an alien species – that is, when they think of them at all. When they cover them they sound like amateur entomologists pondering the consciousness of bugs under glass. Snake-handling features prominently in their coverage, even though it’s only practiced in a tiny handful of mostly informal churches.
According to the media narrative, in 2016 the reptile-loving hillbillies of journalistic imagination embraced another cold-blooded creature: Donald Trump. A typical post-election photo essay on McDowell County was headlined, “This County Gives a Glimpse at the America That Voted Trump Into Office.”[1]
Step right up, city folks! See the strange creatures with whom you share a nation!
The county’s voting results fed the media’s perennial appetite for exoticizing rural people. And yet, despite coverage like “Why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Donald Trump,”[2] the picture wasn’t nearly as clear as their coverage would have it. For one thing, McDowell County’s population was 8.2 percent Black, which isn’t all that different from the national average of 12.4 percent. And yet, Black people rarely figured in their condescending, Beverly Hillbillies-themed narrative.
They got the politics wrong, too. Here’s how McDowell County voted in the 2016 primaries:
- Donald Trump: 785
- Hillary Clinton: 817
- Bernie Sanders: 1,488
That’s right: the democratic socialist got more votes than Trump or Clinton by a factor of nearly two to one.
The general election results were as follows:
- Hillary Clinton: 1,438 (less than Sanders received in the primary)
- Donald Trump: 4,629
- Decline to participate: 11,433
That’s a decisive victory -- for political alienation. The non-participation rate was much higher than that of the country as a whole. Only 34.7 percent of eligible voters voted in McDowell’s general election, versus 56.9 percent nationwide.
“Trump country”? Nationally, 27 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump. In McDowell, that percentage was a slightly lower (if statistically insignificant) 26.45 percent.
Yes, Trump won decisively in McDowell among those who voted. But McDowell County isn’t “Trump country.” It’s “None of the Above” country.
And yet, despite the fact that Donald Trump only won the votes of about one in four voters, the county’s residents soon became the poster children for right-wing “deplorability.”
The media’s challenges didn’t begin in 2016. “Penetrating a closed, isolated society in Appalachia,” read a 2014 inside-the-news headline from the New York Times.[3] But “closed” and “isolated” from whom? Certainly not each other. A story in the Chattanooga (TN) Times Free Press emphasizes a local initiative built on community values:
“McDowell County needed to return to the message its churches preached, locals said. Maybe it was as simple as embracing the Golden Rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The charitable side of McDowell County never seems to make the national press.
Trump screwed them afterwards, of course. Things kept getting worse: drug and alcohol deaths, suicides, rampaging addiction, and a shortage of jobs. The McDowell County Commission sued three drug companies for their role in the opioid epidemic, although few people thought anything would come of it. Nothing did — but at least they tried.
Why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Donald Trump | Anywhere but Washingtonyoutu.be
McDowell County, like the country overall, is divided. But the mainstream media prefers to see a one-dimensional caricature of the county and the state. It’s true that they don’t like elitists, which is how a lot of Democrats come across to them. But they apparently like somebody who stands up to powerful interests and doesn’t talk down to them.
Anything seems like Hail Mary for West Virginia’s Democrats right now, but the Economic Bill of Rights it’s clear, easy to explain, and is opposed by the kinds of people who are despised by everyone from left to right: billionaires and corporations.
It’s definitely worth a shot, and the results will be worth watching.
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One Ugly Summer: Is Latest Trump Rally Violence Just Taste of What's to Come?
Rancor, riot police, anger, and arrests. Will 2016 be the year political events become violent by design?
Apr 29, 2016
One ugly summer.
If events in California outside a Donald Trump rally on Thursday night are any indication, the months ahead are likely to inspire more acrimony than political inspiration as billionaire media personality Donald Trump emerges as the Republican Party's presidential nominee.
While holding an event at the Orange County Fair grounds in the city of Costa Mesa, approximately twenty people were arrested after anti-Trump demonstrators clashed with the candidate's supporters and police were confronted with a hostile crowd who vowed to challenge the noxious views of Trump's campaign.
As the Guardianreports:
Outside the venue, a crowd of largely Latino but also white and African American demonstrators shouted and chanted slogans before the event, then returned as it drew to a close.
Hundreds of people formed human barricades on an approach road to a nearby freeway, blocked the Fairgrounds exits, and waved banners that said "Build a Wall Around Trump" and "Dump the Trump".
Police appeared to be caught out by the protesters and had to call in reinforcements to separate them from the Trump supporters flooding into a large parking lot after the rally.
"Whose streets? Our streets!" the demonstrators chanted as hundreds of police officers, many in riot gear, ordered them to disperse. While most remained peaceful and waved immigrants' rights banners, several of them jumped on a police patrol car parked at one corner of the Fairgrounds, smashed its windows and attempted to tip it over.
"I'm protesting because I want equal rights for everybody, and I want peaceful protest," one demonstrator, 19-year-old Daniel Lujan, told the Los Angeles Times. "I knew this was going to happen," he added. "It was going to be a riot. He deserves what he gets."
Reporters and witnesses tweeted images and video from the scene:
\u201cBack window has been smashed out of a Costa Mesa police cruiser. Protester: "I think Donald Trump did it!"\u201d— Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85 (@Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85) 1461903556
\u201cA @realDonaldTrump supporter just got punched in the face as a scuffle broke out in the street:\u201d— Jeremy Diamond (@Jeremy Diamond) 1461905288
\u201chttps://t.co/msfXtWoMTi\u201d— Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85 (@Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85) 1461904025
\u201c# Trump protesters take over intersection near fairgrounds\u201d— Gina Ferazzi (@Gina Ferazzi) 1461900421
\u201cPeople jumping on police car outside @realDonaldTrump rally. Window smashed few minutes earlier\u201d— Jeremy Diamond (@Jeremy Diamond) 1461903932
\u201cMore pictures from the chaotic scene outside the @realDonaldTrump rally tonight: https://t.co/b1VDAQi12a\u201d— Jeremy Diamond (@Jeremy Diamond) 1461913962
\u201cArianna Perez, 19, with the sign: "We could be peaceful & do things different, but we wouldn't get our voice heard."\u201d— Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85 (@Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85) 1461904676
Though local law enforcement had invited neighboring agencies to assist them and established an emergency operations center to monitor and control the crowds, the Times reports, "it was apparent to some that the sizable police presence was wrestling with a larger crowd than expected."
Megan Iyall, an out-of-towner who attended the rally, told the newspaper, "It definitely got out of control. I shouldn't feel this unsafe."
Though nothing is certain yet, each passing primary contest shows Trump closing in on securing his party's nomination. As a Trump nomination has steadily evolved from vague possibility to reality, numerous critics have warned about the sinister fascist undertones (as well as the overt xenophobia, nationalism, sexism, and racism) of his personality and those who support him.
For his part, the candidate appeared pleased with the evening, tweeting:
\u201cThank you Costa Mesa, California! 31,000 people tonight with thousands turned away. I will be back! #Trump2016\u201d— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1461903849
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