By MEIKE EIJSBERG

 

WASHINGTON, 09 April. - (ANA) - Last Saturday, the third wave of anti-Trump “No Kings” marches took place, in one of the largest mobilisations in modern US history.

 

As many as nine million people took to the streets over policies imposed by the US president, including his war with Iran and crackdown on immigration, and the rising cost of living.

 

Over the weekend of March 28-29, demonstrations sprang up in every US state, in more than 3,300 individual protests.

 

Despite the scale of the protests, Donald Trump and his administration accuse those taking part of being “Antifa” or “radical-Left lunatics”.

 

And the data suggest the marches are unlikely to provoke any real change, even as the midterm election season takes shape.

 

Liz McKenna, a Harvard University sociologist, told NPR: “We’ve seen more people take to the streets, not just in the US but around the world, by the millions, and in many, if not most, of those cases, the protests have not achieved their stated aims.”

 

In an opinion piece for the Boston Globe, Prof McKenna said that although the No Kings protests were clearly popular, “mass protests have increasingly failed to deliver changes in policy or political leadership”.

 

She contrasted that with Right-wing movements, which organise relatively few protests but “systematically [build] leadership capacity and organisations in every state”.

 

Prof McKenna said the No Kings protesters feared to channel their voices in a direction that would be heard by the most powerful, calling the movement “a paradox of scale without power”.

 

 

 

 

Also working against the No Kings movement is that, despite its increasing size, it represents a loose coalition of grievances.

 

In the most recent marches, Democrats had hoped to capitalise on unease caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran, but the messaging seemed confused, without clear demands.

 

For instance, in Florida, women wearing Handmaid’s Tale costumes protested against Mr Trump’s strikes on Iran – an Islamic republic that represses women and treats them as second-class citizens.

 

In Kansas, signs reading “pro-America, anti-Trump” and “we no longer have a difference in opinion, we have a difference in morality”, were held alongside crude jokes about politicians lacking penises.

 

Experts point out that the protests against authoritarian rule, racism and xenophobia are spearheaded by educated, white women in their 40s.

 

Prof McKenna, who attended one of the No Kings marches herself last month, wrote: “Building a big enough coalition means moving beyond self-selecting activists to engage people across their differences.

 

“Large demonstrations are essential for energising the base, but they can also alienate the very people those movements need to persuade.”

 

 

 

 

Experts say the White House does see the marches as a threat, and this is demonstrated by its insistence that they are meaningless.

 

During the No Kings protests in October, Mr Trump posted an AI video of himself in a crown dumping faeces on protesters from a plane.

 

JD Vance, the US vice-president, posted a different AI video of Mr Trump crowning himself, which then showed prominent Democrats kneeling.

 

Abigail Jackson, the White House spokesman, told The Telegraph: “The only people who care about these Trump derangement therapy sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them.”

 

Mike Marinella, a Republican congressional spokesman, called marches “hate America rallies”.

 

Critics of No Kings from across the political spectrum have pointed out that Mr Trump was democratically elected.

 

 

 

 

Kieran Doyle, North America research manager at ACLED, the conflict monitoring service, told The Telegraph: “In large part, No Kings got to be so big because the first one had exceptionally lucky timing.”

 

The first protest took place on June 14, 2025, intentionally coinciding with Mr Trump’s birthday parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US military, and drew around five million people.

 

A week before that, anti-ICE protests had taken over Los Angeles, with Mr Trump deploying the National Guard to police marches that in some cases became riots.

 

“[That sparked] fears of a greater authoritarian turn and an outrage that drove people to protest,” Mr Doyle said.

 

A second No Kings protest took place on Oct 18, 2025, and was attended by six to seven million people.

 

The growth reflected both momentum and escalation, with each successive protest building on the last.

 

Mr Doyle said: “In part, this is because the administration has continued to take actions that are motivating millions of people to protest – most recently the ICE operation in Minneapolis in which federal law enforcement agents shot and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good.”

 

A recent YouGov poll of more than 1,600 people showed that Mr Trump’s overall approval rating had hit a record low of 39.6 per cent.

 

Approval of his handling of the Iran conflict was even lower, at one point dipping to 30 per cent.

 

 

 

 

If a future No Kings protest coincides with another of Mr Trump’s policy announcements, executive orders or Truth Social posts that prompt anger, attendance could be even higher, experts suggested.

 

“The Midterm elections later this year may provide such a flashpoint,” Mr Doyle said.

 

But whether bigger numbers would translate to real change is questionable, in particular because the marches fail to engage with local powers.

 

Scott Warren, a political researcher at Johns Hopkins University, told The Telegraph: “The rallies’ approaches have been impressive displays of getting people out [but] the more important work you’ve seen throughout history is getting folks to organise, to establish constituencies, to engage locally. That is what needs to happen.”

 

Prof McKenna wrote: “Successful movements must build durable bases of leaders and teams at the state level who do year-round organising, not just build voter mobilisation.”

 

Data and history teach us that size alone is no guarantee of effect: of the 15 protests in US history to draw more than one million participants, only a third have led to measurable political change.

 

Before the first No Kings protest took place in June 2025, the attendance record was held by Hands Across America, a 1986 event organised to raise awareness and funds for the homeless.

 

An estimated five million people formed a human chain stretching from New York to California.

 

The runner-up was the 2017 Women’s March, which inspired a record number of women to run for office. Some 4.6 million took part.

 

The 1970 Earth Day protest drew between one to two million protesters and helped prompt the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

However, these protests each focused on a single issue, group or policy while the No Kings marches are more diffuse.

 

No Kings activists cannot seem to decide whether they want to reverse Mr Trump’s policies, encourage people to vote differently in the midterm elections, or have the president removed from office.

 

“I think the reality is that there isn’t much that sets No Kings three apart from the other two,” Mr Doyle said.

 

“It’s coming at a relative lull in protest activity over the past month or so, continues to have the same broad anti-Trump rhetoric, and has largely not changed tactics since No Kings two.”

 

If the protests continue to grow, they may begin to approach the oft-cited 3.5 per cent threshold associated with successful mass movements.

 

Political science research developed by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan suggests that non-violent movements that have the support of at least 3.5 per cent of a population always succeed in triggering change.

 

At the most generous attendance estimate of nine million, last week’s No Kings encompassed around 2.7 per cent of America’s population.

 

But it is worth noting that the 3.5 per cent figure was arrived at by studying uprisings in authoritarian regimes rather than liberal democracies, Mr Doyle added.

 

“So 3.5 per cent isn’t a magic number which forces regime change, and it’s not clear that reaching the 3.5 per cent threshold in No Kings four would change much of what we’re seeing so far.”

 

Despite their size, the protests appear to exist in an echo chamber and seem destined to fail to motivate anyone who would normally vote for Mr Trump to do otherwise.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/09 April 2026 - - -