The No Kings rallies have evolved beyond basic anti-Trump liberalism. Their messaging is sharply antiwar, anti-oligarchy, and far more substantive than the “resistance” politics of Donald Trump’s first term. The Left should be proud to participate.

We’re just over fourteen months into the second Trump presidency. During that time, the administration has crossed several bright lines in its assault on constitutional democracy. It has tried to abolish the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive fiat. It has arrested legal residents for attending protests or writing op-eds. It has flooded American cities with federal agents in a show of force to punish uncooperative local politicians. When those agents have killed protesters in cold blood, it has doubled down.

And now, it is waging a deeply unpopular war in Iran — a war that Donald Trump started without even going through the usual motions of trying to sell the American public on the idea that Iran posed some grave threat that had to be neutralized.

A fair summary of all this would be that Trump has taken several long steps toward governing like a king, who only needs to be heard and obeyed, rather than as the elected leader of a constitutional republic. And Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies gave expression to the mounting public revulsion all of this has inspired.

Organizers estimated that eight million Americans participated in more than 3,000 rallies around the country. At the one I went to in Los Angeles, there were whistles, drums, families with young children and dogs, elderly people, unionized public employees angry about cuts, and at least two protesters walking around in oversize papier-mâché Trump outfits.

Notably, the political content of many of the signs and slogans was far to the left of anything that was common in the “resistance liberalism” of Trump’s first term, or even the generic antiauthoritarianism of the “No Kings” slogan. One of the most common mass-printed signs fused that slogan with fury at the war in Iran (“No Warlords”), while references to Palestine were everywhere.

Read more at Jacobin