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In a day or two, I’ll have a first-hand account from one of the Los Angeles No Kings protests, but for today I thought I’d do a big-picture post on the demonstrations.

When you are geolocating at the protest based on inflatable animals

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— Asha Rangappa (@asharangappa.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 12:50 PM

First off, the numbers were huge.

After adding new data to our spreadsheet, our central estimate of turnout for the No Kings Day protests yesterday has risen to 5.5 million, with an upper bound of 8.7 www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...

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— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) October 19, 2025 at 6:15 AM

Somewhere around 2% of the population of the the United States showed up for a peaceful Saturday afternoon.  

 

Among the many remarkable things about the turnout, perhaps the most notable is the fact that the number is growing when, by most standards, it should have shrunk. The first No Kings Day was, in large part, a counter-protest prompted by anger and embarrassment over Trump attempting to throw himself a North Korean–style military parade for his birthday.

This was just a generic Saturday afternoon in October of 2025. 

 

As before, the where was often even more surprising 

Take note of all these people turning out for protests in small towns in red states. Remember them the next time you’re inclined to write an area off because “they voted for this.”

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 9:29 AM

Dothan, AL, voted for Trump by almost two to one.

In Missoula, Montana, the Missoulian features a sweeping aerial shot of the rally:

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— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 7:28 AM

OKC was just one of 19 cities in OK to have a No Kings rally. These are the others: Tulsa, Norman, Lawton, Stillwater, Ardmore, Durant, Idabel, Pauls Valley, Ada, McAlester, Chandler, Guthrie, Enid, Ponca City, Bartlesville, Tahlequah, Muskogee, and Miami. www.newson6.com/story/68f39d...

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— Ian Carrillo (@iansociologo.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 12:21 PM

This is Idaho 💙

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— ✨🦋𝓢𝓗𝓔𝓘𝓛𝓐 🦋✨ (@sheilaharris.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 4:26 PM

 

Perhaps by this point, we should not be surprised that the NYT didn't live up to the journalistic standards of the Dothan Eagle.

Apparently nothing big happened today since the top story on the NYT website is Friday's release of George Santos.

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— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 10:11 PM

Those with sharp eyes might detect a subtle difference in NYT play last month of an event in one city, w 100,000+ attendees, versus play this morning of some 2500+ events w many millions of attendees, in all 50 states. See if you can spot it! /s Then you can find today's story on p A23

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— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 7:35 AM

Here's a gift link to the New York Times' coverage of the initial Tea Party rallies in April 2009 which inspired the media to treat it like a massive movement. Check out how tiny the crowds were: Philly: 200 DC: "several hundred" Boston: 500 Austin: 1,000 Houston: 2,000

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 5:55 AM

It's not just that the NYT chose to ignore the massive protests -- 300,000 in their city alone! -- but that the piece they *did* run on the front page about Democrats is almost cartoonishly bad in how much it whines that they're just not doing what A.G. Sulzberger LXVII wants them to do.

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 7:27 AM

To their credit, the NYT wasn't the worst. 

Across all the major outlets — NYT, WSJ, WaPo, LAT, CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News, NBC, CNBC, NPR, Bloomberg — the only outlet without a No Kings story on its home page is CBS News. For every other outlet, it's near the top. Even Fox News is running with "Nationwide unrest looms as thousands mobilize"

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— ◥◤CDFI, Frankenstein (@kristoncapps.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 10:39 AM

The Republican reaction ranged from whiny...

Have to admit, being called rhythm-less by a Republican senator from Utah is a bit of an accomplishment.

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— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 5:14 PM

Seriously though, not being hip in this context is kinda the point and Lee is kinda an idiot for playing into it. Old, uncool, white people waving American flags completely undercut the Republican narrative.

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— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 5:35 PM

With the help of a sensationalistic, compliant, and in some cases racist mainstream press, the Republicans were able to portray the broad-based, overwhelmingly peaceful BLM demonstrations as violent riots. The Portlandia/Spirit Halloween protest aesthetic makes that virtually impossible.

— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 5:54 PM

Trump on No Kings: "It's a joke. I looked at the people. They are not representative of this country. And I looked at all the brand new signs I guess paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics. We're checking it out. The demonstrations were very small. And the people were whacked out."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 19, 2025 at 6:09 PM

We’ve known for a while but this makes it official: Trump is a shit-poster.

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— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 2:30