Defiant Democrats are embracing this weekend’s “No Kings” rallies, bashing the GOP’s attacks on the anti-Trump protests as an assault on free speech while urging voters to take to the streets.
“Showing up to express dissent against an out-of-control administration, that’s as American as motherhood, baseball and apple pie,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Friday.
The pushback comes in response to Republican leaders who have spent much of the last week trying to brand the planned protests as “hate-America” demonstrations backed by left-wing extremists vying to undermine the country’s democratic traditions.
“We call it the ‘hate America’ rally that will happen Saturday. Let’s see who shows up for that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters in Washington this week. “I bet you you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see antifa types, I bet you’ll see the Marxists on full display — the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”
Hardly backing down, Democrats have countered those broadsides by emphasizing that one foundational truth of the republic is the right to protest the government, which is enshrined in the First Amendment. With that in mind, many are not only endorsing the No Kings demonstrations on Saturday, they’re planning to join them.
“I’ll be at a rally. I’ll be holding an American flag in my hand,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “It seems that Speaker Johnson and House Republicans only believe that free speech matters if you agree with their speech.”
The rallies are the latest flashpoint in the messaging battle between the two parties over the actions of President Trump, whose second term in the White House has featured aggressive efforts to gut the government and overhaul the way Washington works, even when those gambits defy congressional intent.
Among his more controversial moves, Democrats accuse Trump of using the office to advance his family’s business interests; he’s sent military troops to police American cities; and he pressed the Justice Department to arrest his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and, most recently, John Bolton, who served as national security advisor in Trump’s first term.
The No Kings movement emerged to protest what Trump’s critics view as the country’s swift slide into authoritarianism. A host of liberal groups have united to organize more than 2,500 rallies in all 50 states on Saturday to trumpet that dissent.
Heading into the rallies, Republican leaders have sought to seize the narrative by framing the demonstrations as a protest against the country, rather than the president.
“These guys are playing to the most radical, small, and violent base in the country,” Rep. Tom Emmer (Minn.), the House Republican whip, said this week in an interview with the Fox Business Network.
“You’ll see them on Saturday on the Mall,” he added. “They just do not love this country.”
Democrats have responded with a tone of incredulity, noting that the nation was founded by rejecting a king and empowering citizens to pick their own leaders. In that light, they maintain, there’s nothing more American than a “no kings” rally.
“Just think about where we are, where millions of Americans are coming out to say, ‘We elect presidents, we don’t have kings,’ and the Republicans are like, ‘How un-American,’” said Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip. “I mean, they are so blatant with their disregard for how our system works, for how our Constitution is put together.”
The rallies come at a time when the relations in the Capitol are already strained over the impasse over government spending and the partial shutdown that’s followed. On Saturday, the standoff entered Day 18 with no resolution in sight and each party blaming the other for the deadlock.
From the White House, Trump has only exacerbated those partisan tensions, using the shutdown to fire federal workers — in lieu of traditional furloughs — and vowing to slash programs most dear to Democrats, perhaps permanently.
“The Democrats are getting killed in the shutdown, because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we’re opposed to,” Trump told reporters Tuesday at the White House. “And they’re never going to come back, in many cases.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has also gone out of her way to antagonize Democrats ahead of the weekend protests. On Thursday, she said the Democrats’ “main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals.”
“That is who the Democratic Party are catering to,” she said.
The smear was not overlooked by Jeffries, who hammered Leavitt on Friday as “sick” and “out of control.”
“I’m not sure whether she’s just demented, ignorant, a stone-cold liar, or all of the above,” Jeffries said.
Clashes between Trump and Democrats have a history as long as the president’s political career. But they escalated after Trump’s refusal to concede his election defeat in 2020, which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of Trump supporters, who stormed the building in a failed effort to reverse the election outcome.
The rampage soured relations between the parties and left Democrats leery of the Republicans’ commitment to defending the Constitution and other founding institutions — a distrust that was heightened when Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people involved in the attack on the first day of his second term.
Those old scars have resurfaced in the rhetorical brawl ahead of the “No Kings” rallies, with Democrats seeking to highlight the distinction between the right to peacefully protest, as defined by the First Amendment, and the violence of Jan. 6.
The former, Jeffries said, is “not hateful.”
“What’s hateful is what happened on Jan. 6. That was a hate-America rally, sponsored by Donald Trump and his sycophants who incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol. That’s what hate looks like,” he continued.
“What you’ll see this weekend is what patriotism looks like.”
