The No Kings protest in the U.S. on Saturday, June 14, was extraordinary. There were more than 2,000 demonstrations in large cities from Los Angeles to New York to small towns in red states and blue states. The demonstrations were nonviolent and spirited and featured millions of homemade, creative signs with personal messages to support democracy and oppose Trump’s goal to destroy American democracy.

In my small city, there were people packed on both sides of a commercial street for two miles, with people chanting and waving flags and drivers honking horns in support. The local police were supportive and helpful. The crowd ranged from people in their eighties to teens and young families, including large numbers of military vets from Vietnam to the Gulf Wars and Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a multiracial and multiethnic crowd. It was all of us.

The power of nonviolence

It turns out that the professors at Harvard found very useful data on the social and political power of mass nonviolence action. The data shows clearly that persistent mass nonviolence of at least 3.5 percent of the population turns out to be irresistible in bringing change. Examples are many and include, in 1986 the People Power Movement of peaceful protest and prayer in the Philippines, toppling the Marcos regime in four days. In the nation of Georgia, the bloodless 2003 Rose Revolution stormed parliament buildings, holding flowers in their hands, and ousted Eduard Shevardnadze. In 2019, the presidents of both Sudan and Algeria stepped down after decades in office following mass peaceful protests.

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, in Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, examined in detail the dynamics of success and failure of 323 social movements from 1900 to 2006, examining why they succeeded and why they failed. Nonviolent movements were twice as effective as violent movements. Violence is much more likely to fail.

Nonviolent resistance helps encourage moral and physical involvement and commitment. Higher levels of participation contribute to resilience, create opportunities for tactical innovation and civic action, and shift loyalty among opponents, including members of the military establishment. Successful nonviolent resistance strengthens peaceful democracies and is less likely to regress into civil war.

In the U.S., the No Kings movement demonstrated peacefully while there were mass murders of Democratic politicians in Minnesota by a deranged Trump supporter with a long list of those to be killed. The ultra-violence of Hamas in Gaza made it easier for the Netanyahu regime to bomb and shoot many thousands of Palestinian children and innocent civilians. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies less likely to regress into civil war.

Trump on war as peace

On June 25th, in the wake of bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities in celebration, Donald Trump, with glee, brought out a golden oldie from 1980, Bomb Iran by Vince Vance and the Valiants. Some classic lyrics:

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
Bomb Iran, Let’s take a stand
Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks
Tell the Ayatollah, “Gonna put you in a box!”

Trump supporters nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize after his bombing of Iran. The need for the bombing was justified by unsupported Israeli claims of imminent operational Iranian nukes. Trump had walked away in 2018 from Obama’s successful deal with Iran, the International Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to limit nuclear development and mandated strict inspections.

The JCPOA went into effect in January 2016, sharply restricting Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment plans. Five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) and Germany—collectively known as the P5+1 made the JCPOA function.

The consequences of Trump’s 2025 attack on Iran make it clear that for the Iranian regime that a nuclear weapon would be essential for their survival to prevent further attacks by Israel and the U.S.

The new determination of Iran to build a bomb to stop Israeli and Trump-driven U.S. aggression now includes large amounts of secretly hidden enriched uranium. Whether an Iranian bomb is months or a year, or several years away is unknown.

Chaos

An astounding feature of the second Trump regime has been Trump’s desire to staff his administration with friendly faces, Fox news hosts, yes, women and men, flunkies and incompetents, and some administrative staff whose goal is to give Trump complete power over all aspects of the US government.

There is catastrophic danger from the consequences of Trump’s policies, like denying the existence of climate change and accelerating coal and fossil fuel development.

The Trumps have not merely celebrated stripping women of abortion rights. The U.S. has become the most dangerous place for a mother to survive childbirth. The brutal and cruel is now the new normal in Blue and Red States.

Trump has slashed government staff, broadly reducing the government’s ability to deal with problems of all sorts, from healthcare for veterans and air crashes and near misses that have become “normal”. Data from agencies across the government has been plundered and put in the hands of Doge for their use and manipulation. The Trump administration has instituted a reign of terror focused on brown skinned people speaking Spanish to arrest and deport without legal rights.

America has squandered its soft power and reputation. The United States is now a sad and dangerous place. The U.S. is no longer a place that travelers want to visit or for kids to go to school. In the United States, it is now common for bounty hunters dressed similarly to masked ICE agents to kidnap brown skinned Spanish speakers and make money by turning them over to ICE for deportation. That’s life in Trump’s America.

Trump is clearly losing his mental acuity. He is a man who watches Fox News and other right-wing TV. He does not read. He trusts his gut and listens to people who tell him what he wants to hear. He lies constantly as a sport. He is easy to flatter and manipulate.

At the Nato Summit, he was happy to be called Daddy and happy that the Nato allies have decided to boost military spending to 5% annually because they can no longer trust Trump and the United States.

The U.S. no longer looks to Europe for military sales. Instead, Trump has finalized a 142 billion dollar deal in May 2025 with the Saudi Crown Price providing state of the art war fighting equipment from a dozen US defense contractors.

The U.S. has become a high-priced, inefficient, and rule-bound system. Yankee ingenuity has been choked. China and the EU have become the global leaders in electrification and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They are the leaders in high-speed rail, electric cars, electric planes, and much more.

The U.S. under Trump is committed to more coal and oil development, as temperatures above 100 degrees are the new normal. Trump’s greed, theft, and limitless desire call for fundamental healing change before it is too late for all of us.

Trump has convinced the vast majority of Americans from Blue and Red states, other than the MAGA core, do not want a Trump dictatorship to replace our democracy.

Conclusion

No Kings is just the beginning of resistance to Trump. The path is an increasing number of millions in the streets embracing nonviolent resistance, leading to the collapse of the Trump regime. This can be the conventional defeat in the 2026 midterm election, given new democratic power in the House and Senate. That's conventional wisdom. But there are substantial additional related options. There is impeachment, unlikely given Trump’s current power, but that might change quickly as the economy collapses, millions are in the street, and Trump becomes even more erratic. Another path is Section 4 of the 25th amendment on presidential inability that could allow JD Vance and the Cabinet to take action if the shit hits the fan.

There are other emerging new paths that can combine or replace electoral transformation. As Trump nationalized California’s National Guard and sent the Marines into LA, Governor Newsom noted that, as Trump threatened to withhold federal money from California. The state pays 83 billion more to the feds than it gets back. “Maybe it’s time to cut that off,” Newsom concluded.

Rebellion is beyond the Governor. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas supported withholding federal taxes. Rivas also dismissed Trump’s rumored grant cancellations as “unconstitutional and vindictive.” Rivas said, “We’re the nation’s economic engine and the largest donor state, and deserve our fair share.”

State Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire vowed to defend the State from “this President’s illegal and unprecedented attack on our state”. Similar sentiments are being discussed in other blue states. There is a developing state resistance from below

Another fundamental power of states is the use of the Constitutional provision for states to implement a new Constitutional Convention under Article 5 of the Constitution. It’s triggered when 34 state legislatures (two-thirds) apply for a new Constitutional Convention. This is a mechanism to recast Federal rules to dramatically remove power not only from a dictatorial Trump, but to empower states and increase state efficacy and power.

The existing Constitutional model can be transformed constitutionally under Article 5 to limit Federal power and strengthen states directly. Wealthy states, for example, can share income collectively among and between the states with limited or no recourse to a dictatorial Federal government. We can start by slashing the trillion-dollar war budget to an affordable defense budget in an era of accessible global data and instant communication. Rich states help support poorer states, and both rich and poor still end up with more net income by slashing many billions of bloated Federal expenditures.

We can structure a new cooperative working agreement among states. It’s time now to develop the outline for a new peaceful and prosperous ecological 21st-century constitutional order. We must persist in the defense of democracy. The world now operates in microseconds and crunches terabytes of data. States, not Washington, matter. Washington operates at 19th-century speed and passes bloated and corrupt budgets as the rich get richer and ordinary people and small business suffers.

The United States can embrace a new imperative for freedom. Renewal and healing adventure beckon.