AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, UNFORGIVABLE, COUNTDOWN

Who would have anticipated that the annual CPACKKK gathering in Texas on March 27 was to give the NO KINGS! rallies an extra boost on the Friday preceding their impressive worldwide Saturday gatherings. Conservative Trump loyalist, Matt Schlapp, attempted to rouse the CPAC crowd by asking if they wished to see impeachment hearings against the president and he was taken aback by the cheers from the assembled group. Schlapp immediately responded, “No! That was the wrong answer!” Presenting the question once more brought forth a mix of responses, providing for an awkward moment and revealing the growing divisions within the Republican Party — in particular over the decision to go to war against Iran. Trump’s ‘America First‘ platform has run aground, getting backlash for not adhering to his emphasis on reducing foreign entanglements.

The president decided against attending the Grapevine gathering, and that combined with the drop in his approval ratings, seems to have affected the attendance seen in previous years. MS NOW reporter, Rosa Flores, saw the usual proliferation of MAGA-hawkers’ booths, but with thin crowds in those  areas. Show host, Chris Jansing of MS NOW, asked Flores what the overall mood was like and the camera showed empty booths and one seller staring at his cellphone. Flores said that in her on-site interviews, most respondents don’t believe the Trump disapproval ratings as seen on Fox News, and that higher oil prices are Biden’s fault, with the Iran “excursion” being “what’s best for America.” CPAC host, Mercedes Schlapp, in her on-stage interview with border czar Tom Homan, asked him to compare the current administration with the Biden years. She then stopped the conversation to face the audience, scolding them with, “I’m not hearing a ‘boo’ when I say ‘Joe Biden,’ people! Come on! We do audience participation here!” That brought jeering from the crowd, but Homan’s mention of the former president as he explained the illegal alien disparities between the two regimes failed to garner a response — probably watching Klan videos on their phones!

Turnout numbers have yet to be confirmed for the NO KINGS! protests but organizers expected as many as nine million would participate for the third event (but eight million ain’t so bad), a marked increase over the June and October events of last year. Minneapolis was the designated flagship city, which attracted over 200,000 demonstrators, who heard speakers Tim Walz, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Jane Fonda, and a special performance by Bruce Springsteen covering his musical tribute to slain protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The 3,300 organized protests across the US, and in several larger cities around the world, prompted White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson to dismiss the event with, “The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them.”

Jon Clemence writes on Quora that prior to protest marches, the naysayers claim that “nothing will be achieved, so why bother?” So, Clemence decided to study just how effective such events are, and what is achieved. He found that historically, a 53% success rate of achieving goals through nonviolence — though since 2010 in this digital age, the rate has dropped to about 34%, but nonviolence is the most viable path for systemic change. Researchers found that once mass protests grow to a size of 3.5% of the population (12 million protestors in the context of the US population), the success rate is 100%! Protests provide public pressure that can influence legal and local victories. In 2025, the ACLU took 239 legal actions against the Trump administration and won 64% of cases. Protests like NO KINGS! send a strong signal to business leaders and media executives that remaining loyal to the Trump regime could cost them in terms of business outcomes — losing money!

Protests are an easy entry point, helping people become involved in political activism in other needle-moving ways. Sixty-six percent of RSVPs for last weekends’s NO KINGS! event were from people who live outside of major urban centers. It’s no longer just a ‘liberal’ thing — if it ever was. People in conservative and battleground districts are now pushing back. So, Clemence asks if the NO KINGS! protest will have any effect on the Trump administration? Perhaps not directly, he assumes, but it does not matter as long as it angers the president. However, it does matter as a part of the litany of actions that, taken together, can affect change; it tells anyone in power that supporting Trump is a losing strategy; and, it shows anyone in MAGA who still has a functioning brain that they are also supporting a loser. He challenges anyone to go ahead and tell him that what he and millions of others are doing is pointless — just understand that the data doesn’t agree with that charge.

Among the doubters of the effectiveness of protests are The New York Times, which questioned whether the throngs were diverse enough, the message focused enough, and whether the participants have “mastered the harder work of organizing,” calling the rallies “collective therapy” fretting over the lack of a single demand. Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal’s op-ed by a New York psychotherapist compared the protests to “bad group therapy,” arguing that the protests offer validation without challenging participants’ thinking. The Raw America blog says Rupert’s message is to ‘go home,’ as the mainstream media tells you ‘don’t believe your own eyes,’ in light of the fact that the movement is growing — spreading into Red States, crossing oceans to more than a dozen countries. Raw America believes nobody went home feeling as if they’d just done therapy — they went home feeling like they were part of something real, because they are! The world isn’t confused about what is happening in America. They see it clearly. The only ones who can’t seem to see it are the billionaires who own our media.

Brad Reed of Common Dreams reports that Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, is calling for a nationwide general strike for May 1, modeled on the day of action residents of Minnesota organized in January against the brutality carried out by federal immigration enforcement officials. Levin appeared at the NO KINGS! rally in Minneapolis, praising protesters in the face of the ICE siege earlier this year, and announcing that Indivisible wishes to replicate it nationwide. “It is a tactical escalation…an economic show of force. We are saying, ‘No business as usual, no work, no school, no shopping.’ We’re going to show up and say we’re putting workers over billionaires and kings. We are going to build on that courage, that sacrifice, to demonstrate that regular people are the greatest threat to fascism in this country.” Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg says the goal of a nationwide strike is to send “a clear message: we demand a government that invests in our communities, not one that enriches billionaires, fuels endless war, or deploys masked agents to intimidate our neighbors.”

Many see Trump looking for scapegoats in his cabinet to bail him out of his troubles, with Kristi Noem being the first to fall with revelations of her wild, self-aggrandizing spending in her post as Homeland Security Secretary — her “grifts — er, gifts that keep on giving,” says Lisa Needham at Daily Kos. The $220 million contract for her “horsey ad,” blame for which she tried to shift to the president, sealed her fate. Noem had near-complete authority to waste your tax dollars, however she liked — those glamour shots in front of Mount Rushmore did not come cheap, but money is really no object when you’re playing with house money, says Needham. So, why not soak the taxpayers for as much as possible to get fancy “horseys and flattering makeup“? Renting, transporting, and boarding three ponies for two days cost us $20,000 — ponies from competitive barrel racer champion, Jill Moody, a South Dakotan, and longtime friend and backer of Noem. Four hair stylists based in Washington, DC were flown in, tallied up to $3,800 for the quartet, and South Dakota’s Bombshell Beauty Makeup Studio (a Noem backer) billed us for $2,070, so with this much money to waste, you have to spread it around among friends!

Kristi Noem’s new gig as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas won’t provide her with a bottomless trove of cash, so maybe she’ll have to do with the costumes and paraphernalia leftovers from the Homeland Piracy. And the $50,000 Rolex she was so keen about flashing during her media hit at CECOT prison in El Salvador? Don, Jr. and Eric may have to arm wrestle for that prize. The president is allowing her to retain ten staffers, but it’s a good bet they won’t be traveling in the cowgirl’s private jet. It was painfully obvious the Mount Rushmore video was designed to feature Noem, and that was the real problem in Trump’s view. She made herself the face of DHS, the face of deportations, the face of ICE — okay with Trump as long as her reputation didn’t eclipse his. But it was about Noem — “the most unforgivable sin of all,” says Needham.

Greg Sargent of The New Republic writes that, “On the surface, Trump wants less attention paid to mass deportations. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is taking new and hidden steps to wreak havoc in the lives of undocumented children and their families.” Sargent asks whether or not Trump has figured out that Miller’s fascist cruelties have become a niggling political liability for him? The Wall Street Journal suggests that the president may be moving to marginalize Miller’s influence, believing that the difficulty can be cured by a few optical tweaks, when the real culprit is a deeper ideological one. The Journal reveals that Trump wants to “lower the profile of his mass deportation efforts,” which are hideously unpopular, wishing voters would view the targets as “bad guys,” and not noncriminal undocumented residents. That Trump is siding with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, is a sign of his political panic and a rebuke to Miller, with Wiles advising that deportations are a liability for the midterm elections. Yet Miller delights in flaunting the administration’s vicious sadism and overt white nationalism, certain that latent majorities are quietly cheering him on.

Sargent writes that the Journal report deserves some skepticism, and bears watching, since Trump mostly wants the ‘appearance’ of an ICE pivot, focusing on ‘criminals’ in GOP ‘messaging,’  as the project fully forges ahead. Stephen Miller recently met with Texas state legislators to discuss the idea of ending state public funding for the education of undocumented children, limiting funding only for kids who are citizens or are lawfully present in the country. The aim of denying public school is to destabilize the lives of undocumented families as another way to encourage them to self-deport, but this would run afoul of a 1982 Supreme Court decision which blocked states from denying public education to the young based on immigration status. The civil rights ruling, Plyler v. Doe, holds that restricting public education violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s enshrinement of equal protection before the law. Naturally, Miller and his anti-immigrant allies are gunning for Plyler in order to provoke another court battle in hopes that our right-wing Supremes would overturn the 1982 ruling.

Such a ruling would be seismic, the issue being whether these kids are to be regarded as equal persons despite being undocumented, relegating them to an unacceptable subclass status. Immigration law scholar Hiroshi Motomura, explains that “the emergence of a permanent subcaste is intolerable within a national constitutional culture based on equality,” which Miller is keen on ending. It’s too early to tell whether Texas lawmakers will do as Miller wishes, or how the high court might rule if that occurred; but if it worked in Miller’s favor, other red states with many immigrant families would be jumping on the bandwagon. Should Miller’s project advance, that opens up another can of worms — Trump’s desire to end birthright citizenship, which clashes with the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that all persons born in the US are automatic citizens.

Pursuing these maliciously profound rulings would result in a constitutional order more ‘hereditary’ and ‘caste-like,’ says legal scholar, Akhil Reed Amar — which is exactly what Trump and Miller want. This is echoed in VP Vance’s suggestion that heritage, not adherence to creedal ideals, makes one an American. Jamelle Bouie calls Vance’s vision “tiered citizenship” based not on equality of birth but on one’s “connection to the soil and to the dead.” Ned Resnikoff hears hints of this in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Western-civilizational-supremacist rhetoric, as well, writes Sargent. “Miller’s true goal is to use immigration as a tool to chisel away at the Fourteenth Amendment, and until he’s ejected from the White House, all our rights are in danger,” says counsel Chris Newman at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Perhaps Miller should watch his actions, since Marin Scotten of The New Republic says he was caught on video letting out a big sigh of boredom during one of Trump’s speeches justifying his “excursion” into Iran. At a recent roundtable in Memphis, attended by Miller, Trump, FBI Director Patel, AG Pam Bondi, and SecDef Pete Hegseth, the sigh was seen as an unintentional show of disagreement with the president and his war. But, despite this slip-up, Miller later showed complete agreement with Trump’s crackdown on crime in Memphis and five other cities (which has cost taxpayers nearly $500 million, if you’re keeping score.) Miller added, “What President Trump has done on border security and public safety is a national miracle that will be studied not only for generations but for centuries to come.”

Some anonymous claims by former and current DHS officials accuse Miller of overriding direct orders from Trump, prompting Governor Gavin Newsom to post on X his prediction that Miller is on his way out. His post shared an article by the Daily Mail which alleges that at times Miller holds more power than the president. “START THE COUNTDOWN!!! Stephen Miller is going to be fired!,” Newsom predicted in his post, which was accompanied by an image of Harry Potter villain Voldemort. The Daily Mail report asserts that DHS officials accused Miller of making decisions on the immigration program that caused complete chaos within the department, such as Trump’s directive not to target farm workers in one operation — which Miller then changed. One insider claims that Miller selected Markwayne Mullin to head DHS, to be used as his puppet — no comment by Miller.

Emily Singer, in her post on Daily Kos, believes that the Defense Secretary may be next in line for dismissal, writing, “Pete Hegseth, you in danger, girl!” She reports that last week President Trump laid the groundwork to blame Pistol Pete for the ongoing disaster in Iran, as he said the Secretary convinced him to begin the “excursion,” despite the lack of a coherent rationale. At the Memphis event, Trump bragged about the stock market and the “fantastic” economy, but he “unfortunately” called advisors to discuss possible action in Iran, and Hegseth was “the first one” to recommend the attack. Pointedly, he addressed Hegseth saying, “You said, ‘Let’s do it’ — because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump has been accused of stock market manipulation as he hints at, lies about, negotiations taking place with Iranian leaders to end the war, a ploy that seems to work for him and his billionaire backers. Iran says it wasn’t dealing with Trump, and the president continues to make threats and carry out limited forays, clearly terrified about the chaos he has unleashed in the world. Polling by CBS/YouGov finds that a majority of Americans think the war is going “very” or “somewhat” poorly, while another 60% disapprove of the conflict altogether. Singer writes that Hegseth should start polishing his resume and reaching out to friends at Fox News, his old stomping grounds prior to his Pentagon appointment.

The president has no qualms about firing officials to make them scapegoats if that is necessary to get the monkeys of his cruel and unpopular agendas off his back — Noem should be a good lesson for the survivors. The administration has seriously considered replacing Hegseth, particularly after the SignalGate fiasco of discussing classified military operations in which a journalist was allowed to be in on the secrets. Now that the war has been publicly laid across Pete’s new Florsheim’s as an advocate of the bombings, he makes a better fall guy than Jared Kushner or Steve Witkoff, even though they are seen to be instrumental in warning about an “imminent” attack by Iran. Singer concludes that, “If there’s any consolation for Hegseth, it’s that his firing would let him unlock the liquor cabinet he claimed to have shut when he became Secretary of Defense. A scotch on the rocks may be in your future, Pete! At least you have that.”