Why You Should Attend Your Local No Kings Protest
Once again, I’m deviating from my usual news summary format to try something different. This time, I’m encouraging everybody who reads this newsletter to visit the website nokings.org and find a No Kings protest in your local area that you can attend tomorrow this Saturday. There really is no ideological litmus test other than the belief that sovereignty resides with the people rather than the monarchical Donald Trump. And if you can’t attend a protest in person, you can offer moral support by watching and reacting to No Kings protests that are streamed over the Internet.
Lately, there is so much news in our 24/7 news cycles that it goes beyond what any one person (including me) can interpret or even digest. However, there are two events I certainly cannot forget: Donald Trump’s baby step attempts at the military occupation of Los Angeles and the forcible removal of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) from a press conference convened by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
In analyzing these events, I find it more useful to look at history and political theory—something mainstream journalism does not do well—because sometimes you have to know the precedents in order to know how unprecedented something is.
I started by looking at a list compiled on Wikipedia of all the times the federal government has invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807. According to a 2021 article in the New York Times, Donald Trump instructed his aides to prepare an order invoking the Insurrection Act to get the military to suppress the George Floyd protests of 2020, but Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley convinced Trump against invoking the act. According to Mark Esper’s account, Trump was so incensed about the George Floyd protests that he asked, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Because of incidents like these, Mark Milley argued that Donald Trump was “a fascist to the core.”
Barr, Esper, and Milley were the so-called “adults in the room” who restrained Trump the last time, but Trump’s current Cabinet suggests those safeguards are much weaker now. Instead of Esper, you have the drunken white nationalist mediocrity Pete Hegsteh. Instead of Barr, who was one of the worst, most corrupt Attorneys General in history, you have Pam Bondi, who somehow manages to limbo below the already low bar set by Mr. Barr. The remaining ray of hope is that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine is more loyal to the nonpartisan traditions of the U.S. military than he is to Donald Trump.
Another disturbing aspect of Trump’s deployment of the military to Los Angeles is that he is doing it over the objection of the sitting Governor Gavin Newsom. In the 30 times that the Insurrection Act has been invoked since it was passed in 1807, the U.S. president has federalized the National Guard over the objections of the governor only four times: Eisenhower using the Arkansas National Guard to desegregate Little Rock Central High, JFK using the Alabama National Guard to integrate the University of Alabama, JFK desegregating the Birmingham public schools, and LBJ protecting Martin Luther King Jr’s third voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Unlike Trump, in every single case, the goal was to expand civil rights and civil liberties. By contrast, Donald Trump is using ICE and military authorities to undermine habeas corpus and due process.
In addition, the official X account of the Department of Homeland Security posted a statement currently defending the manhandling of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) for daring to ask a question at a press conference by DHS Secretary Noem in Los Angeles. The department is already trying to justify the disproportionate response of federal agents by stating that Padilla “interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem.”
According to a post on X by Rhonda Elaine Foxx, a former Congressional Chief of Staff, the reference to the Senate pin in the Department of Homeland Security statement is a complete fabrication. The Senate pin has absolutely no legal status whatsoever outside the U.S. Capitol complex:
Let’s talk about the Senate Security Pin, because the misinformation is spreading fast.
It’s a small lapel pin given to Senators and House members. Each Congress it's slightly redesigned (usually just a color change).
House members have larger pins; there are 435 that stay around for 2-year terms, so ID’ing each is harder.
In the Senate? It’s 100 faces, 6-year terms. Most security knows them by sight.
And fun fact: Many women wear theirs as necklaces, making them even less noticeable.
So, what does the pin actually do?
It lets members move more easily within the Capitol complex, because it's illegal to impede a member of Congress from going to votes. Outside the complex? It’s meaningless.
The facts? Google which Senators have been stopped while wearing their pins in the Capitol. If Capitol Police don’t always recognize it, how is a random ICE agent supposed to?
They’re not. Because this whole talking point is bullshit. Pin or no pin, you’re a federal agency operating in a state. You should know who the Senators are.
Don’t spread misinformation. Don’t fall for the spin.
So, if you want to stop creeping authoritarianism and you want to show how you don’t want official government social media accounts to be used for propagandizing and lying, then I encourage you all to check out nokings.org.