Protesters Flood Times Square and 2,500 US Cities, Reminding Trump We Don’t Do Monarchs

Mass protests in New York and beyond reflect a sharpening debate over presidential power and the future of American democracy.

On a muggy Saturday afternoon in June, an estimated half a million people surged into New York’s Times Square, their chants of “No queremos reyes” (“We don’t want kings”) briefly drowning out the city’s relentless buzz. Similar scenes played out across the country: in Washington, protesters encircled the Capitol; in Chicago, throngs gathered in the city centre. The No Kings movement—named in pointed defiance of perceived autocratic overreach by President Donald Trump—unfurled itself across America, with simultaneous mobilisations in over 2,500 cities and towns, and even in sympathetic gatherings from Berlin to Honolulu. By the organisers’ count, some five million Americans and allies marked the largest street protest since Mr Trump’s controversial return to office in January.

For most New Yorkers, accustomed to demonstrations ranging from the flamboyant to the furious, the scale and symbols felt different this time. Commencing on June 14th—Mr Trump’s birthday—the first No Kings march set the tone: yellow-clad demonstrators (borrowing dress cues from Hong Kong’s nonviolent protesters in 2019) and costumed animals filled the avenues. Saturday’s reprise was even larger, but retained a whimsical, almost carnival spirit, despite the underlying disquiet.

The kernel of the protest was opposition to what organisers term “growing authoritarianism” from the president. Mr Trump’s decision to deploy military units to several Democrat-run cities, including New York, under the banner of crime-fighting and immigration enforcement, provided immediate impetus. The mood was amplified by resentments over immigration raids, looming healthcare cuts, and fresh Republican manoeuvres to redraw electoral districts before the midterm elections.

For the city, the implications are multifaceted. New York, long a magnet for immigrants and a lightning rod for federal power plays, now finds itself re-litigating questions thought long-settled: What is the appropriate remit of the presidency? When does federal intervention preserve order, and when does it trample local autonomy? Grandstanding in Washington rarely resolves such tensions. But on the city’s streets, the shape of dissent—and the resilience of civic culture—can be measured with unusual clarity.

The protests have remained overwhelmingly peaceful; so far, New York has avoided the spasms of violence that marked earlier waves of social unrest elsewhere. Yet the governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott, saw fit to mobilise his state’s National Guard pre-emptively. In Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson labelled the movement “anti-American”, darkly linking its organisers to foreign militant groups and the newly outlawed Antifa. The White House, for its part, denies any kingly ambitions: “They say I act like a king. I’m no king; I want law and order for American families,” Mr Trump told Fox Business.

The economic ripples ought not be ignored. Such sustained mass gatherings signal a depth of anxiety not easily papered over by GDP growth or Wall Street’s gyrations. Tourists, emboldened by the city’s relative calm, continue to fill its hotels. Yet underlying insecurities—among migrants, small business owners, indeed, any group vulnerable to abrupt policy swings—are on the rise. The symbolism of troops in city streets, regardless of the formulaic assurances from City Hall and the Pentagon, tends to chill investment and sow doubts that endure long after the soldiers depart.

New Yorkers, hardly innocent of politics by spectacle, are attuned to the second-order ramifications. The city’s reputation as a beacon for immigrants and dissidents is being put to the test. The risk, in the reckoning of many civic leaders, is that a parade of martial interventions erodes trust not just in federal authority but in the city’s own institutions. Grassroots groups, unions, and faith-based charities find themselves scrambling—again—to provide practical reassurance to their constituencies. Elections, already fraught with legal challenges and gerrymandering antics, may tip further into cynicism and disengagement.

A nation allergic to monarchs revisits its founding anxieties

Americans’ suspicion of concentrated power is woven deep into the national fabric, stitched in the aftermath of the War of Independence and the overthrow of George III. “No Kings” is no mere slogan; it is both a warning and an invocation of 1776’s founding spirit. Historically, American presidents have occasionally flirted with the boundaries of their authority, from Lincoln’s wartime measures to Roosevelt’s court-packing plans. But rarely has the perception of monarchical behaviour—deploying troops domestically, reshaping political maps, lambasting dissent as disloyalty—provoked such widespread and synchronised rebuke.

Other democracies have not been immune to such tensions. France and the United Kingdom, each with their own turbulent relationships to executive power, offer examples both cautionary and instructive. In neither case have executive excursions gone unchallenged by street protest or parliamentary rebuke. New York’s solidarity from afar—marchers gathered in Paris and Berlin—suggests that anxieties over hyperactive leaders are hardly parochial.

From our vantage, this episode reveals the paradox of American democracy’s resilience. The machinery of protest remains sturdy: permits are issued, civil peace is mostly maintained, the right to assemble is reasserted. Yet the roots of these discontents are not so easily trimmed. Public confidence in the executive branch has rarely been so anemic. The customary American constitutional stalemate—ambivalent towards both kings and mobs—endures, but not without cost.

Despite the buoyant turnout and the bittersweet optimism on display, “No Kings” portends a rougher terrain for American civil society in the months ahead. The convergence of military deployment, electoral manoeuvring, and intensifying street mobilisation signals a country grappling not merely with policy, but with the legitimacy of its own governing compact. The world will watch whether the capital of American pluralism can keep its contradictions productive—or whether the democratic experiment will continue to fray at the edges.

New York, for all its drama, has long revelled in the spectacle of dissent. Yet even here, the stakes now feel higher, the echoes of 1776 uncomfortably relevant. For a city that likes its mayors pragmatic and its presidents far away, the return of kingship to political turnpikes is a reminder that the price of liberty is, indeed, eternal vigilance. ■