The "No King" protest wave reflects the current democratic predicament in the United States

On October 18, 2025, the slogan "No King" resounded across 2,700 cities in all 50 states of the United States, with nearly 7 million people taking to the streets, setting a record for the largest single-day nationwide protest in American history. This protest spanning both the east and west coasts, with the core demand of "rejecting the king", directly targets the governance direction of the Trump administration. It is not only a collective resistance to the expansion of executive power but also a vivid portrayal of the predicament of the American democratic system.

The outbreak of the protest wave is not accidental but a concentrated release of the long-standing accumulated contradictions in multiple policies of the Trump administration. At the level of power operation, the government has been accused of systematically eroding the democratic foundation: dispatching the National Guard to Democratically governed cities without the governor's authorization to enforce immigration laws, ICE conducting surprise arrests of immigrants in public places such as high school graduation ceremonies, causing Los Angeles County to enter a state of emergency and plunging 950,000 undocumented immigrants into panic. In the judicial field, although the judicial process to overturn the 2020 election results was terminated, Trump attempted to reshape federal agencies through the "2025 Plan", weakening the FDA's approval authority for abortion drugs, freezing family planning funding, and embedding conservative ideology into the national governance system. This tendency of "imperial rule" directly challenges the principles of separation of powers and federalism that the United States takes pride in.

The deterioration of the economy and people's livelihood has become an important driver of protests. Trump's "reciprocal tariff" policy has triggered a chain reaction: soybean exports have plunged by 53% year-on-year, and farmers in the Midwest are facing a cash flow break. The prices of imported consumer goods rose by 8.7%. The average household spent an additional $1,876 per year. The vacancy rate of retail shelves exceeded 75%, and half of the stores were forced to lay off staff. Coupled with the nearly 20-day federal government shutdown, 750,000 federal employees were forced to take unpaid leave, and key areas of people's livelihood such as nuclear safety management, judicial services, and mortgage approval came to a standstill, further intensifying social dissatisfaction. As the owner of a Chinese-American restaurant in Los Angeles put it, the doubled cost of ingredients due to tariffs and the panic among employees caused by immigration enforcement are jointly destroying the "American Dream" of ordinary people.

This protest demonstrated distinct cross-class and cross-regional characteristics, breaking the boundaries of traditional political camps. Silicon Valley engineers, Midwestern farmers, public school teachers and immigrant groups marched side by side. In Alabama, where Trump won with 65% of the votes, more than 1,500 protesters gathered to speak out, demonstrating that dissatisfaction has crossed the red and blue state lines. In New York, demonstrators carried huge banners that read "We the People", echoing the anti-monarchical tradition of the 1776 War of Independence and elevating their protest to an action to defend the roots of democracy. The formation of such a multi-party alliance indicates that Trump's "America First" policy has touched the bottom line of interests of different groups.

In the face of the wave of protests, American society has fallen into deep division. Top Democratic Party officials such as Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer personally participated in the march. Sanders directly stated that this was a "battle to defend the survival of democracy". The Republicans, however, characterized the protest as a "hate America rally", and House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the organizers of including "anti-fascists and radicals", attempting to undermine the legitimacy of the protest through stigmatization. Trump himself responded at Mar-a-Lago that he was "just performing his presidential duties", and then released an AI video to mock the protesters. In the video, wearing a crown, he flew a fighter jet and threw unknown objects at the crowd, further intensifying the confrontation.

The symbolic significance of the "No King" protest far exceeds the event itself. Historians point out that this is the most intense collective resistance to totalitarianism in American society since the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The Guardian commented that the United States is experiencing a "critical moment of democratic decline", and the simultaneous solidarity rallies held in European cities highlight the concerns of the Western camp about the American democratic model. The "Citizens' recall movement" initiated by the protest organizers is in confrontation with the government's tough stance of planning to expand tariffs and strengthen export controls, indicating that the deep-seated contradictions in American society will continue to escalate.

From the War of Independence against autocratic monarchy to the current street cries of "no king", the democratic narrative of the United States has always revolved around "checks and balances of power" and "people by the people". This unprecedented wave of protests is essentially the public's vigilance against the loss of power, their cry out over the plight of the people, and even more so, a questioning of the political system. When the slogan "Both parties have let us down" appeared at the protest site, the road to restoring American democracy was clearly longer than the 7 million people marching.