U.S. ‘No Kings’ protests urge voters to turn out in midterms: ‘Stop Trump’s unchecked rule with early voting’

[Financial News] With the U.S. midterm elections just over two weeks away, the ‘No Kings’ (‘There Are No Kings’) protests have shifted their street chants into calls to vote. In major cities including Washington, D.C., where participants gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, as well as New York, Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles, demonstrators went beyond criticizing policies to call for voters to hold the administration accountable at the ballot box. Because the events are being held in dispersed locations rather than as a mass gathering in one place, it is expected to be difficult to estimate the total number of participants.
According to organizers on the 17th (local time), more than 2,500 No Kings events were planned across the U.S. that day. This is the fourth time the protests, organized jointly by around 200 groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have been held. A defining feature of this round is that communities are organizing rallies in their own ways, rather than drawing crowds to a particular city. Local media reported that organizers were presenting the event not simply as a nationwide protest, but as a bipartisan effort to get voters to the polls.
In the capital, Washington, D.C., hundreds of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Placards reading ‘Vote early,’ ‘Your vote is your voice’ and ‘Keep your hands off my right to vote’ waved throughout the march. Many people also carried signs directly targeting President Trump, including ‘Trump must go’ and ‘We elect presidents, not kings.’
Participants denounced the administration’s policies across the board, saying American democracy was under threat, and urged people to get to the polls as soon as possible. The aim is to use the November 3 midterms to deliver a verdict at the ballot box and put the brakes on the Trump administration’s go-it-alone approach. The New York Times (NYT) reported that civil rights attorney Gerald Griggs, speaking at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, shouted, ‘Vote early, contact five friends and tell them to vote early.’ Participants at a rally in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, declared, ‘Voting in the midterms is just as important as voting in a presidential election.’ Since midterms, held halfway through a president’s term, generally have lower turnout than presidential elections, the emphasis appears to be on encouraging people to vote in the first place.
Early voting is already underway in several states. Virginia and Minnesota began early voting on September 18, while Georgia opened it on the 13th and will continue through the 30th. Local media also reported that more than 40,000 additional people voted on the first day of early voting in Georgia compared with the 2022 midterms.
The No Kings protests first took to the streets on June 14 last year, the day of President Trump’s 79th birthday and a parade marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army. The protest, which was estimated to have drawn 5 million people at the time, grew to 7 million that October. Organizers counted more than 2,700 events across all 50 states during the October protests. The third protest was held on March 28, shortly after the Trump administration entered the war with Iran. Organizers said more than 8 million people took part in around 3,300 rallies across all 50 states.
Unlike the previous three rounds, this time the events are being split into smaller gatherings at the local level, so it remains unclear whether organizers will be able to provide a nationwide participation figure.
[email protected] Jeong Gyeong-su Reporter