Washington DC—Just under 3 weeks until the country was to vote in its midterms, millions rallied around the country for the fourth ‘No Kings’ event. Their aim was to inspire citizens to vote in favor of a major government overhaul that centers people instead of elite billionaires and monied corporate interests. It was the fourth major nation-wide rally and supported by hundreds of grassroots organizations allied with the No Kings Organization. At stake was the republic itself and whether the people would permit it to continue along a road to authoritarianism.
In Washington DC at Memorial Circle, Third Act-DMV was the main organizer. The elder group was joined by other groups such as Hands Off The Arts, 31st Street Swing Left, 50501DC, ACLU-VA, and League of Women Voters, DC Activist Street Band, and others.
“This No Kings event is different from previous ones in that the focus is on early voting,” said Susan Douglas, an organizer with Third Act-DMV. “There are over 3,000 events across the country. This tells me that the people are serious about protecting and exercising their right to vote, which is a pillar of our democracy. We are voting to put an end to the senseless war, the endless corruption, the lies, the cruelty, and the vanity. In Virginia, the early voting turnout has been very strong. Our votes will be counted, and a change is coming,” she said.
No Kings 4 Built Alliances For Two Years
The ‘fourth time is the charm’ is not how the saying goes, but in this case the newly formed alliances have had no choice but to make their rally for voting rights work for everyone. It was their fourth time rallying and marching to urge the region to vote against a presidency rife with corruption, untruthful in its official statements, auctioning government processes to monied interests, and setting its default policy to war as a first response, while mowing down the remnants of the republic, both figuratively and physically.
In 17 days it would be time for the people to stand and deliver at the polls. No Kings 4 was the final curtain call.
And even though the likeliness of winning more election contests was coming into focus based on polling, there was little doubt that any win had to be decisive and far outweigh a close race. Because even a close win was almost certain to be withered away by court challenges or worse, through voting process interference.
White House Desperate As Polling Craters
There have already been many attempts by the president himself to undermine voting processes both in his statements and his actions, by casting normal voting processes as deliberate attempts to hijack the election process itself. These attempts not only undermine the basic democratic principles of government by and for the people, as set forth in the Constitution, they also reflect a growing panic inside the White House that the president is less popular at this time in his term of office than any other president in history.
A Pew Research Poll analysis found the president’s approval rating has collapsed to just 30% approval overall with a 68% disapproval. His unpopularity has driven him to issue unsupported claims about election integrity.
He has accused the voting by mail process as a rigged attempt to steal elections. He has attempted to seize state’s voting rolls. Courts have rebuffed every one of his attempts to seize States’ voting rolls. He has attempted to use the U.S. Postal Service to arbitrarte whether mail in ballots are valid, another attempt the courts rejected. He has persecuted a Democratic opponent three weeks before the election, directing the FBI and DHS to raid the home of Michigan Representative Ilhan Omar in an attempt to charge her with naturalization fraud, remove her citizenship, and deport her.
A published report by Reuters laid out more evidence from the president himself of his regrading election intentions. He has urged States’ Republicans to nationalize elections. National Guard troops have been posted around ballot drop off boxes in Washington DC.
He has urged his supporters to “cheat like hell” in order to get the results he wants. He has threatened to deploy ICE agents to polling places.
If imposed, these individual actions combined would have the effect of shifting the results in close races, if not undermining trust in the outcome altogether.
His actions leading to the midterms of 2026 fall in line with his efforts in 2019 to overturn the presidential election.
The Brennan Center for Democracy designated the Federal Government itself as a threat to free and fair elections because of the actions of the Trump White House. The Brennan Center listed 21 concerted actions taken by the White House, beginning with the pardon of the January 6, 2020 insurrectionists on his first day in office, to undermine the election. Many other actions had to do with removing funding that provided for electoral oversight and placing 2020 Presidential election deniers in key positions of power, such as FBI Director Kash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, also an election denier.
So the No Kings Four organizers knew they must throw everything at getting out the vote. They know they must win with wide margins to really win. They developed their strategy for the past two years: their art, their signs and songs, their allies, and their courageous spirit too, to focus energy on victory to defeat the treacherous voting landscape ahead. As they walked across Memorial Bridge towards the Lincoln Memorial they knew this was probably their last chance to compel America to vote. The Third Act-DMV organizers are self directed without a hierarchy and have a positive mindset.
And this event was the last time groups in DC would mobilize in mass to inspire a record turnout to the polls. And they had to get it right and they pulled out all the stops.
Nationally, groups like theirs had steady grown the No Kings number of participants from 5 million at No Kings, to 8 million in No Kings 2, to 11 million during No Kings 3. But what would count at No Kings 4 would be how many voters they could pull into the polling booths.
Organizers pulled groups together from across the region, many who had worked together before, but never with this much networking. The last two years has seen a steady build up of networks that had not existed before. In fact many of these groups knew little about each other until the beginning of what was obviously a series of anti-voting policies that had been implemented, so much that the historian Heather Cox, who first described the actions of the White House as authoritarian, began calling it fascism straight out. The groups had no choice but to form stronger alliances to mobilize against it.
Speakers included Jim Acosta, a former CNN reporter who often went head to head against the president at press briefings during his first term. “We’re standing up for the American way of life,” said Jim Acosta, former CNN reporter and newscaster fired by CNN because of his opposition to the Trump presidency. “What kind of country do we want to hand off to our kids and grandkids? November 3 is not just election day, it’s rejection day,” he said while railing against the corruption and grift in the White House, ICE on the streets shooting people, and a president “profiting off the presidency.”
Miles Taylor, a former senior Homeland Security official also spoke. He was part of the secret resistance inside the first Trump administration. “In the past year I have watched this country go from complicit and scared to defiant,” said Taylor, the former DHS official who chose defiance when the president had him fired. “The corruption is breathtaking. He has put his name the coins. He has put his name on park passes…passports…federal programs…airports…he’s put his name on the 59 companies he’s started since he came into office.”
Tara Hoot, a standout vocal artist, author, and personality from the Hands Off the Arts movement also spoke. Hands off the Arts was organized around protecting the Kennedy Center as well as the minority venues for which it provides safe haven. It has taken its place as a major vein of resistance against a takeover and possible demolition posed as a renovation. Tara Hoot also urged everyone to vote and vote early.
Music by the DC Activist Street Band, Rapid Response Choir, and Raging Grannies led the groups across Memorial Bridge, leaving behind Memorial Circle, site of yet another conflict raging over whether the president’s vanity arch should be allowed to eclipse the honor of over 425,000 Veterans and their spouses interred there.
After the rally, the group marched across Memorial Bridge, and concluded at noon with songs on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The organizers stressed that the event be non-partisan and avoid conflict or contact with possible opposition. They wanted it to be held in the spirit of a unified front that every vote should be allowed and counted and that the government leaders should be elected by the people, not coercively impose their will on how long they retain power.
November 3 was only 17 days away and much could happen in that timeframe but it was something they could not let distract them. Despite the uncertainty of what was to come, one thing was certain: with thousands of No Kings events scheduled across the country and millions participating, it was clear that voter engagement had not seen this interest and intensity in many decades.
It is the possibility of losing something treasured by a community that drives everyone to the voting booth. If the final vote count leads the people to keep their republic then they are also going to need the courage continue fighting to see their way through to the new government they want.
Video of No Kings 4:
