No Kings Are Going to Stop Us From Voting

Interference in the fourth No Kings protest

The latest No Kings event occurred on Saturday, this time aimed at getting people to take advantage of early voting where it is available. As Ava Berger writes for NPR:

“‘The first three No Kings were designed to send a message,’ said Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible — one of the major organizations within the No Kings network. ‘We're done sending a message.’

“Now, he said, they want people to vote.

“The events looked different across the country. Some were larger marches or rallies, but many were smaller community gatherings such as block parties and cookouts. While some protests, like the one on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, were reminiscent of the first three No Kings rallies — with signs blasting Trump and his administration's actions — other events focused on spreading information to community members on how to vote.”

Some critics of the approach taken by No Kings have wondered what was accomplished by gathering crowds, no matter how large (and they were very large), if there was no more direct action taken, even as a followup.

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to effectively resist an authoritarian consolidation. Control over a regime comes down fundamentally to perceptions of what other people are willing to do and whether or not that regime is capable of successfully repressing dissent. Large crowds turning out against a regime on a regular basis makes the public aware both that there are a significant number of people who are unhappy with the regime and that the regime is incapable of stopping them from expressing it. Both are very important facts to communicate widely, as public knowledge of regime weakness will help more members of the public be less hesitant to do good things that the regime would rather they did not do.

No one doubts that the Trump administration is unpopular now, of course. And there is no more objective demonstration of that unpopularity than an enormous defeat at the ballot box, something that of course has concrete consequences beyond “sending a message,” as Levin emphasizes. Unstated also is the urgency of getting as many votes in early as possible to avoid any potential chaos, whether created by the administration or the vagaries of life, on November 3 that might prevent people from reaching the booth that day.

The potential for the administration to deploy DHS agents to some subset of polling locations has loomed over the midterms essentially all year. I am, for what it is worth, a bit less worried about this now than I was a few months ago. Election Day is two weeks away, exactly. If they were preparing to deploy a significant number of agents, I suspect we’d be seeing the logistical preparation by now.

But we are already seeing interference of a different sort. As Sanya Mansoor reports for the Guardian:

“The coalition leaders behind nationwide pro-democracy protests that have drawn millions of Americans to the streets in recent years were frustrated when its Instagram account was temporarily shut down during its latest demonstration on Saturday.

“The No Kings movement’s account went dark for several hours while protests focused on increasing early voter turnout were under way, sparking censorship fears.”

It is possible, even likely, that this was an error due to automated moderating, as Meta claims. But Meta has not earned one drop of the benefit of the doubt. They appointed a Trumpist to their board in January of 2025, they had Stephen Miller review their plan to dismantle the company’s DEI rules, and were among those like CBS that settled a frivolous lawsuit with Trump with a multi-million dollar payout.

Amanda Carpenter at If You Can Keep It also has a useful roundup of the various attempts the administration has made so far to interfere directly, mostly through executive orders and investigations rather than thugs sent to physically intimidate voters. Her list is not short.

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Connect with your local election protection effort if you can. Vote as early as you can. Whatever happens on Election Day itself, I suspect we’re in for a turbulent few months until the next Congress is seated.

Not that it will get less turbulent from there.

The campaign to deport Rep. Ilhan Omar

“Border czar” Tom Homan—apparently his de facto actual title—was interviewed on Fox News over the weekend. Chris Walker reports at Truth Out:

“Appearing on Fox News over the weekend, border czar Tom Homan gave the starkest indication yet that the administration is moving forward with plans to ‘denaturalize’ Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), stripping her of U.S. citizenship status that she’s had since she was 17 years old. …

“‘If you lie during the naturalization process, there is a process to denaturalize somebody. We’ve done it before … And certainly, if the evidence points that way, that could happen’ to Omar, he said on the program.

“The border czar left some rhetorical wiggle room, but reiterated that the administration was looking into fraudulent behavior by the Minnesota lawmaker or her family members.”

The administration may have broken the law at the very first step of attempting to demonstrate Omar was in violation of the law. As Jeremy Roebuck, Alexei Koseff, and Perry Stein report in the Washington Post:

“Lawyers for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) on Friday accused federal authorities of ignoring key restrictions that a judge placed on the search of the lawmaker’s D.C. residence this week and demanded the immediate return of all property seized from the home. …

“Among the restrictions the attorneys said agents did not follow were provisions requiring investigators to provide Omar’s lawyers with a copy of the warrant and to contact the House Office of General Counsel before carrying out the search. That would have given Omar the chance to consult with congressional attorneys on any legislative work product that might have been exempt from federal seizure, her lawyers said.”

The ‘law and order’ administration continues to be a bunch of phonies, running the greatest lawbreaking administration in the history of the country. Over the weekend executive editor Samantha Hancox-Li had me on Neon Liberalism to discuss the Omar case and what it portends.

Unrest abroad

France experienced tremendous unrest over the weekend. As Amelia Nierenberg and Catherine Porter report in the New York Times, what began as high school student protests weeks ago has grown to include “labor unions and other campaign groups,” and indeed on Saturday “More than half a million people joined some 110 marches throughout France,” making it the biggest day of protest so far in the month-long episode.

“Amid many peaceful demonstrations, rioters vandalized about 1,500 shops and many symbols of the French state, leading to nearly 2,400 arrests. Gérald Darmanin, the justice minister, said on Tuesday that more than 700 people were expected to be tried over the next couple of days.

“An arson attack largely destroyed the town hall in Limoges, in central France. In Marseille, the second-largest city, masked people broke into a government building and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the republic.

“The government has estimated that at least 3,000 businesses across the country were pillaged over the weekend.”

The government has imposed a curfew and is in general cracking down in a manner that, from my vantage point very much outside of the story and country, appear to be fueling rather than suppressing the disorder.

“Prosecutors and a police watchdog are investigating at least 34 cases involving accusations of police misconduct during the protests.

“The cases include a 15-year-old boy whose left hand was ripped off, officials said, most likely by the explosion of a police stun grenade; and a 14-year-old boy maimed by a tear-gas grenade that an officer had fired at close range.”

‘Less-lethal’ weapons are no joke, as the residents of Minneapolis experienced all too concretely this year and protesters across the country (for example in Portland, Oregon) have experienced for years now.

France is not alone in Europe experiencing heightened unrest. Yesterday, RFI reported on protests calling for the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation:

“Demonstrators have clashed with police since Tuesday as months of protests escalate, driven by fresh demands for better university conditions, anger over corruption and renewed calls for Rama's resignation.

“‘Protests are a right, whereas violence is a crime; this red line must be drawn clearly at this critical stage of our democratic development,’ Rama said in a Facebook post.

“The prime minister said he was prepared for dialogue, except with those who commit violence and political parties that fail to distance themselves from it.

“Hundreds of protesters again gathered at Tirana's main square and in front of the education ministry on Monday.”

At the BBC, Paul Kirby and Paulin Kola report on the long fuse this unrest had and its point of origin:

“Every evening, throughout the summer for some 135 days in a row, Albanians in central Tirana would hold pictures of a pink flamingo, calling on Prime Minister Edi Rama—now in his fourth term—to resign.

“The protests began over a mega-tourism project on the Adriatic coast linked to US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Demonstrators said the bird would become extinct on an island near the coastal city of Vlora, if the plans for a luxury development went ahead.”

“The public anger comes as allegations of corruption among ministers and other senior officials grow louder.

“One deputy prime minister has fled the country, another has been ordered to step down as investigations continue.”

There goes my promise to leave America’s own troubles behind in this section. Kushner’s sordid Albanian story was the subject of not one but two episodes of Half the Answer this summer.

Mogging MAGA

A video posted by Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed went viral on Saturday. In it, he takes a hostile question asking if he will denounce the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather than simply answer, El-Sayed turns the question around on the questioner, taking the opportunity to school him in a bit of civics. That sounds more boring than the clip in fact is, and I encourage you to watch it as it is less than five minutes long.

Who was the questioner? Independent journalist and friend of Liberal Currents Marisa Kabas had the scoop a day later:

“For nearly five minutes, El-Sayed questioned the man—who said his name was ‘Tommy’ and identified himself as a Christian—about his understanding of the Constitution and the religious freedom it affords all Americans. He compared the ‘dual loyalty’ question to those asked of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, and asked whether Tommy would disavow any attempts to read religion into the Constitution. Tommy refused, rejecting El-Sayed’s point that the Constitution allows us all to worship any god, or none at all. After outing himself as a bad-faith interlocutor, Tommy sullenly left the room.

“The Handbasket is first to report that Tommy is Thomas Teepell, who, according to his X and Facebook profiles, currently lives in Detroit. Teepell served as Operations Director for Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley until February of this year, according to Legistorm. He then took a job as Political Director for the failed gubernatorial campaign of Philip Sarnecki, a Republican businessman in Kansas.”

One thing I want to mention here is that a basic function of political parties is to identify political talent and nurture it, draw it into the fold of a particular coalition. Like Jon Ossoff, El-Sayed has repeatedly demonstrated preparedness and a great skill at navigating in-person confrontations, either in a town hall setting like the video above demonstrates, or in interviews with the press. That does not always translate into a victory at the ballot box, and we shouldn’t take a skillful handling of a heckler as evidence that El-Sayed is going to win. Matters are never that simple.

But having that skillset in the coalition has great value, outside of moving the outcome of any one election. Zohran Mamdani gets a lot of credit for being charismatic, but his is a different toolkit. He is, on the one hand, very good at one-on-one, face-to-face conversations with even the most hostile of interlocutors—but usually in a more intimate setting than a debate stage. And on the other hand, he and his team are tremendous talents at messaging over social media.

Ossoff and El-Sayed on the one hand, and Mamdani on the other, all bring distinct skills to the table when to comes to rhetoric in the various domains any public figure has to navigate. But those are skills we will absolutely need in the struggle to defeat authoritarianism and reconstruct this country.

Wasn’t this going to be an open book test?

SULLIVAN: We weren't supposed to get these questions beforehand, were we? MODERATOR: No, neither one of you got questions beforehand PELTOLA: I'm prepared!
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-16T18:54:09.377Z

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Better Win a District: Virginia’s Sixth, by Alan Elrod: Flipping this ruby red district would signal an "apocalypse for Republicans."
Four Principles for Comprehensive Higher Education Reform, by Brendan Cantwell: Chapter 14 (pp. 107–120) from The Reconstruction Papers.
Ilhan Omar vs. Regime Politics (Neon Liberalism #95, with Adam Gurri): The DHS raid on Ilhan Omar's residence is continuous with Donald Trump's birther politics.
To Rebuild Democracy in the Hearts of Americans, We Need a New National Service Initiative, by Alan Elrod: Chapter 15 (pp. 121–124) from The Reconstruction Papers.
The Message Is Getting Out There. We Need Your Help to Make a New Reconstruction Possible. The Reconstruction Papers was referenced in Vox this week.
Next week, we will be running a series of essays specifically on the question of what liberalism is. Look forward to it!
A reminder that we have produced an audio version of The Reconstruction Papers. You can redeem our subscriber drive deal to get access to audio for all of the essays right now, or you can subscribe on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and elsewhere via RSS feed to get a new essay a day in your feed for the rest of the month.