Roughly 10,000 area residents marched through downtown San Antonio on Saturday to take part in the nation-wide ‘No Kings’ day of action and decry the rapid descent of the world’s longest standing modern democracy into authoritarianism. In Texas, they were joined by an estimated 20,000 marchers in Austin, 15,000 in Houston, and thousands more at dozens of marches and rallies across the state.
Led locally by 50501 San Antonio, Indivisible SATX, and PSL-San Antonio, among others, speakers urged residents to rally to the defense of their most vulnerable friends and neighbors at the ballot box, their workplaces, and communities. Several encouraged active-duty service personnel to also think critically about the orders they are receiving as Trump and some U.S. governors call up military reservists to engage in domestic policing in (mostly) Democrat-led states and cities.
Other concerns included the elimination of federal healthcare subsidies and social services, widespread violence by masked and apparently unaccountable ICE agents and the disappearance of detainees, as well as Trump’s frequent violations of judicial orders, increasing attacks on the rights of trans people, redevelopment plans in Gaza, the clawing back of millions in funding for clean energy and clean water, and the ramping up of CIA operations for regime change in Venezuela and extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean.
The nation’s largest marches occurred in New York City (320,000), Chicago (250,000), and Washington, D.C. (200,000). This makes for a historic largest single day of protest in country’s history, inspiring around 2 percent of the U.S. population to get out into the street.
“Today I stand here with the ghosts of my grandfathers at my back. Brave men in the Army, in the Army Air Corps, who fought fascism in World War II,” said a woman who introduced herself as Kate, a U.S. veteran, and a member of Protect and Defend, a San Antonio-based veterans organization.
“We, brothers, sisters, siblings, in uniform or out, we volunteered to share the burden of protecting democracy, promoting justice for all, and projecting the best of us for the world to see. Our troops must determine if they are being asked to obey a lawful order or if the task before them is an unlawful order that they are required to refuse under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”
President Trump and Republican Governors like Texas Governor Greg Abbott have begun to call up state reservists to engage in domestic policing operations, mostly in states and cities with Democratic leadership, largely over the objections of local elected officials, and largely in defense of ICE operations.
In the latter, masked raids have led to deaths in some cases. Meanwhile, recent reporting by ProPublica has found 170 U.S. citizens who have been detailed by ICE and a long list of abuse claims that have largely fallen on deaf ears at the White House.
“Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on,” writes Nicole Foy at ProPublica. “They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”
ProPublica took on the project of tabulating abuses since, as they write, “the government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans.”
In expletive-laden remarks, Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez laid into the Trump administration for its attacks on broad swathes of the American public committed to traditional values like democracy, progressivism, and pluralism.
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From a district that includes Uvalde, site of the 2022 massacre of children at Robb Elementary School that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers, Sen. Gutierrez spoke of the America “we deserve”:
“We deserve a country where kids don’t get shot in school. We deserve a country where each and every one of us has the same access to a government-paid single-payer insurance! We deserve a country where people have the freedom to choose not just their partner, but what they want to be and who they want to be.”
“We deserve an America where cops don’t have their goddamn boot on our necks.”
U.S. House Rep. Joaquin Castro thanked the young people in attendance and said their energy would be needed in the month ahead. He also thanked the many older attendees, those who fought through the Civil Rights era who he credited for bringing the country “to a better place… [that] let people pursue their dreams regardless of the color of their skin.”
But, he added:
“We need you for one more fight. We need you for one more season. Because we have a man in the White House, unfortunately, that thinks he’s a king. That thinks he leads a kingdom and not a country.
“And so we need your experience and we need your wisdom and we need your passion and we need it now and we need it in November of 2026.”
Slideshow Two
And yet part of the specific danger of this moment lies in the reality that the United States seems to be sliding toward “competitive authoritarianism,” as in Hungary or Russia—where a country technically still has elections, courts, and congress but in effect has one-party rule by a dictatorial strongman—according to consensus among political scientists and national security experts. Toward that end, No Kings participants also called attention to the urgency of action beyond the standard get-out-the-vote messaging of other moments.
“We have arrived at the precipice of a civilization-ending climate catastrophe,” said Brian Lopez of the Southern Workers Assembly, which describes itself as a network of unions working to unite labor power across the U.S. South.
“Wars and genocide backed by our tax dollars are raging, not just in foreign lands, but here on our streets, perpetrated by those who are supposed to be our neighbors, against our loved ones and families. The facade of democracy is being pulled back, revealing the centuries of rotten foundation our country has been teetering upon,” said Lopez.
“We are at the point where we would not be able to simply vote our way out of this mess. If you are truly concerned about the future of our society, of our children, and the planet we share, we must fundamentally change the structure of our society.”
Slideshow Three
It was a point echoed as well by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who represents District 35, a long stretch of Central Texas that joins Austin and San Antonio. However, at President Trump’s request, Texas Republicans recently redrew voting maps to deliver five more Republican House seats before next year’s mid-term election. Those maps are being challenged in court, but are clearly intended to unseat Casar.
Related: “Texas Gerrymandering Fight Reveals Actions of an Autocrat—And What it Takes to Defeat One“
In his comments to No Kings participants, Casar said that during a recent visit to the United Nations, many leaders wanted to know “what the hell is going on in America” but that the antics of the Trump administration were plain to leaders from across Latin America.
“Leaders from Latin America said, ‘No, we know exactly what’s going on.’ Because they’ve seen stuff like this in their own countries where authoritarianism was even further down the road than what we’re experiencing today.”
Their advice resonated strongly with those attending No Kings in San Antonio.
“They said to me, mijo, you might be looking for a shortcut, an elevator to take you to where you want to go. But in this life, there are no shortcuts. You can’t take the elevator. You’ve got to take the stairs. Step by step by step. March after march. Rally after rally. Talk to your neighbors. Organize. Push back every single way you can until we win.”
Slideshow Four
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Trump’s response to the national marches was captured in a social media post he made the same day, in which an AI version of himself wearing a crown dumped massive amounts of excrement on virtual marchers; as the musician Billy Bragg responded on Facebook: “While it’s genuinely gob smacking to see a head of state post a clip of himself defecating on his own citizens, it does confirm that shitposting is the closest thing the Trump regime has to an ideology.”