Project 2025 Meets Protest 2025, and the Stakes Are Sky High

The nation’s soul is trapped in a crossfire. Resistance is rising, but the history of protest in America teaches patience, demands persistence and rewards only the movements that refuse to fade.

Different signs. Same fight. Americans have always taken to the streets when power overreaches.

From “Hell no, we won’t go!” to “America has no king,” protest chants have always been more than angry noise. They’ve been declarations of identity, defiance, and vision.

Many of us remember the cries of the past, as if we heard them just yesterday. There was “We shall overcome,” and “One, two, three four, we don’t want your fucking war.” Black Americans chanted “Power to the people,” and “Say it loud: I’m Black and I’m proud!” while gay Americans in New York chanted, “Out of the closets and into the streets” as they marched on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village.

These chants didn’t just echo through city streets and college campuses. They tore open something deep in the American soul, reshaping how we think about war, youthful defiance, race, sexuality, and the true meaning of democracy.

Now a new wave of resistance is rising, and its chants carry that same urgency. There’s “No king. No Trump. No tyranny,” and my personal favorite: “Hey Trump, what do you say? How many rights did you take today? a modern echo of the 1960s’ fondness for rhymed resistance. They’re shouted by Gen Z students and aging Vietnam-era vets, by immigrants and retirees, in red states and blue.

While the slogans may be different, the intent is familiar: a demand to be heard, a refusal to be ruled, and a warning to resentful leaders, arrogant in their certainty and blind to their overreach, who keep tightening their grip.

This weekend, hundreds of thousands, some say millions, of Americans turned out en masse in cities across the country, raucously pushing back on what they see as a determined drive by Donald Trump, his MAGA loyalists, and a small band of far-right provocateurs to dismantle democratic norms, weaponize executive control, and install a system of loyalty above law.

At the same time, Trump’s military parade, a $25 million authoritarian pageant in full regalia, rolled out tanks, fighter jets, and troops lined up as backdrops for a man who sees loyalty as a one-way street and has done everything he can to undermine the U.S. Constitution those troops have sworn to uphold.

Rex Smith, who worked in some of the same journalistic endeavors as me early in our careers, described the event this way in his Saturday column, The Upstate American: “Most notably,’ He writes, :”the intent of this year’s pageant is dubious.” Rex points out that while June 14 marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army, the parade’s “a bit of extravagance surely related to another anniversary on the day: Donald J. Trump’s 79th birthday We know that this president loves pageantry, though perhaps not quite as much as he simply adores having honor lavished upon him.”

Indeed. Folks lined the streets of Washington to watch, some cheering, others standing in silent protest. An 18-mile security perimeter surrounded the event, as officials tried to present unity while the country’s divisions played out loudly in communities spanning all 50 states.

“No Kings”

Crowds ranged from hundreds in small towns to tens of thousands in major cities, all keyed to a simple two-word phrase: “No Kings!”

Houston drew 15,000 peaceful demonstrators, while Philadelphia, New York, and LA saw “flooded streets, parks, and plazas” brimming with protesters waving signs that read “Democracy, Not Dynasty,” “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA,” and “The Flag Belongs to the People,” according to reports and photos carried by local news media.

Even on Long Island—my home area, and a place hardly known as a hotbed of protest—turnout was strong. In Port Washington, some 400 people gathered in the rain, chanting and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Hundreds more marched through Mineola and Riverhead, while smaller rallies stretched from Garden City to East Hampton, part of a coordinated island-wide effort that drew thousands.

About 60 veterans were arrested in Washington D.C..as they protested ahead of Army parade, pushing past a barrier to sit on the steps in front of the Capitol. Sitting on steps, oh my! What a horrible, horrible action, right?

Organizers estimate this day of action could surpass 3.5 million participants united in anti-authoritarian dissent. Who knows if that number is accurate, but news photos from the streets told a story too large to ignore.

The protests were largely organized under the banner of the 50501 Movement, a decentralized, pro-democracy coalition named after the zip code for Fort Dodge, Iowa, where the group staged its first mass protest earlier this year. With no central leader but plenty of digital coordination, the movement has attracted activists, artists, veterans, union organizers, and disillusioned former Republicans.

These aren’t protests against just one policy or executive action. They’re a nationwide alarm bell, a raw, rising chorus of Americans insisting the country is headed in the wrong direction and refusing to stay silent. They echo earlier moments in history when standing up to an overreaching and indifferent government was a moral imperative, and protest became the steady heartbeat for American democracy.

A Difference Maker?

Will these latest protests make a difference? Not to Trump certainly. He’ll wave them away with contempt.

Not to the architects of Project 2025; they’re so locked into their vision of a purified, theocratic America that anything outside that window is irrelevant. Not to the MAGA faithful in Congress or the diehards in red-state America. They all view the marches as just so much noise, temporary outrage that’s destined to fade.

I’m pretty sure they’re disappointed the protests failed to explode into violence and property destruction, giving them the perfect excuse to justify more crackdowns, more arrests, more force. Their bet? The Americans they depend on when the voting starts, will stay home, catch the highlights on TV, and let the talking heads balance passion with disinformation until it all blurs.

And too often, they’re right.

The Lessons of History

Mass protest has always been the last resort of people pushed to the edge. When institutions fail and the courts go quiet, the streets speak up. While protests rarely deliver instant victories, history shows that when they’re sustained, focused, and paired with legal, electoral, and economic pressures, they can shift public opinion and force political realignment.

The anti-Vietnam War protests didn’t immediately stop the bombing, but they helped focus the public to the government’s actions, and shifted the politics that funded it. After National Guardsmen, sent by Ohio’s hard-right governor, opened fire on unarmed students protesting at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine, the war continued for five more years as Americans grew increasingly disillusioned with its purpose, and outraged by its cost.

The civil rights movement didn’t win the moment John Lewis marched across the Selma bridge or when Dr. Martin Luther King declared, “I have a dream!” and “We shall overcome.”

Working through insistent marches, smart lawsuits, voter registration drives, and carrying a strong sense for the moral needs of our nation, these movements cracked open the foundations of American government. They turned our nation from one that enforced segregation, voter suppression, white supremacy, sexual repression, and systemic exclusion into an America that, at the very least, aspired to equal protection, shared power, and civil rights for all.

Scale, Message

The lessons here? The impact of protest depends on scale, it depends on persistence and the moral clarity of the message sent, and, finally, it depends on whether cracks can be formed among those in power. In the Philippines and Tunisia, mass demonstrations toppled dictators in weeks because the ruling elites there splintered. But in countries where the ruling class stands firm, protesting is a marathon, not a sprint.

That’s the issue facing Americans right now. Will this wave of protest fuel a continuing, well-focused movement that will significantly influence the 2026 midterms? Can it erode support for Trump’s authoritarian policies within his own party, and empower local officials in either party to aggressively resist federal overreach?

Can it bring those who are suspicious of left-wing dogma, and lean toward a more conservative view of American life, into the fold?

Much of that depends on what comes next. A march makes noise; a movement makes change.

To make a difference, today’s anger needs to become tomorrow’s sustained action, through organizing, legal action, voter drives, labor power, and community pressure. History teaches patience. Even the most successful movements took years to bear fruit. The idea that a single day of marching, or a few days — even if millions participate — will stop the machinery of authoritarianism is fantasy. But that doesn’t mean it’s futile.

Protesting plants seeds. It shifts the narrative. And sometimes, it’s the only lever left when all others have been broken. What we saw Saturday wasn’t just a protest against specific policies, though there’s plenty of material around right now to work with. It’s a nationwide alarm bell, a chorus of Americans coming together to declare that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

It’s a reflection of earlier times when dissent defined a generation, and left our nation a better place moving forward.

“Hell no, we won’t go! Hell no, we won’t go!” That was the chant echoing through universities and on city streets in 1970, as the Vietnam War dragged on and I stepped out of high school and into the real world.

I wasn’t headed to college, and I didn’t have a father who could pressure a local doctor to diagnose me with bone spurs. My family was led by an often overwhelmed single mother with good intentions but little time to keep the oldest of her children in line, and I was pretty much on my own. At the time, I was working in a pizza joint and writing for a local weekly newspaper.

And I was damned scared of getting drafted to fight in a war I didn’t believe in.

In 1970, the U.S. Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which handed the president, Lyndon Johnson, a blank check for military expansion, and I was desperately thinking of ways out.

Canada? Maybe. I lived in an upstate community on the northern border for awhile in my early teens, and the Canadians I met were all pretty nice. Cut off a toe, or maybe my trigger finger? No way. Burn my draft card and spend time in jail? That meant choosing between getting shot in a foreign jungle or getting stabbed in a cell. I was never very diplomatic in saying what I thought, and either way I’d probably face problems.

But the draft missed me. I stayed home, and I married my high school sweetheart, who still keeps me in line. But some of my classmates weren’t so lucky. They were already on their way to Southeast Asia.

The whole damn thing never made sense to me. It was a war buried in a jungle and, frankly, carried on with a high level of colonial arrogance. Meanwhile, students from Berkeley on the restless West Coast to Kent State in the industrial Midwest and Columbia, a citadel of the powerful East Coast corridor, were shutting down campuses and demanding change.

Did the protests make a difference? They certainly did, but not easily, and not overnight. Will the protests going on now make a difference?

That remains an open question, one that likely won’t be answered until the 2026 midterms are behind us. In the meantime, the work must continue on all fronts: in Congress, in the courts, among families and friends, and in the daily trenches of our civic and political lives. What do you think?

The Sunday Wrap-Up …

Political Violence: A shocking act of political violence unfolded in the early hours of June 14: Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, a former House Speaker, and her husband were fatally shot in their Brooklyn Park home by a gunman impersonating a police officer .

The suspect, identified as 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter, a former state appointee, remains at large, prompting an intense multi-agency manhunt, complete with shelter-in-place orders, heightened security for elected officials, and the FBI’s involvement.

Governor Tim Walz called it a “politically motivated assassination” and described Hortman and her husband’s deaths as “unspeakable tragedy,” praising their service and character. But really, this is what happens when you insist on calling anyone who is against you politically “people who hate America,” as our president is wont to do. Right?

This is where we’re at in America, and we shouldn’t be surprised when something like this happens.

Trump Retreats, Once Again: The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.

The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign, an issue at the heart of his presidency, is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose politically.

So people that were fired within the government bureaucracy are being called back by the hundreds. And immigrant attacks are ended in some areas because it might hurt the president politically. Wow! Trumpworld is both incompetent, and incredibly self-serving.