‘No Kings’ Rallies Are Just One Piece of the Puzzle

The “No Kings” rallies scheduled for Saturday will likely rank among the largest mass demonstrations in American history. But to truly contest President Donald Trump’s assault on constitutional safeguards, opponents may also need to revive an edgier tool of protest that has largely vanished from the nation’s experience — the general strike.

For this weekend’s rallies, organizers are expecting more people to turn out than the estimated four to six million who showed up at some 2,150 events during the first No Kings demonstrations in June. No one would claim those protests, which were timed to offset the military parade Trump hosted the same day in Washington, have deterred his drive to centralize presidential power and transform the federal government into a vast mechanism for rewarding allies and punishing adversaries.