NO KINGS PROTEST 3, New York City, March 29, 2026

 

On March 28, 2026, 8 million Americans gathered in 2,600 different venues and in every state to participate in No Kings Protests, challenging the Trump Administration and its policies on immigration and war–and so much more as stated in its site: “Masked secret police terrorizing our communities. An illegal, catastrophic war putting us in danger and driving up our costs. Attacks on our freedom of speech, our civil rights, our freedom to vote. Costs pushing families to the brink. Trump wants to rule over us as a tyrant. But this is America, and power belongs to the people – not to wannabe kings or their billionaire cronies.”

If you open that site, In America We Have No Kings, and click LIVESTREAMS at the top, you may watch the No Kings Flagship Rally which was held at the Minnesota State Capitol [4:09:06].

Otherwise, please enjoy my photographs of the New York City (Manhattan) No Kings Protest, which began at West 59th Street and continued down 7th Avenue to 14th Street. For your information, my photographs (which total 195) start with 4 taken at my home in the South Bronx, then continue with 13 of people who caught my eye as I made my way on 59th Street to the starting point on the west side. The remaining photographs are of the actual protest march, which proceeded south down 7th Avenue.

 

AT HOME

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAKING MY WAY WEST ON 59th STREET

 

 

 

The contrast between Young MAGA and this delightful, equally young woman is so revealing. The young man was happy to display his Ultra MAGA banner, but then spewed several nasty comments at me, having noticed that my tee shirt identified me as Liberal–no respect for elders here! He was part of small group of 30-or-so MAGA motorcyclists who were gathered at 5th Avenue and 59th Street. They didn’t venture any further west.

The contrast is not merely in the demeanor of the two, but also in the signs they display. MAGA signs, banners and other merchandise most often are sourced commercially, part of a multi-million dollar industry. His ULTRA MAGA flag is available for $16.95 through PatriotDepot.com. Her sign, of course, is unique, personal and hand-made.

 

This young man also holds a hand-made sign. It’s subject is ICE, the acronym for U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents have been using intimidating and overly aggressive tactics against innocent citizens and legal immigrants far beyond what our laws allow. Also, the 2025 ICE budget under Donald Trump is enormous–its $30 billion to track, arrest and deport immigrants is a 300% increase over its budget of the prior-year. It also has $11.25 billion added to its annual detention budget, exceeding our DOJ budget request for 2026 for the entire federal prison system.

So, yes, America, stay salty, melt ICE.

 

Is Donald Trump an authoritarian? A majority of more than 500 political scientists, surveyed exactly one year ago, claim the United States is moving toward some form of authoritarianism.

Is Donald Trump corrupt? In February 2026, the Campaign Legal Center writes: “A defining feature of the Trump administration is that those who pay get to play….This is not just abnormal — it defies any semblance of integrity or
ethics in government.”

Is Donald Trump incompetent? On April 9, 2026, The Nation published an article titled, “How Trump’s Incompetence and Looming Global Catastrophes May Intersect.” A week earlier, the New York Times Opinion editor, Kathleen Kingsbury stated:  “Over and over, our federal officials have failed to deliver on the actual responsibilities of government. In this administration, though, incompetence isn’t usually a fireable offense. It’s just part of the job.”

 

This man’s sign conflates two things. One is Donald Trump as chicken, which comes from the fact that he often makes pronouncements from which he soon backs away. The other relates to the Band Aid on the right ear, a reference to the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler, PA on July 13, 2024, in which his ear may have been hit by a bullet, or maybe by shrapnel, or maybe not at all (as many skeptics suspect).

 

 

 

This man’s sign pictures Patti LuPone hoisting a tulip glass–an image that comes from her performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Ladies Who Lunch and to its final words, “Everybody rise!”

The words on the right side of this sign refer to a 2017 Variety red carpet event where, when asked what she would do if Donald Trump came to her show, LuPone replied the she would not perform. Asked why, she replied with the words you see on the right.

 

This is a conflation of two Trump references. One is Trump’s proclivity and preference for fast foods. The other is the nickname given him especially after his “Liberation Day” tariffs of May, 2025, in which he continually threatened to raise tariffs on countries only to then reverse his threats, something he continues to do, even today, with his war on Iran; TACO refers to the threat and its subsequent reversal: Trump Always Chickens Out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This sign, which conjures up Nazi Germany, Auschwitz, and Death Camps, is harrowing.

Is the Past Prologue? Is this, today, the USA?

ICE detention camps such as Alligator Alcatraz and Krome (both in Florida) are inhuman, insanitary places where detainees have died–31 in 2025 alone–and because ICE removes so many names from its Federal database, family members and lawyers cannot contact them or know where they are; in essence, they have disappeared. A New Republic article of last July asks “Are We About to Have Labor Camps in the United States of America?” Amnesty Inernational in December 2025 documents “Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State…” In an article of March 13, 2026, Tim Dickinson, senior political writer for The Contrarian,  wrote an article titled “Is Trump Building ‘Concentration Camps’? These Experts Have No Doubts.”

People, our neighbors, our friends, immigrants are not being put into trains. They are, however, being put into planes–2,253 deportation flights to 79 different countries (many in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia) between January 20, 2025 and January 20, 2026. They have, essentially, been “disappeared.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: CROWD

 

 

 

These are typical views of the protest–a heterogeneous mix of people and of signs. The green sign on the far right is in Farsi. I can’t translate it, sorry.

 

DRUM, which stands for Desis Rising Up and Moving, was founded in 2000 to promote the civil, economic and educational rights of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrants in New York.

 

I don’t know if this crowd belonged to a single group, but the two yellow oblong signs, They tried to bury us and They didn’t know we were seeds, refer to a 1954 poetic epitaph for Adolfo Báez Bone by Nicaraguan poet, Ernesto Cardenas: Te mataron y no nos dijeron enterraron su cuerpo….Y lo que hacían era enterrar una semilla.

 

I hope that these five photographs convey the quality of this protest: wall-to-wall people; nearly everybody smiling, happy, up-beat, even if the day was quite chilly; a broad mix of all ages and ethnicities, of individuals, of families and friends, and of larger groups representing specific causes.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: PEOPLE IN COSTUME

 

Surely there’s a long history of costumed protesters, and the reasons behind the costumes are many. But some of our more recent, inflatable costumes, such as the frog that we see above–especially the frog–carry an interesting origin. After an early Frog costume wearer in Portland, Seth Todd, was videoed getting pepper sprayed through his air vent by ICE in October, 2025, demonstrators everywhere, in comradeship with the victim, made the “Portland frog” ubiquitous.

But, whether frog, or other animal or cartoon character, these costumes fall under the rubric of Tactical Frivolity. Their intention is to disarm law enforcement, to look ridiculous and clearly be non-threatening. Because they are based in satire, their mere unwieldy form undermines the common lie of ICE, police officers and conservative politicians who justify overly-aggressive tactics by accusing the demonstrators of being violent “Antifa” agents.

 

Besides being another example of inflatable tactical frivolity, Cookie Monster became a political activist two years ago when he complained about corporate product “shrinkflation” (particularly in regard to the diminishing size of cookies).

 

Here we have Dinosaur Royalty returning from the end of the Mesozoic Era to set things straight and challenge an overinflated real estate developer who wants to usurp their throne. Their signs: Eat the Tyrant and F**K Trump.

 

 

 

Although the Bald Eagle has been the national emblem of the United States ever since it was placed on the Great Seal in June 20, 1782, president Biden officially made it the national bird on December 24, 2024. I suspect that this bird is marching to complain about how the economic boom that Biden left has turned into the Trump Slump.

 

Donald Trump has truly transformed Uncle Sam–the national personification of the United States–into Uncle Scam. David Corn, writing this week in Mother Jones, concludes his thoughtful article with these words: “Trump is the most successful con man in American history. Maybe in world history.”

Rand Engel in July of 2024 presented a research tour-de-force in the periodical, Medium, titled: “119 Examples Of Donald Trump’s Corruption.” Read’em and weep!

 

 

 

Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984, a dystopian novel set in a Christian theocracy named Gilead, which is what the USA had become once its democratic government was overthrown. Its protagonist, June, is given a new name, Offred and made a Handmaiden ofFred, for whom she is forced to bear children. Atwood’s novel has too many uncanny parallels to what is being promoted today in the USA by Republicans, from restrictions on reproductive rights, gender roles and bodily autonomy, to no-fault divorce, to the right-wing promotion of the concept of “Tradwife,” to the fact that 69 million married women may lose their ability to vote if the SAVE Act is passed.

Most of these exclusionary goals can be found in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which seeks to dismantle decades of progress in women’s rights by restricting healthcare and enforcing a ‘natural family structure.’

See, for example, Areeba Haider, “One Year In, 53 Ways the Second Trump Administration Is Harming Women and Families,” (Jan. 2026) and Kathy Spillar, “Republicans Want to Reverse Over a Half-Century of Hard-Fought Progress for Women and Girls,” (July 2024).

 

 

 

 

 

Just a note: cut off on the left of my photograph is the fourth member of this party, a policewoman holding the chains.

 

It may be difficult to find some political motivation for an Elvis Presley impersonator in this No Kings Protest, unless–like the Tyrannosauri Rex–the King of Rock and Roll also came to dethrone that wannabe real estate developer.

But, come to think of it, All Shook Up is a song about a man in need of help and about LOVE (as opposed to the hate being spewed by the Right):  Uh, well, a-bless my soul, what’s wrong with me? I’m itching like a man on a fuzzy tree….Well, my hands are shaky, and my knees are weak  I can’t seem to stand on my own two feet.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, No Kings

 

From the moment that Donald Trump took office for the second time in January of 2025, he has consolidated his power, challenged all constraints to that power, asserted total authority over the Executive branch (including the Department of Justice), bypassed Congress by using executive orders to make policy, and asserted his sovereign immunity over any legal controls. In other words, he has acted like a king.

Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute accused him of  “acting more as Roman emperor than American president.” British author and Teaching Fellow Dafydd Townley wrote that “Trump sees himself as more like a king than president.” and concluded his article with these words: “This is not the separation of powers as prescribed by the framers of the US constitution, but more like the absolutism of medieval monarchs.” Conservative lawyer and jurist J. Michael Luttig wrote in December that “Donald Trump is trying to amass the powers of a king.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a picture of the King of Spades from a set of French playing cards from ca. 1770 by engraver and printmaker Jean Marie Delattre. Nothing like getting French help towards our ‘second Revolution against monarchism’, 250 years later!

 

 

 

 

 

The three men pictured at the top of this No King Makers sign are Supreme Court Justices Alito, Roberts and Thomas, all of whom (along with three more) decided on July 1, 2024 in the case Trump v. United States that “A former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his ‘conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.’” To this, Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, responded three days after the ruling: “Trump v. U.S. astounds in its implications. It grants the president the power of a monarch.”

 

 

 

 

 

Piles of money connect this sign (No Kings XI), linking Kleptocrats and Kings, and the one above it, showing greedy Kings rolling in their ill-gained wealth. Kleptocrats–authoritarian leaders who exploit state power to enrich themselves–and Kings are not (necessarily) the same, but Donald Trump (King or not) is definitely a Kleptocrat. In January, an NPR program asked “how much money President Trump and his family have made?” Based on the research of New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick, the answer was “Trump and his family have made almost $4 billion dollars ‘off of the presidency’ in just about a year.”

That constitutes kleptocracy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, President Trump

 

 

 

 

 

This is a wonderful, inventive Taco King. He straddles his tortilla stuffed with money, holds up his monarchical symbols–orb and sceptre–and wears a crown á la Chiquita that appears to have chile pepper horns. In his right hand, the sceptre is topped by his favorite fast food, a hamburger (or hamberder as he misspelled it once). In his left hand, the orb is a Bit coin instead of a globe. So creative!

We already know why Trump is sometimes called TACO, but I ought to recognize Robert Armstrong, the US Finance Editor of the Financial Times, who first gave the name to Donald Trump in late May, 2025.

 

Everyone notices and comments on the unnatural orange skin color of Donald Trump’s face. It’s unclear whether he uses bronzers, self-tanning agents, tanning sprays, or some type of tanning device, but in 2019, a Vox reporter actually named a product,”Boosting Hydrating Concealer in orange,” made by a Swiss company called Bronx Colors. Regardless of the product, Trump’s orange-tinted appearance has invited the nickname “Cheeto,” as in those bright orange-yellow corn-cheese snacks made by Frito-Lay, Cheetos.

 

For all who read Emoji.

 

 

For whatever reason, Donald Trump avoided the military draft during the Vietnam War. Between 1964 and 1968, he received four deferments while attending Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania. Upon graduation in 1968, he was diagnosed with bone spurs in his heels by the Queens podiatrist, Larry Bronstein (or Braunstein). This gave him a medical exemption and classified him as ineligible for military draft. A YouTube from the program, The Ring of Fire, stated: “the podiatrist, according to his own daughters, came up with the made up diagnosis of bone spurs.”

 

This sign demands analysis in two-parts. Part 1: This woman could not know that Donald Trump used AI to represent himself as Jesus, because he only did so 3 weeks after the No Kings Protest as Trump was feuding with Pope Leo. Here is that AI image posted by Trump.

However, what I call the Trump Image Industry had provided his devotees with such blasphemous images for years. For example, I call this Trump as Good Shepherd, and this Trump as Winged Saviour, and this Trump as Orange Jesus, and this Trump-Jesus Crowned, and this Trump with Halo in Assumption. There is a decades-long association of Trump with Christ for whatever reason.

Part 2: the “not Jesus” part goes back to an incident of 2005 when Donald Trump was recorded as he bragged to TV host Billy Bush about trying to have sex with a married woman. Here is the transcription of that clip:  Trump: “…better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful… I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.” Bush: “Whatever you want.”  Trump: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

 

The phrase “GET LOST, PIGGY” has appeared in social media posts ever since November of 2025, when President Trump snapped at Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey with these words: “Quiet, quiet piggy.” The exchange took place aboard Air Force One when she asked him about the Epstein files.  But, then, Trump has referred to women before as Piggy, as for example the Venezuelan actress Alicia Machado, Miss Universe of 1996.

So it’s understandable that women are throwing his derogatory term back at him.

 

A woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson filed a civil lawsuit in 2016, alleging that Trump and Jeffrey Epstein raped her in 1994 when she was 13 years old. The lawsuit was withdrawn by the plaintiff before going to trial. In another case from the 1990s (this one not involving children) a jury found Trump civilly liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll. The judge in that case later clarified that the jury’s finding of “sexual abuse” met the common definition of rape, though it did not meet the specific technical definition under New York Penal Law at the time.

As of October 2024, since the 1970s, at least 28 women have accused Donald Trump of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape, sex with minors, sexual assault, physical abuse, kissing and groping without consent, looking under women’s skirts, and walking in on naked pageant contestants. Even his former wife, Ivana Trump, said that he violently assaulted her during their 1990 divorce (but she later walked back rape charges). This sign is merely an allegation, but the man’s behavior gives it plausibility.

 

Caligula, or Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (12-41 AD), was the third Emperor of Rome. He ruled from 37 AD until his assassination four years later. He was 24 when he succeeded Tiberius and became known for his cruelty, sadism, extravagant behavior and sexual perversions…sound familiar to anybody?

He also demanded to be worshipped as a living god. This sign, punctuated by a colon, implies that the descriptive words refer to Caligula, but they could just as easily define Donald Trump.

 

The quotation, “An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes” is attributed to the Chinese General Sun Tzu. Each tongue of flame in this sign refers to an aspect of our society that has diminished and been attacked by Trump and our elected Republicans. 

That Donald Trump has neglected his own nation has eluded very few. For example, Thomas Reese wrote a piece in the National Catholic Reporter in February titled “Trump is destroying America — he must be stopped.” In January, the Center for American Progress published a study “tracking 111 ways the Trump administration weakens America’s security, economy, and global influence.” And just a few days ago, American writer and Guggenheim Fellow Rebecca Solnit wrote a hard-hitting piece for The Guardian titled “The United States Is Destroying Itself.” Here are three sobering observations from her article:

“The federal government that serves us is being starved while the federal government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is glutting itself on taxpayer money…”

“Trump at some level knows he’s failing politically, cognitively and physically and wants to take it all down with him, the way that ancient rulers were buried with their slaughtered horses and servants.”

“They will not last for ever, and we need to think about what happens when they’re gone – to talk about the kind of reconstruction the US will face for the first time since the civil war, the reconstruction a ravaged and corrupted country has to go through to return to functionality.”

While name-calling and pejorative nicknames are a long-standing tradition in American politics, historians generally agree that the sheer volume, speed, and public nature of the pejorative names directed at Donald Trump are unprecedented, particularly in the modern media era.

 

Traitor: Among many possibilities for this, the example most often cited is Trump’s instigation of an insurrection on January 6, 2021, which undermined the peaceful transfer of power and betrayed his oath of office.

Racist: Well prior to Trump’s more overt and recent examples (such as posting a video of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes) Trump has a decades-long record of racist statements and actions, and even his first 2016 campaign was driven by racism and xenophobia.

Unattractive:  This is a slippery topic. Tastes vary, and as the saying goes, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” But, then, in 2016, Professor Brendon O’Connor applied a different lens for an article titled “6 types of ugly American, and Donald Trump is all of them.”

Maniacal: Again, one may cite numerous examples, but the Editorial Board of the South Florida Sun Sentinel on April 8, 2025 trumped them all with “A president who talks like a genocidal maniac.”

Psycho:  In October 2024, a letter signed by over 200 mental health professionals warned that Donald Trump was “grossly unfit for leadership” due to “his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder–malignant narcissism.”

 

For those who prefer to avoid the “MF” phrasing feel free to replace it with  “…as a Brick,”  “…as a Box of Rocks,”  “…as a Box of Nails,” whatever may be your preference.

 

As of April 2026, many historians and polls have ranked Donald Trump among the worst U.S. presidents, placing him at the bottom three along with James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Critics cite poor handling of institutional stability, foreign policy, and polarization

Editor, political analyst and writer, Jonathan Alter, wrote the following this February in regard to America’s presidents: “There’s debate about the top three—my choices are Lincoln, Washington, and FDR—but no suspense about who’s bringing up the rear…we can be confident that Donald Trump will be viewed as the worst president in U.S. history, with Richard Nixon now a distant second.”

My guess is that historians of the future (and yes, we’ll still have them) will focus on three surpassing abuses: Trump’s violation of his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution; Trump’s use of the power of the federal government to threaten and punish his critics; Trump’s gobsmacking corruption.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Kakistocracy

 

 

 

Ancient Greece gave us this word: kákistos (worst) and krátos (rule). The Cambridge Dictionary defines kakistocracy as a government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people in a state of country.

You may ask, is the US Government a kakistocracy under the Trump Presidency and Republican Majority in Congress? Steven Greenhut offers an indirect, yet convincing yes by observing that in January 2025, “The Economist this year named kakistocracy its word of the year after reflecting on President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) for attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence.”

Economist Noah Smith is more direct–the title of his substack blog for November 2, 2024 is “Trumpism is kakistocracy.”

But for a gentler, more subtle answer, I prefer the poem, American Kakistocracy, by Carlos Figueroa: It starts:  They think   I’m some   Johnny-come-lately…. then continues: Marching, invading places—   Venezuela, Minnesota   Sovereign spaces   Meeting their quotas?…. and concludes: Open our doors   Let people in   Non-citizens and citizens   And everything in between   Convict the American Kakistocracy   And we will win.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Holocaust

 

My reference to holocaust refers to the major definition in the Oxford dictionary: “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.”  This word derives from the Greek word, holokauston, which means sacrifice by fire. Certainly the mushroom cloud issuing from Trump’s head suggests this major definition. Of course, most would argue, President Trump would not drop a nuclear bomb on Iran or somewhere else.

But can we be certain about this, particularly after 8:06 a.m. (eastern time, April 7, 2026) when Trump, on his Truth Social site, threatened Iran with holocaust: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again?”

Intentional of not, this is a threat for a first-use of nuclear weapons. If the USA dropped every conventional munition it had on Iran, Iranian people and Iranian civilization would survive. Only a nuclear weapon would accomplish Trump’s threat, bringing on holocaust.

 

 

 

I take license in placing these two signs under the holocaust rubric, but Trump’s willingness to abandon a 79-year alliance with Western Europe (which began with the creation of NATO in 1949) leads to an unprecedented destabilization and insecure global future. In the words of Joschka Fischer, former Vice-Chancellor of Germany, “The strategy Trump is pursuing amounts to self-sabotage.”

Apologies like this have appeared at all three No Kings protests and everywhere in the Blogosphere. For example, an Iowa District Attorney titled his blog this past August, “America’s message to the world: We’re so very sorry,” and just last week, Methodist minister John Pavlovitz wrote a piece calling on all who voted for Trump to apologize to America’s children for subjecting them to a long litany of cruelties, fears and indecencies. He extended this apology to children of the planet, who “all have lost because you were irresponsible with one of the greatest responsibilities you’ve ever had in their lifetime”: the vote.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Congress

 

 

 

It’s a fact that Congress has been ceding its power to the Executive branch for more than a century, and both major parties are to blame. Nevertheless, in recent decades, House leadership under Republicans has been particularly abysmal, as the mere naming of recent, failed Republican Speakers of the House denotes: Boehner…Ryan…McCarthy…and Johnson, who today is facing internal revolt from his own Republican House members.

Our Constitution established Congress as the first branch of government in Article I–by far the longest Article–enumerating its core powers of government through taxation, commerce, defense and the making of laws. James Madison understood the primacy of Congress when he wrote (Federalist 51) “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates;” so did Abraham Lincoln when he stated at Gettysburg that our government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Yet now, as Andrew Tisch’s article of last week in Forbes states, “With Its Tail Between Its Legs, Congress Cedes Its Constitutional Responsibilities To President Trump.”

Where, indeed, is our Congress?

 

On August 7, 1974, three Republicans (well under a “handful”) convinced Richard Nixon to resign because of an offense less egregious than several by President Trump–the Watergate scandal. Those Republicans were Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), John Rhodes (R-AZ), and Hugh Scott (R-PA). Apparently no Republican is able or willing to serve our country in this way today, as one can infer from Mark Leibovich’s article of September in The Atlantic: “Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Leibovich article may take a rather exhaustive look at GOP cowardice and spinelessness, but it’s hardly an outlier. Here are a few other similarly-titled pieces: “’Spineless’: House Republican Pelted With Boos, Rage At Chaotic Town Hall;”  “Spineless Republicans Are Part of a Bigger Problem;”  “Former Republican Says Ex-Colleagues Are ‘Spineless Politicians, Rotten to the Core’;”  and “Conservative retired federal judge calls GOP ‘spineless’ in scathing rebuke of Trump.”

This last article refers to one of the stalwart, great Republican jurists and thinkers, J. Michael Luttig, who is quoted from this article of June, 2023 saying that his party was “destroying itself” and he warned: “No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Epstein Coverup

 

The Epstein Files consist of millions of documents, videos, images and emails referencing and associated with the American financier and convicted child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. It is suspected that people associated with Epstein may well have facilitated, participated in, or covered up his underage sex trafficking network.

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were close friends from the 1980s up to a “falling out” around 2004.  In this t-shirt, the “He…is…guilty” refers to Donald Trump, who is mentioned literaly thousands of times in the Epstein Files released by the Department of Justice. All the black lines on the t-shirt refer to the redactions within the text of the Files. In a pre-Christmas release of files by the Justice Department, for example, at least 550 pages “were fully redacted.”

 

 

 

 

 

These three signs all suggest a link between the Epstein Files and the War that President Trump started with Iran on February 28, 2026. There is, after all, a long tradition of leaders initiating an external conflict to divert public attention from domestic problems, and three weeks before the USA began attacking Iran, Donald Trump (whose name appears over 6,000 times in the Epstein Files) said that it was “really time for the country to get on to something else.”

That long tradition, known as Diversionary War Theory, seems not to be working as Trump had hoped. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), a member of his own party, has said “Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away,” and attorney Ann Olivarius, who represents sexual abuse survivors concurs: “Trump is a genius with distractions, but the Trump-Epstein files are a gift that will keep on giving.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Iran War

 

This sign reads: “The Lyin’ King” above and below: “no more wars.”  Throughout 2024, Donald Trump ran by touting his “deal-making skills” to end global conflicts. In his victory speech on his election night in November of 2024, he pledged his supporters: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Trump lied!

 

 

I’m not aware of anyone in our government actually using the words, “bombing for peace.” However, after the USA joined Israel’s unprovoked war against Iran on June 21, 2025 by bombing three nuclear sites–Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan–Donald Trump congratulated his military and declared “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”

 

Pete Hegseth: “We will…keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”  This is a war crime according to retired Army Judge Advocate, Dan Maurer.

Pete Hegseth’s “double tap” strike on a alleged drug boat in Caribbean + U.S. bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran. These, also, are war crimes.

Donald Trump: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” This terroristic threat, alone, is a war crime according to Stephen Rapp, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes.

Donald Trump: “We are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously;” “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one.” These, also, are war crimes.

 

“I was just following orders,” otherwise known as the Nuremberg Defense, are the words that military defendants speak in attempts to shift responsibility of their actions onto their superiors. According to the Nuremberg Principles, following orders is not a valid defense for the committing of war crimes. Today, as well, in American military law and international law, this defense is rejected.

 

The words on this sign come from Tupac Shakur’s lyrics for his 1993 rap song, Keep Ya head Up: “…You know, it’s funny when it rains it pours   They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor  Said it ain’t no hope for the youth and the truth is   It ain’t no hope for the future…”

But these lyrics also apply to real life, as Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams points out: the Trump Administration “would strip federal nutrition assistance from an estimated 6 million low-income Americans—including nearly two million children—as it spends billions on an illegal, open-ended war on Iran that has killed more than a thousand people and plunged the global economy into chaos.”

America’s poor are hardly the only victims: the destitution caused by this war will affect the entire world: “The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran could push more than 30 million people around the world into poverty.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Economy

 

A clever sign showing Donald Trump as Marie Antoinette in which Trump is oblivious to the daily struggles of ordinary American citizens. There is no evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said, “let them eat cake,” but plenty of evidence that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs did not reduce debt as promised and, in fact, “amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000 per US household.”

The titles of two recent articles lay bare the economic plight of most Americans: “Trump Has Turned the US Economy Into Sh*t,” (Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor);  “America’s wealth gap is growing, and Trump’s policies are making it bigger,” (Shannon Pettypiece, senior policy reporter for NBC News).

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Voting

 

The U.S. Constitution provides a social contract by which the American People choose to live and it established the framework for our Democracy. As Keecee DeVenny of the NAACP states, “Voting is the primary language of a democracy. It’s one of the main tools people have to communicate how they wish to be governed.”

Therefore, without a doubt, We The People negotiate with/by our vote!

 

The right to vote is the foundation of American Democracy, but, for decades, Republican politics “has been to win elections by making it difficult for their opponents to vote — more specifically, by blocking minority access to the ballot.” So writes Bill Yeomans, law professor and long time lawyer in the Department of Justice. Over the past several decades, Republicans and Red states have pushed voter suppression measures such as imposing strict voter ID laws, cutting early voting times and reducing voting machines in certain districts, restricting voter registration, and aggressively purging voter rolls.

Here is a most egregious example of this Republican push: George Bush won Florida in the 2020 election (and thus also the presidency) by a margin of 537 votes. However, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has uncovered “an extraordinarily high and inexcusable level of disenfranchisement, with a significantly disproportionate impact on African American voters” in that Florida Presidential Election. This is how voter suppression can skew–and steal–elections.

 

The most recent (but not only) attempt to suppress the vote has been the Save Act (or the SAVE America Act: S. 1383) which, had it passed, would “impose extreme and unnecessary documentation requirements on the voting process, creating barriers that could silence millions of Americans by making it harder to participate in our elections….a dangerous component of a broader effort by the Trump administration to curtail the freedom to vote.” Fortunately, four Senate Republicans joined every Democrat to defeat the bill on April 23, 2026 in a late-night vote of 48-50.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, ICE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was created in 2003, but, if like me, you may never have heard of ICE until last year when it launched its “Operation Metro Surge” enforcement activities, sending masked, highly armed agents driving unmarked vehicles into sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles and Minneapolis. These men (or mainly men) operate through fear and intimidation, without transparency and with no accountability for their many due-process violations.

An article about ICE for the League of Women Voters, written by Rebecca Goldman this February, begins with these words: “Communities across the country, in Minnesota and beyond, are living in terror as federal immigration enforcement agents patrol, surveil, detain, arrest, disappear, injure, and kill civilians.”  Her article pointed out that, as of January of this year, ICE held 73,000 people in immigration detention–an all-time high–and its arrest practices “have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record who are held in ICE detention.”

This isn’t policing. This isn’t making our cities and our country safer. This is terrorism, as stated in the sign above and as convincingly argued by John Shottall in an article of January 24 entitled “Designate ICE as a Terrorist Group.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Immigrants

 

 

 

 

 

As ICE pursues its goal of deporting immigrants, it claims that it is arresting the “Worst of the Worst.”  However, the actual facts expose this lie. As of April 4, 2026, 70.8% of current ICE detainees have no criminal convictions, according to Immigration Detention Quick Facts.

In January, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, warned that “Demonising migrants and refugees collectively as criminals, threats, or burdens on society – based on their origin, nationality or migration status – is inhuman, wrong, and it goes against the very fabric and foundations of the nation.”

As has been shown and proven time-and-again, immigrants bolster the labor force, enhance national security and strengthen the U.S. economy even as they are ineligible for many benefits. Immigrants start businesses, develop cutting-edge technologies, become our engineers, scientists and innovators, and increase our GDP.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, LGBTQ

 

 

 

Let me simply quote António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, speaking in support of LGBTIQ+ People:  “Working as one, we must push to repeal discriminatory laws, combat violence and harmful practices, and end the scapegoating of marginalized communities.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Remembering Anne Frank

 

 

 

The first sign above, actually a beautiful painting, has these words in script: Somewhere in America, a young Hispanic girl is hiding in an attic writing a diary.

The second sign quotes the words of 13-year-old Anne Frank who described “poor helpless people…dragged out of their homes. Families torn apart…children come home from school to find their parents have disappeared.” It then asks, is this 1943 Amsterdam under Nazi occupation or some 2025 American Sanctuary City being besieged by ICE agents?

Fair question!  Picking up on this powerful reference, Tony Bravo of the San Francisco Chronicle “wondered what firsthand accounts are yet to come from the Anne Franks living today.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Diversity

 

 

 

President Donald Trump attacked policies of diversity–more commonly referred to as DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in his first term, and is doing so even more now. His attack is a brazen assault on decades of success in the promotion and expansion of racial justice in American institutions and society. Trump’s attack promotes a white supremacist agenda rooted in racial grievance. As the ACLU made clear, “the anti-DEI backlash is part of a larger effort by right-wing foundations, think tanks, and political operatives to dismantle civil rights gains made in recent decades.”

How sad is this, especially given how these foolish efforts undermine the principles embraced by Republicans’ own favorite President, Ronald Reagan. Reagan, for example, on January 6, 1982, launched Black History Month to celebrate “the contributions black Americans have made to our nation. This annual observance inspires pride in the rich diversity that has been such a vital part of our country’s greatness.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, WOKE

 

The word woke is connected today to diversity (or DEI), in that it was born because of racial prejudice and social injustice. Its origins, however, trace back at least to the 19th century as one of many African American Vernacular words used by Black people to elude the understanding of White people. Woke was code for avoiding any racial confrontations, particularly with white Southerners. More generally, it also referred to being aware, in the sense of being educated, in a time when enslaved Black people were prohibited from even learning how to read and write.

It’s easy to imagine Black adults, then and now, mothers in particular, warning their children to “stay woke” whenever they ventured outside the house, where they might encounter race (or gender) discrimination. But the word recently gained broader usage with the Black Lives Matter movement and a documentary film of 2016 about it, Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.

 

In the Summer of 2023, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis campaigned for the presidential nomination, he falsely criminalized woke with these words: “We will fight the woke in the legislature. We will fight the woke in education. We will fight the woke in the businesses. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Our state is where woke goes to die.”

Republicans in general took up this anti-woke banner, claiming to oppose a “woke ideology” whose progressive focus on race, gender and identity discriminated against white Americans. They used (and still use) the word as a cudgel, never even attempting to define it. As journalist Kate Ng stated in an essay about the modern uses of woke, “those on the political right have weaponised it as a way to denigrate those who disagree with their beliefs.”

What woke really means is implied by the sign above: It means empathy. Woke means being aware of racial, social and gender injustices. “We are ‘woke’ because we care not only about ourselves but about what happens to others.”  “The term ‘woke’ simply means being aware of the realities other people live with….listening to understand, showing empathy, and advocating for those whose voices are overlooked.”  “Awareness of unfairness in the treatment of others…creates a culture in which the marginalized receive empathy instead of blame….A woke culture would be a pleasure to live in for everyone.”

And as journalist Shari Dunn reminds us in an essay on The War on ‘Woke’…, “Empathy is the bedrock of human relationships.”

 

I include this sign under the WOKE rubric because the evidence suggests that one aspect of the anti-woke movement boils down to an attack on thinking, on critical thinking, on education.  As author and civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote last year, “Book bans are a stark example of that backlash and are among the most fundamental tactics in the “anti-woke” playbook.” The universal availability of books, all books, no matter the topic, enhance our critical thinking, our cognitive flexibility, our intellectual growth. The banning–or burning–of books constitutes an attack on thought, itself.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Fascism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The raised fist, or clenched fist, is a common symbol of solidarity and resistance, but one that may represent almost any political ideology. In this case, it is raised against fascism, and this man is clearly exercising his First Amendment rights, non-violently.

But many Republicans would accuse him of being “antifa,” and the Trump Administration blithely tosses around the word Antifa–which means anti-Fascist–as a way to criminalize any and all opposition to its policies and actions. The White House on September 22, 2025 designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization (an accusation without any grounds in fact or law). My question is this: WHY has nobody taken this action by the Right to its logical conclusion: that, if our government is fighting “Antifa,” our government under Donald Trump must be fascist!!??

 

This photograph memorializes an earlier time of protest and also conjures up a fascinating contradiction.

What it memorializes is Woody Guthrie, that “poet of the people,” who, in the 1940s, painted his guitar (sometimes he used stickers) with the words: “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Guthrie was inspired by American workers who put stickers bearing those words on their machines used for making war materials.

The contradiction it conjures up is this. We see a person in black shoes, black jeans and black shirt with the words “This shirt kills fascists” peacefully strolling down 7th Avenue. It’s a contradiction because, from 1919 to 1943 under Benito Mussolini, the “Blackshirts” (Squadrismo) were Fascists. They were a brutal and violent paramilitary who attacked any and all opponents of the Italian National Fascist Party. The presence of this person (with this shirt) in the No Kings day of protests is a clear statement that Donald Trump is a fascist.

He is not alone in stating this. So, too, does Yale Historian Timothy Snyder: “Putin and Trump are both, in fact, fascists.”   And so, too, does Ben Worthy of the University of London: “Trump already has the full apparatus of fascism: concentration camps, a secret police, a loyal elite, and a weakened opposition. Like Mussolini, he is now simply waiting for the final crisis.”

 

Fascists All, indeed!  The Nazi Party was inspired by Italian Fascism (and even adopted the straight-armed salute from Mussolini) on the one hand; on the other hand, the American Confederacy was seen as a precursor to Fascism in its embrace of repressive white supremacy, racial hierarchy, minority rule, and slavery.

May the losing continue!

 

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Democracy

 

By dressing Putin, Musk, Vance and Trump in Nazi uniforms, this sign pictures them as the enemies of Democracy, and there is no doubt that Fascism and Democracy are ideological and structural opposites (implied, as well, by the previous sign).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“With fear for our democracy, I dissent” is the concluding line of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s blistering dissent in Trump v. United States (2024), issued July 1, 2024. Sotomayor argued that, in its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court essentially made the President a “king above the law” and unaccountable.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, We The People

 

We the People are the opening words of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States which was presented and approved on September 12, 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. These words embody the basis of our Democracy by giving American citizens authority over their government. Here is the Preamble in full:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

 

 

As Justice Louis D. Brandeis said, “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These last four photographs depict a giant version of the Constitution’s Preamble created by a Washington, D.C. group called the Backbone Campaign. Beneath the giant replica of this historic document are thousands of signatures by American citizens, and, as can be seen in the second and third photograph, extensions to the document allow for more signatures and for its length to be increased to over 150 feet.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Impeach

 

 

 

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Trump the Servant

 

Even before his first Presidential campaign, Donald Trump played up to and praised Vladimir Putin, repeatedly calling the Russian dictator “smart,” “very savvy,” “a strong leader,” and often using him as an example against which to demean Barack Obama. More recently, two long-time and dedicated servants of our government warned us of this unique affinity (often characterized as ‘autocrat envy’):  Michael McFaul wrote (November, 2025) that “Trump Is Once Again Acting as Putin’s Agent,” and Joseph Bosco wrote (May, 2025) “Never has an American president so abjectly subordinated himself to a foreign leader — a proclaimed enemy of the U.S., no less — and been so publicly humiliated as has been the dynamic between Trump and Putin.”

Interestingly, there is also a previous source for world leaders kissing, and that is a photograph of 1979 of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker ceremoniously embracing in what was known as the socialist fraternal kiss.

 

In the same way that, for at least a decade, we encountered signs and statements that Donald Trump is/was “Putin’s Puppet,” so more recently–particularly since the bombing of Iran–we hear accusations of a similarly unequal and manipulative relationship between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Daniel Kurtzer (ex U.S. Ambassador to Israel and to Egypt) and Aaron David Miller (senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) argue convincingly that, at least in regard to the Iran war, Trump was not simply obeying Netanyahu’s bidding [and these are two people who know better than most anyone else]. “Trump alone,” they write, “is responsible for the United States’ participation.”

And, for emphasis, they conclude with these words:  “Regardless of how the Iran war ends, it’s Trump’s, and he’ll own it—and its consequences—for the rest of his presidency and beyond.”

 

Here is the other side of the same sign. It needs no explanation.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Right Wing Racism

 

 

 

 

 

Racism is and has always been a foundational element of American culture; it has been deeply embedded in our history, laws and social structures ever since the Colonial Era. For anyone choosing to dispute this, I simply cite the April 29, 2026 ruling of Louisiana v. Callais by our Supreme Court, a ruling that has undermined “civil rights laws designed to protect voters of color from racism that still persists, especially across the South.”

Justice Elena Kagan concluded a forceful, 47-page dissent regarding this ruling with these words:  “I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.”

Even more forceful, however, is the response to this ruling by Eddie Glaude, Princeton University’s James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in an interview with Nicolle Wallace. It is under 3 minutes, and I encourage all to watch and listen to it. Here are two selections from this interview:

On the Supreme Court 6 majority Glaude says this: “These people play fast and loose with our dead, they play fast and loose with our sacrifices; they think they own freedom; they can give it to us and take it away whenever they want, and they think we’re just supposed to sit here and take this?”

Then, if we are to salvage our Democracy, Glaude says we must first “admit that racism still occupies the throne of our country,” i.e., that we are not in a “post-racial world.” Then, once we admit that, “perhaps we open up the future for us to be otherwise.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, The 1%

 

 

 

 

 

Whether called the 1%, Oligarchs, Oiligarchs, Millionaires or Billionaires, it is now the case that “the wealthiest 1% held about $55 trillion in assets in the third quarter of 2025 — roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans combined.” Essentially, this enormous and increasing disparity in wealth has eroded a basic principle of American Democracy, one person, one vote and led to enormous disparities in political spending, and in access to and influence on politicians, contributing to the enacting of policies that mainly serve the ultra-wealthy. The title, alone, of a recent article by Glenn Altschuler, Cornell Emeritus Professor of American Studies, will suffice:  “Economic inequality is destroying our democracy.”

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, The Heritage Foundation

 

The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank founded in 1973 and located in Washington, D.C.  It is the creator of Project 2025 (aka. the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) which (among many other things) calls for appointing ideologically aligned civil servants, restricting abortion access, opposing LGBTQ+ rights, transforming federal agencies for political purposes, and imposing strict immigration policies–essentially everything that this Trump Administration has been doing.

It would take a dissertation to expose all that Heritage is doing and has done, so I simply offer you a few titles to set the stage:  “The Heritage Foundation’s Racist Origins and What That History Tells Us” (April, 2024); “The Heritage Foundation: A Think Tank on a Mission to Destroy the Public Postal Service” (September, 2017);  “Project 2025 Would Destroy the U.S. System of Checks and Balances and Create an Imperial Presidency” (October, 2024);  “The Dangers of Project 2025: Global Lessons in Authoritarianism” (October, 2024);  “Project 2025 is on track to subvert American democracy” (May, 2025);  “Unmasking the Anti-Democracy Agenda of Project 2025″ (July, 2024); “Project 2025 Poses a Serious Threat to Our Democracy” (December, 2024).

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: SIGNS, Listen to Women

 

Not only would New Yorkers be at brunch instead of protesting down 7th Avenue had Kamala Harris been elected, but, as the Philadelphia Inquirer put it this January, Harris “would have led the country with dignity and integrity, values currently in short supply inside the Oval Office.”

 

The woman holding this sign may have taken her inspiration from the 1999 pop song by Christina Aguilera, What a Girl Wants:  “What a girl wants, what a girl needs…What a girl wants, what a girl needs  Yeah, c’mon….What a girl wants, what a girl needs…Whatever makes me happy sets you free….Oh baby, oh darling   Thank you, thank you for giving me what I want   And what I need….Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” But the woman holding this sign clearly wants more than what one boy can give…

…she wants what Francis Bellamy wrote about 107 years before Aguilera. She wants what became his concluding phrase of the U. S. Pledge of Allegiance: Liberty and Justice for All. She wants the American ideal of freedom and equal treatment for all citizens…even for women…

…but under the patriarchal structure of American culture, women had to wait until 1900 to own property (Married Women’s Property Act), had to wait until 1920 for the right to vote (19th Amendment), had to wait until 1963 to be freed from sex-based wage discrimination (Equal Pay Act), had to wait until 1972 to be freed from sex-based discrimination in academics, in athletics, in housing (Title IX), had to wait until 1974 to obtain credit without a male signer (Equal Pay Act)…a never-ending pursuit of parity under a patriarchy…

 

America most definitely would be better off with a Queen than with a King (possibly with the exception of King Charles III who so recently demonstrated such humility, respect, gratitude and joy in his address to our Congress on April 28, 2026). But then, to be fair, if we say No Kings, we must also say No Queens.

What we should say YES to is Women Presidents, however. Study after study in leadership has revealed that women outperform men in collaboration, in employee motivation, in crisis management. The studies show that organizations with higher gender diversity in top management positions show better financial performance, greater innovation and higher employee retention. Moreover, the studies conclude that women exhibit higher emotional intelligence, empathy, and relationship-building skills.

Women Are Better Leaders During a Crisis (Harvard Business Review)…Women More Effective Than Men In All Leadership Measures (Forbes)…When more women are empowered to lead, everyone benefits (American Psychological Association)…Why Women Are Better Leaders, women take more effective approaches when managing others (Ohio State University)…women leaders often outperform male leaders in key leadership traits such as compassion, intelligence, organization, creativity, communication, empathy, honesty, and ethics (InPower Coaching).

 

I truly believe that the world would be a better place if it had more women in leadership positions, but I’ll leave the argument for this to three random articles from Medium, from the American Psychological Association, and from Villanova University.

What I prefer to address are the first two words of this sign by asking, WHY ARE WOMEN ANGRY?

Women are angry because Donald Trump, with the cooperation of the Republican Party and input from the Heritage Foundation has made Toxic Masculinity and Misogyny the defining features of our government. A convincing proof of this is an article by author Ray Williams, “The Rising Tide of Toxic Masculinity…Reshaping American Society.”

Read the Williams piece at your leisure, but here are just a few statements and actions out of the White House that also explain why women are angry:

Donald Trump (on Whoopi Goldberg), “She was so filthy, dirty, disgusting. She was so dirty. Every word was filthy, dirty. What a loser she is.”  Donald Trump (on Arianna Huffington), “Unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man — he made a good decision.”   J.D. Vance (on Kamala Harris, AOC et. al.), “A bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”  J.D. Vance (on professional women), “You have women who think that truly the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle at McKinsey instead of starting a family and having children…[such women fail to] realize…that this is actually a path to misery.”  Elon Musk reposted on social media that women are meek objects “built to be traded to another tribe (or captured).”  Marco Rubio (on being “pro-life” said), “Even one abortion is too many.”  Scott Bessent (on Nancy Mace), “In California, Silicon Valley is where they make the computers. In South Carolina, Silicon Valley is the space between Nancy Mace’s tits.”  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was described by his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy as a “sexual deviant” and has been widely regarded by many others as a serial philanderer.  Markwayne Mullin bragged to an audience about spanking his daughter, Larra, as a young girl, and her frightened resistance made it “like a four-minute ordeal.”

And then there is Russ Vought, the new Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the main contributor to the new Heritage Foundation Project 2026. As the December issue of Ms Magazine warns, “Project 2026 Declares Open War on Women’s Rights.”

THIS is why women are angry!

 

In essence, what often makes women angry is the patriarchal system under which they live. To the extent that most “first-world” societies–industrialized nations with democratic governments, high standards of living and capitalist economies–are patriarchal, they exhibit a greater level of male dominance, obsession with control, and various degrees of the subordination of women. A matriarchy would not simply be the opposite, a female dominated society operating under the same tendencies. Instead, it would be one in which egalitarian balance replaces competitive dominance, gender equality replaces male-centered control, consensus and community cooperation replaces individualistic authority, competition and hierarchy.

Matriarchal societies exist today–among them, the Mosuo in southwestern China, Asante in Ghana, Haudenosaunee Confederacy in Canada and the Northeast U.S.–but these are definitely distinct from the “first-world.” However, some parts of the “first-world,” like the Scandinavian countries, are much less patriarchal. Even though not matriarchal, these countries rank very high in gender equality. Their woman leadership is high both in politics and the business world. For example, 80% of the Nordic nations (Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Norway) and two of three Baltic nations (Lithuania, Estonia) were led by women in 2021.

The difference, in essence, is that while Trump, MAGA, the Heritage Foundation and today’s conservative Republican Party attack science, medicine, higher education, birth control and advances in reproductive technology for narrow–even spurious–political, religious and ideological purposes (often simply because they perceive them as “leftist” and liberal)–the Scandinavian countries embrace them.

To create a matriarchy in any “first-world” nation would demand an unprecedented structural overhaul. It would not be possible. But imitating Finland or Denmark certainly would be feasible. Let’s begin the process by electing a woman President.

 

NOW, the National Organization for Women, will celebrate its 60th year this June. Look it up. Support it. Join it. It may be among the most effective ways to counter this King nonsense, to rescue our Democracy, and to bring the U.S. into closer alignment with those Scandinavian countries.

The final 44 photographs capture some of the people in the protest. They have no interpretive text. They simply reveal the diversity of  We The People. Enjoy.

 

THE PROTEST MARCH: PEOPLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Explanation: The green sign says “united” in Arabic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Explanation: Donald Trump owned the Plaza Hotel in 1992 when Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was made. He demanded a cameo appearance (7 seconds) for allowing the film to be produced on his property.