For months, planning has been underway for what may be the nation’s largest single day of anti-Trump protests on June 14, expressing opposition to the president’s authoritarian, white supremacist agenda, corruption, incompetence and suppression of free speech. The protests, called No Kings Day, are being organized in more than 1,800 cities and towns across the U.S, coinciding with Trump’s planned military parade in Washington, D.C. celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary and the president’s 79th birthday.
The June 14 demonstrations also come as Trump federalized 4,000 California National Guard troops and deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles after the eruption of protests against militarized ICE deportation raids. The president issued a memorandum federalizing the National Guard troops over the objection of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in turn sued the president for overstepping his authority. There’s widespread concern that Trump may soon invoke the Insurrection Act that could lay the groundwork for martial law, the suspension of civil liberties and the imposition of dictatorship. Many view Trump’s recent actions as a test of how far he can go in eroding democratic checks and balances on his executive power.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Tamika Middleton, managing director of Women’s March, who talks about the broad pro-democracy coalition’s plans for the June 14 national No Kings protest, where the Women’s March is organizing over 300 political theater events they call “Kick Out The Clowns’” circuses that will employ satire and humor to mirror the absurdity of the MAGA regime and the clowns who lead it.
TAMIKA MIDDLETON: We say history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it does teach us things. And so, if we are paying attention to history, we can recognize the signals of this sort of strongman president organizing a military parade on his birthday, which also happens to be Flag Day and sort of the conflation of patriotism with his own individual identity as a leader. And so there are a number of things happening on Saturday, a number of organizations that are mobilizing in response to this in response to what feels like an escalation of this march towards fascism, towards authoritarianism. And so there are a couple things. One, I will say there is the mass action that you’re referring to that is a large coalition of organizations that is No Kings Day. That is one mass mobilization that is happening across the country. There are of course, local folks who are taking action in a number of places.
And Women’s March in particular, we’re taking a different approach to this day than we have in the past, really taking our cues from what we have seen work in the fight against fascism in other countries, and really tapping into political theater, humor and satire. And so when you’ve mentioned “Kick Out the Clowns” it’s sort of our attempt to really lean into that.
We’ve been talking to organizers and reading about organizing in Serbia and other places where they really sort of leaned into the invitation of humor, whereas both an invitation to people into the movement, but also as an intervention that brings some nuances and really starts to problematize and make the distinction between what we know as normalcy and the absurdity of the current government.
And so we have, in addition to the No Kings Day efforts, we also have over 300 political circuses being playing around the country in all 50 states with our flagship event happening in Madison, Wisconsin and really inviting folks to think about their activism in lots of different ways.
Think about the ways that we can create a political dilemma for leadership. Think about the ways that we can invite our neighbors who may have voted for Trump to say, “Listen, let’s look at the absurdity of what’s actually happening right now. Let’s look at what is impacting you, what is all of us on every single day, and let’s bring more and more people into the fight that we’re in right now.”
So yes, again, so many different things taking place across the country, so many people getting involved and recognizing the absurdity, not just of, like you said, the military parade and then the mobilizing of the National Guard, but then also the sort of back and forth that’s happening with Elon Musk and then the back and forth that’s currently happening with Gavin Newsom.
And so there’s just a real absurdity to what is taking place that we want to really highlight and exploit in order to call the question for our neighbors and our friends and our community members who may have been sitting on the sidelines or may have been on the other side in this election and inviting them into conversation with us.
SCOTT HARRIS: What’s the goal of the protest? Maybe you could tell our listeners the succinct message that you’re trying to get out there with likely hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who will be participating in all these events across the U.S.
TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Yeah. Women’s March, our goal is always to bring more people into the movement. So we are really thinking about not just how we get people into the streets, but how we move them into political homes and into formations on the other side of these actions.
And so for us, it’s really important all the time, and it’s a place where we have struggled as a movement across a number of mobilization moments where people get out in the streets and they get really activated, and then we lose that momentum. And we are in a moment where we cannot afford to lose the momentum. That is one of the big goals that we have for us for this weekend— is we want to activate people. We want to mobilize people, but then we want to activate them for the long haul. We want to connect them directly to organizations as a formation that they can plug into in their communities or nationally where they can continue to be in the fight and do the work.
That’s one big thing for us, is that we find that mobilizations are the lowest barrier to entry into social movement work. And so we want people to come in, we want to be an on-ramp. And then the second thing that we really want to do is give people the skills to do this in their own communities. We give people toolkits, we do trainings, we do organizing calls where people begin to build their own skills to protest and resist in their communities. And so we are doing that constantly with these mobilizations. What we’re up to is really trying to build a big tent, bring in more and more people, bring in everyday people, give them the skills that they need, and then support them in landing those skills on the ground so they can be fighting in their communities.
For more information, visit the Women’s March website at womensmarch.com, Kick Out the Clowns at action.womensmarch.com/calendars/kick-out-the-clowns, and No Kings Protests June 14, 2025 at nokings.org.
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