On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else.
Instead of allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day: people coming together in communities across the country to reject strongman politics and corruption.
For that reason, NO KINGS is not hosting an event in Washington, D.C. We will instead have a major flagship march and rally in Philadelphia to draw a clear contrast between our people-powered movement and the costly, wasteful, and un-American birthday parade in Washington. You can RSVP for the Philadelphia event here.
For participants in the D.C. area, we encourage you to join us in Philadelphia, find a local NO KINGS mobilization in Virginia or Maryland, or join our partners at Free D.C. for DC Joy Day, a community-led event in the District.
ICE is abducting US citizens out in the open to provoke a response. They're doing this on purpose to escalate and then play the victim when people protest.
: blah blah blah disingenuous disingenuous disingenuous. Bryn McDonnell: $134M for the deployment to LA. (That may cover just the Guard.)
Dan Przygoda
@dprzygoda
It’s going to cost $134 MILLION for National Guard troops to be here in LA for the next 60 days. That’s a lot of $$$ spent for them to sleep on concrete floors & stand outside Federal buildings (which LAPD could do on its own) while the GOP wants to gut Medicaid and VA benefits
Remember when the right freaked out because bike riding Biden fell on the Air Force 1 stairs as he ran up them? Where are they now? Remember when tRump needed a General to walk him down the ramp? Well now tRump has falling on the Air Force 1 stairs. So where is the outrage on the right? tRump rides a gold cart on the green so he is supper fit, but Bide riding and exercising Biden in their mind was a feeble old man days into his term. Hugs
Later today I will post three updates. Kamyk is doing much better, Ron leaves for NH today, and I am facing the eye doctor not being able to clear up my sight. Possible cataract surgery time. More details later. Hugs
I don’t think people should engage in violence and vandalism and I don’t think federal agents should provoke people to engage in violence and vandalism. Too many law enforcement officers sworn to protect and serve now look and act like they are in Fallujah.
And now Trump is deploying the Marines. There is no need for this, and it’s illegal.
The situation in Los Angeles doesn’t require military assistance. There are already 2,100 guard troops in the area with another 2,000 on the way, and now 700 Marines will join the party at a cost of around $134 million to taxpayers, which is five Trump golf trips, or three Trump birthday parades.
The military is deploying 9,000 troops for the parade.
Back to LA, these are protests, not riots. But Trump’s trying to create a riot.
Trump posted on Monday, “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!” Remember, this is the guy who pardoned White nationalists MAGAt terrorists who attacked cops on January 6, 2021. They did a lot more than spitting.
Trump is also praising himself, saying that Los Angeles would have “burned to the ground” if he hadn’t called in the National Guard. The protests are in a small area in the city of 4 million people. There were only around 400 protesters when Trump decided he should call in the military.
Trump wants a riot because it’ll give him more excuses to expand his power and extend his authoritarianism. Calling in more soldiers and Marines creates a much more hostile atmosphere, and creates more protests in other cities, which Trump will use to deploy more of the military to fight civilians. Trump is fanning the flames. In another post, he said we will “Liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.”
That post is designed to create riots. (snip-MORE, and it’s on point)
Ever since Donald Trump came down his racist escalator and vaulted himself to become leader of the Republican Party in 2015, a popular theory has taken hold in liberalism and particularly at the highest levels of the Democratic Party: “Distraction.”
The idea goes something like this: Because Trump is a creature of the modern media environment and because we are constantly bombarded with narrative after narrative, Trump and his acolytes within the GOP are regularly setting off distraction bombs, meant to keep us occupied while they’re up to no good behind closed doors.
There were two recent invocations of distraction theory worth noting. First, the fight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump was purportedly a distraction from the harm of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that intends to destroy the social safety net. A few days later, some Democratic leaders argued that the attempted military incursion of Los Angeles over immigration was also a “distraction” from the bill. It was also argued by California Gov. Gavin Newsom – who is directly involved in the Los Angeles “distraction,” ironically – that the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was also a “distraction.”
If it isn’t already clear, I think this theory of the world is very stupid and frankly counterproductive. It operates as if we are still somewhere in the distant past, when only a few narratives could ever operate at one time, usually with a clear “A” story and one or more less important “B” stories. But it is 2025 and that method of operation has long been obsolete.
We are in an ideological war with the American right. They are attacking everything good and right about America and are trying their damnedest to drag us back to the stone age when women, minorities, and LGBTQ people were a subordinate slave class to the whims of wealthy, straight, white men.
These things aren’t distractions. They are fronts. America fought war on two fronts during World War II, taking on the Axis powers in the European and Pacific theaters. There wasn’t any choice in the matter. There were American soldiers island hopping toward Japan and there were soldiers landing on the beaches of France and Italy on their way to Berlin. Leaders like Franklin Roosevelt and General Dwight D. Eisenhower, while they had to prioritize targets and objectives, didn’t have the luxury of saying the war couldn’t be fought on either side of the U.S. It was an existential battle for survival and they were victorious on both sides.
That is the situation we are in now against conservatism and Republicans. Liberals have to make the case, over and over, that these people are unfit to rule and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. Every action that liberals and its representatives within the Democratic Party undertake should underscore that clear goal.
That means war on multiple fronts. Sometimes that means pushing legislation and investigation. Sometimes that means a press conference or media briefing. And yes, sometimes that means childish insults, memes, and trash talk.
Scottie's Playtime 