Opinion
By Larry Sand
11/4/25
The “No Kings” zealots need to look in the mirror.
The “No Kings” movement started last June with a series of protests, opposing what the organizers say are the corrupt and authoritarian policies of President Trump. The most recent event occurred on October 18, when supporters claimed that more than seven million people participated in over 2,700 events across all 50 states.
Like any president, Trump has made some mistakes, but calling him a “king” is absurd. Kings are not elected, and Trump ran for office three times, winning twice.
In fact, when it comes to tyranny, the fingers should really be pointed at the leftists in the “No Kings” crowd.
Let’s start with Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and his cronies. As Victor Davis Hanson points out, in 2021, Biden’s DOJ and FBI raided former President Trump’s home. They found only 102 classified documents among approximately 14,000 seized, yet still indicted him. However, there was no SWAT raid on Biden’s multiple repositories of illegally removed classified documents.
Additionally, all of Biden’s documents were in less secure locations than Trump’s were in Mar-a-Lago. Biden removed them over three decades without facing consequences. Unlike Trump, he had no presidential authority to declassify them at the time.
The “No Kings” hyperventilators compare Trump’s constitutional right to pardon to the power of a king. During his nearly five years in office, Trump has granted about 1,700 pardons, including roughly 1,500 granted en masse to those convicted for the January 6 protests.
In his four years in office, Biden pardoned approximately 4,245 people.
Also, a report released on Oct. 28 shows that Biden’s administration officials misused executive authority and took actions without then-President Joe Biden’s approval as his mental acuity declined.
Biden’s inner circle hid the full extent of his mental decline from the American public. It misused executive power by abusing the presidential autopen and exploiting a weak chain of command.
Furthermore, as Hanson notes, in the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s surrogates assembled 51 “intelligence authorities” to falsely claim that Hunter Biden’s authentic and incriminating laptop—which had been verified but suppressed by the FBI—was the work of the Russians.
The Biden-era FBI also joined Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to help suppress any media story that might have verified the authenticity of the laptop.
It’s also worth noting that many communist organizations strongly support the “No Kings” movement.
As noted by Stu Smith, an investigative analyst with City Journal, one of the most active groups is the Chicago-based Coalition Against the Trump Agenda, which claims support from more than 80 organizations. However, CATA is closely linked to the far left, from its protests to its steering committee. Notable coalition members include Students for a Democratic Society (launched in 2006 but sharing the same name as its 1960s predecessor), the Chicago chapter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Arab American Action Network, among others.
Another group involved in the “No Kings” protests is the far-left Refuse Fascism. They have been active online and in major cities like New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. The group asserts that Trump has “galvanized a fascist movement based on vicious white supremacy, hatred of women and LGBT people, immigrant-bashing ‘America First’ xenophobia – with a leading core of Christian theocrats and backed by violent mobs of ‘proud boys’ and others.”
Today, Refuse Fascism is most prominently represented by Sunsara Taylor, a leading figure in the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Perhaps the teachers’ unions are the most hypocritical among the “No Kings” cohort. Overall, they have a ruling elite that harms children, defends ineffective teachers, and mandates quality-free seniority rules based only on the number of years on the job.
Importantly, even though over a third of all teachers are Republican, the unions ignore their political preferences and direct their spending almost exclusively to Democratic causes and candidates.
As Open Secrets discloses, in 2024, the National Education Association spent $22,744,023 on politics, with 98,24% going to Democrats and a paltry 1.76% going to Republicans.
The American Federation of Teachers is even more one-sided, having donated $3,069,063 (99.89%) to Democrats and a scant $3,323 (0.11%) to Republicans in 2024.
In summary, the teachers’ unions are monolithic and power-hungry. They advocate for wealth redistribution, race-based policies, and, until the Supreme Court’s Janus decision in 2018, compelled all public school teachers to pay dues.
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten is one of the more strident leaders of the “No Kings” movement. She has ruled her organization since 2008 and is kept in office by union elites. Yet, she writes, “At every turn, this president has undermined the rule of law, weaponized the federal government against the people it should serve, and divide and silence us. And now, the same far-right groups that cheered his chaos are smearing those of us who are organizing peacefully for justice.”
Weingarten, who tirelessly fought to keep schools closed during the COVID hysteria, also strongly opposes parents’ right to choose the best school for their child. She nonsensically claims that vouchers are meant to send taxpayer dollars “toward elites and bankrupt public education.”
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Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
Link: https://www.forkidsandcountry.org/blog/the-sandstorm-no-kings-claptrap/#none
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
