From Alabama to Arkansas - Even the Republican States Are Marching Against Trump - An Investigative Report

It was as if the nation had held its breath for a moment - and then set in motion what many had thought impossible. In all 50 states, from Alabama to Arkansas, from the Great Lakes to the High Plains, millions poured into the streets. About seven million people, according to estimates, took part in the “No Kings” protests on October 18 - a wave of demonstrations that swept across America, crossing political boundaries and reaching even those areas that had voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump just a year earlier.

The images went around the world: families with children, students, veterans, grandmothers holding hand-painted signs - “No Kings,” “Liberty for All,” “Democracy Is Not a Brand.” In small towns like Brenham, Texas, or Kingsport, Tennessee, hundreds, sometimes thousands gathered. In the metropolitan areas of Washington, Chicago, and Oakland, tens of thousands joined. It was not a fringe movement, not an uprising from the liberal bastions of the coasts, but an uprising of the center, carried by those whom Trump once believed to be his own.

“Even my small, conservative hometown of Brenham held a ‘No Kings’ rally,” wrote Ellen Flenniken of the ACLU. “A hundred people who refused to give up - and who understood that democracy doesn’t survive on its own.” Such words capture what is happening these days: American society, divided, tired, and exhausted, is remembering what once united it - the rejection of any form of kingship, whether real or political.

In Pella, Iowa, a town where Trump still won more than 70 percent of the vote, people marched through the streets wearing cardboard crowns, shouting “No kings! No crowns!” - no kings, no crowns, Pella, Iowa - a town where Trump is still revered almost like a king - about 150 people dared to take to the streets to shout “No Kings, No Crowns.” Most of them were older women, some over seventy, who once could not even get a credit card without a man’s signature and who are now marching for their granddaughters.

They protested peacefully, politely, almost too politely - in a town so clean, quiet, and strictly ordered that even dissent seems improper. Yet beneath the immaculate surface lies fear and anger: about the silence, the division, the lies that have set even neighbors against each other. The protesters know their voices are small, almost inaudible among tulips and pastries, but they speak anyway - because silence would be worse. And so their “no” to Trump may be quiet, but in its persistence it is louder than the noise of those clinging to order while democracy crumbles.

More than during the great Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which reached around 40 percent of the nation’s counties.

A new study from Harvard Kennedy School confirms that this is not a passing phenomenon. Under the title “The Resistance Reaches into Trump Country,” the researchers document what may be the most geographically widespread protest movement in American history. A new study from the Harvard Kennedy School shows that the “No Kings” movement is no longer a fringe phenomenon of liberal cities but has reached deep into Trump country. Researchers led by Erica Chenoweth and Christopher Shay found that in 2025, protests against the government took place in more than 60 percent of all U.S. counties - more than at any other point in American history. Particularly striking is that since the spring of 2025, the majority of protests have occurred in counties that voted for Trump in the 2024 election. The movement, which brought millions to the streets in June and October, is, according to Harvard, “the most geographically extensive and at the same time the most disciplined” in decades: peaceful, persistent, and deeply rooted in small towns and rural regions. Even in places where Trump received over 80 percent of the vote, dozens or hundreds gathered - a quiet but unmistakable signal. Harvard calls this development a historic novelty: a protest movement growing from the heart of conservative America - slowly undermining the political ground Trump stands on.

What is remarkable is not only the number but the geography: the median county hosting protests today gave more votes to Donald Trump than to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. In other words, the protest is growing where his power once seemed strongest. On October 18, the movement reached its provisional peak. Across time zones, in town squares, parking lots, and in front of city halls, a picture took shape whose scale surprised even seasoned observers. More than seven million people were counted by organizers - two million more than in June. Over 2,700 gatherings, from Boston to Bakersfield, from Portland to Pensacola, made that day one of the largest protest moments the country has ever experienced. No riots, no violence, but a mass affirmation of the Republic, carried by people raising their voices against the temptation of the crown. And the fact that this uprising of dignity did not begin in New York or San Francisco but in places where Trump once won almost every vote made it something deeper than a headline - a day when America remembered who it belongs to.

The enormous size of the NoKings march in Minneapolis was hard to capture, because it stretched across 20 city blocks in the central downtown area. Here is the front - the back was still at the US Bank Stadium and had not yet moved.

In Kingsport, Tennessee - a city of 55,000 in a county that gave 77 percent of its votes to Trump - more than 2,000 people gathered in June, and over 3,500 in October. In the central square, between fast-food chains and a shuttered paper mill, Kristina Runciman of the group East Tennessee Voices gave a simple, powerful speech: “America was founded because we didn’t want a king. And we don’t want a king now.”

Her words captured the tone of this year - a blend of patriotism and defiance, of fear and pride. The protesters wore no black masks but red, white, and blue scarves. Some had crossed out Trump’s name on old campaign posters and painted the word Citizen over it. In Wyoming, Nebraska, and Mississippi, veterans rolled through the streets with walkers, young mothers carried babies on their shoulders.

What Harvard calls “a wave of protest of unprecedented geographic depth” is in truth more than a statistical curve. It is the first sign of a return of the American conscience. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the share of counties hosting at least one anti-Trump protest has risen more sharply than ever before - surpassing the protest density of his first term. The crucial point is this: the movement does not come from the outside. It arises from within - from regions where loyalty once seemed immovable. From churches that once prayed for him. From universities that had to live under his education reforms. From towns that benefited from his tax cuts - and now realize that freedom is more than a campaign promise.

The demonstrations are called “No Kings,” but their echo reaches further. They are an act of self-assertion, a collective no to the temptation that grips many democracies: the call for a strong man when the world becomes complicated. In the hands of the people are no weapons, but signs - and in those signs lies a message that could not be clearer: no one stands above the law. Not even the one who believes he writes it. And so the movement that began in Portland and now stretches to Pella, Kingsport, and Brenham may mark a turning point - not only for the United States, but for what defines it at its core: the refusal to bow before a throne.

Why Are Trump’s Poll Numbers Stable?

Despite the ballroom scandal and repeated political upheavals, Trump’s approval ratings have recently risen slightly - a contradiction that says much about the psychology of contemporary politics. The so-called rally-around-the-leader effect is at work: the more Trump is under fire, the more his supporters close ranks. Criticism is no longer perceived as enlightenment but as attack. Add to that a fragmented media landscape in which conservative outlets celebrate the ballroom as a symbol of national grandeur, while economic themes - jobs, markets, prices - remain more decisive for many voters than institutional scandals. The rest is habituation: after years of constant outrage, the audience grows numb, and the threshold for indignation keeps shifting.

The same pattern is visible in Europe. Germany makes the same mistake: the louder the political and media outrage against the AfD, the more solid its voter base becomes. The phenomenon that political scientists now call the “paradox of outrage” reveals itself with striking clarity in both the United States and Germany. The louder a society or its media strike out at populists, the tighter their followers close ranks. The mechanism works on both sides of the Atlantic - only the volume differs. Criticism that dissolves into moral outrage, mockery, or endless scandal does not enlighten, it confirms. Those who attack Trump or the AfD only deliver the proof their supporters seek: “See, they’re afraid of us.” Every headline, every talk show that turns outrage into a method unwittingly strengthens the narrative of the persecuted outsider.

Both movements live not from political achievement but from the feeling of exclusion. When this feeling is further fueled by media rhetoric - with words like “undemocratic,” “dangerous,” “far-right” - it only forges their supporters closer together. Tone replaces substance, pathos replaces precision.

What is missing is strategic sobriety: instead of outrage, journalism needs coldness, patience, and factual clarity - the precise, well-documented naming of contradictions without moral inflation. Populists lose when they become boring. Trump loses when he is treated not as a drama but as the subject of a file.

Because populists do not live from contradiction but from its performance. As long as the opponent is shouting, the audience stands behind the clown. And as long as outrage replaces conversation, their power grows in the noise of those who claim to expose them.