Can you recall any other instance where FoxNews boycotted the White House press pool in support of left wing media outlets?
That is unprecedented as far as I know. What did Trump do that inspired FoxNews to make this choice?
I do agree there is a ton of hyperbolics in NoKings / Indivisible / the left. I work within these organizations, enduring it, to temper their messages and opinions. Minds are moved in real life while biases are reinforced online. It's hard to forget there is another human with different experiences when you sit face to face.
Occupy Oligarchy, we are the 99%
it's more important than you make it seem.
* Obama extensively used the Espionage Act to uncover government sources used by the press and also against the press directly
* Obama secretly subpoenaed the phone calls of AP reporters
* Obama didn't allow or severely restricted photojournalists
I don't think that it is good to ban the media from the White House, and I do think the much of the criticism is fair, but to then claim that this is undemocratic is wrong.
Occupy Oligarchy, we are the 99%
What, specifically, do you think this means? Do you think they're trying to install a new government without a vote?
Or is "disregard democracy" just word salad nonsense that you're repeating for some reason?
I am very concerned with much of the rhetoric on the left. I used to be more concerned with the right.
The difference to me today is I see intentional cruelty to our fellow humans by those currently in power. Especially from the likes of Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller.
Just that alone is enough I think.
But you can also see his disgust to western democracies, and his fascination with autocracies, the vast majority of them are extremely incompetent - thank God for that at least.
Living ex-presidents were not fair game until the partisan late 1990s. It was still done primarily as a posthumous tribute. Naming taxpayer-funded facilities for a sitting president who hopes to find a way to run again was not done under Franklin Roosevelt and has always remained drastically outside of the Overton Window. While in office, Trump has now directed attention to making the following public items promote his personal brand, name, image or likeness:
US Passports, US entry visas, US Naval class of vessels, US Institute of Peace federal building, National Park entry passes, and currency struck by the US Mint;
Moreover, presidential staff have confirmed that the president has asked for New York Penn Station to be renamed for himself before he would agree to release congressionally approved federal funds for its improvement. He also explored having Washington Dulles International Airport renamed for him; since then, his supporters have renamed Palm Beach International Airport (IATA PBI) for him and changed the IATA designation to DJT.
The president recently diverted over $22MM from Homeland Security and Border Protection to pay for television commercials featuring himself talking about causes dear to himself. I have not tracked whether this spending went to all major broadcast networks or was directed to be spent at networks that the president considered deserved the tax money. The third commercial "was virtually identical to an ad for Trump's Republican reelection campaign in 2024 and showed him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a 'final battle' against 'globalists' and 'warmongers'." The president has reportedly agreed not to continue spending government money on this series but refuses to reimburse taxpayers the $22MM.
In 1926, coinage was struck with the image of the sitting president, in honor of the nation's 150th anniversary. It turns out that Trump on coins for the 250th anniversary has precedent.
The rest of it... yeah. Appalling, especially when you put it all together like that.
Populism and nationalism were on the rise, much like today. Hopefully we reflect on history and don't do another world war.
I do agree that the ads should be criticized, but there is precedent for previous presidents having done something similar, not that it makes it above scrutiny but rather not so bad.
The problem many Americans have is that these are the top priorities of the president. Even the Iran war was more about him and his legacy, to "be the guy" who ended it, not understanding Iran's ability to inflict damage on allies and close the straight, because Trump removed many of the people who have been analyzing this for decades. Perhaps there were good reasons prior presidents have not decided to do this.
Then he turns around and does deals with Putin while blaming Zelensky for diesel prices... it's all so shameless, it should be shameful.
If you listen to oval office or state room events in full, you will hear him forget what he is talking about and go to his standard ballroom, arches, name on this or that. He's more focused on himself than anyone else.
So you want constant war in Ukraine? What did Obama do when Russia took Crimea? What did Biden do during the Russia-Ukraine war that improved the situation?
He’s a narcissist, but so are all of them but Trump is probably more tactless about it than most.
That is not why Trump started his own forever war. In fact he told the Iranian "help is on the way" and then never showed.
https://nypost.com/2026/01/13/us-news/trump-tells-iranians-k...
He went to war for his legacy and miscalculated badly, because the people who understand the region and the IRGC were fired or pushed out. He was sending Witkoff and Kushner (real estate guys) to negotiate nuclear topics, alone, without experts in nuclear science or Iran / IRGC.
My expectation is they do to Trump what they did to Carter.
You're joking right? In just the past 48 hours he attempted to remove over 20,000 people from the voter rolls. A preliminary check of the data revealed that more than half of these people were born in the U.S. and thus were automatically entitled to vote.
Last week he attempted to denaturalize a sitting U.S. legislator based on supposed irregularities in her immigration paperwork from when she was a child...even though the paperwork had been reviewed without issue by the federal government when it was first submitted and again to confirm her eligibility for office at the start of her first term (which began during Trump's first term).
He has openly mused about using the Secret Service to assassinate people he doesn't like. For the past 2 years, he has been threatening to jail and murder his opponents, and ordered his DOJ to prosecute his opponents for made-up crimes.
Ilhan Omar certainly seems to have very concerning immigration records and given that a judge has signed the search warrant.
I think you have gone into conspiracy theory territory that I’m not familiar with.
Ilhan Omar’s alleged corruption and immigration fraud and the rampant fraud in Minnesota are good examples where the left leaning media has ignored but others have not.
It would be great if the "other elected officials" part turns out to be true, but my in my experience I don't see that happening. Have there been any policy proposals out of No Kings that would create better oversight and accountability?
One of the good ideas are expanding ranked choice voting.
One of the bad ideas is justifying gerrymandering because the other side is doing it too.
Roughly only 10% of House seats are actually competitive. This is a problem that needs fixing.
"NoKings" is one identity for the resistance to autocratic tendencies and the backslide of democracy seen globally. We does not need to be so literal, step back to see the full picture.
In some cases Presidents have issued orders that exceeded their legal authority. The effects of those are eventually blocked by the judicial system, although that necessarily takes some time.
Chucky Cheese specializes in this /s !/s
ICE refusing to make officers available to law enforcement for investigation of issues.
A lot more happening than "making executive orders", though kudos to Trump for trying to sign executive orders that even his own DOJ are not just illegal, but unconstitutional.
The advent of the computer changed how automation impacted society. We (majority of HN audience) benefitted immensely, rising in wealth and social acclaim, while at the same time failing to create new tasks for regular people, who's jobs we replaced with technology.
Let's see if the will of the people is honored, or if the king steps in too.
Plus, protests can influence other people in government, outside of elections.
But Trump disavowed it, said that's not what he was running on. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/trump-project...
Today though, this plan to destroy the government is in full effect. It's had remarkable success with the quadfecta of GOapnhouse & Senate doing nothing, allowing the president to seize the power of the purse, enact recisions, whatever. And the partisan hack joke of Florida election recount denier "justices" enabling him at every turn, using shadow docket rulings at an unheard of rate to step in to deny the regular courts their normal motion of things, to forward dear leader along. Executive power we have no belief they will continue to espouse when it's a Democrat in a hopefully less gilded tacky ass White House. Project 2025's progress undoing America & governance has been a horror. https://www.project2025.observer/en
If you can't separate your personal opinion from a factual statement like this, you're not someone worth listening to.
Russ Vought and Stephen Miller are notable examples.
These people are not hiding this fact, they ar rather proud and loud about it. What they have also done is convince a number of people to go out and disavow the connection on their behalf.
You said it was "terrifying to America" and "No one wanted it".
That's your opinion. It's your opinion that you stated as a fact. I think a lot of people wanted it. I personally know many people who were excited about it and wanted it. It may be terrifying to leftists, but certainly not to America as a whole.
You might slow down and stop reacting emotionally. I'm not the same person.
> not to America as a whole
Most Americans now favor changes to the government which would require constitutional changes. They may not all use the same words, but there is a significant consensus things are very broken.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/28/most-amer...
I agree with your original statement. Some people did want this. Some small percent. Who are traitors to America, who want to destroy it. I don't think those people deserve anything but antipathy and to be persecuted as traitors.
Saw this super interesting interview the other day. The Students - What the Greeks would call our government.
I do believe you read a blog post where someone told you there were passages which "describe Trump to a T".
This one, probably: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-hamilton-warned-in-the...
I suspect you did a quick search to find something you thought would back up this projection
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SD8nzsQzIHnOi2zSTwP... (readings)
Since I write almost zero code these days, I have far more time for reading and writing human.
But what is that have to do with No Kings being a protest against the president acting like a tyrant?
Several of the colonies had general property taxes on land, buildings, and physical property which continue today. Given that "capital" was not a thing back then and wouldn't be for almost 200 years, these property taxes were in effect wealth taxes.
The point of the protest is to prevent him from making himself a king.
> And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful.
This is really weak cherry picking. He has successfully removed medical care from millions of Americans, started foreign wars of aggression, destabilised several countries, probably tanked US international reputation for a generation... he is incredibly powerful.
why tho? it's No King_s_
you can have one
A bunch of European countries (including all of Scandinavia) are constitutional monarchies, and they don't devolve into the sort of anti-democratic behaviour we're all seeing from Trump. As a UK resident, I would prefer if the UK were a republic on general principle, but I fail to see the monarchy causing any real large-scale harm to society (individuals like Andrew notwithstanding).
The real point they should be making is "no more despots". Some despots are kings, but some are styled presidents, such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un.
Also, legitimately elected or appointed officials become despots all the time. Hitler had a plurality (but not outright majority) of votes in 1932. Salazar was an MP and minister of finance, and actually legitimately tried to resign from that role several times over many years before he was eventually nominated to the role of prime minister. Ferdinand Marcos won the Philippine presidential election in 1965 with some amount of intimidation, and the Philippines only formally became a military dictatorship under his rule in 1971.
In many ways, that's the scariest scenario — people who legitimately get elected to power, and then use that power to solidify their illegitimate rule.
I'm not a UK resident [obviously] but I thought the parliament was explicitly superior to the monarchy? Isn't the monarchy essentially cultural theater at this point, for centuries now? The moment the king causes a crisis by stepping out of his very narrow lane, one Act of Parliament could make the monarchy a memory, right? I suppose he could refuse ascent then, and that would be a legitimate constitutional crisis.
I would argue that, even though it's not my preference, there is real political value in the monarchy today still. E.g. Charles's speech to Congress[0] has a certain weight to it that wouldn't be there if Charles were an elected leader instead of a monarch.
> except they don't like the guy's policies and conduct.
That too, but his conduct rises above "policies I don't like"; he has shown direct contempt for the other branches of our government. For example, his administration has essentially dismantled or destroyed various functions in violation of the Constitution: take USAID as an example here: USAID is an agency created de jure by Congress, yet it has been de facto dissolved by the administration. We all learned, I think, in grade school, that the job of the executive is to implement the laws passed by Congress. From an article at the time about it:
> “The President does not have constitutional authority to ignore a statute that establishes a department or agency,” says Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
He holds the judicial branch in contempt too: quite literally any time any judge does anything he disagrees with, the judge is blasted as "left-wing radical", even and including cases where the judge was a GOP-appointee. Further examples include ignoring judicial orders and depriving people of access to the courts by physical force (see the many cases of the administration's removal of people from the country; to put it one way: "For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury", or "The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene" — Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kagan & Jackson.)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/the-slopagan...
Trump acts like a king, even if he was elected. He gets tributes and requires deference, clearly visible from the foreign and corporate donations, and behavior of the Republican Party. Or take the "super intelligence" thing, him dictating what a technology shall be called, lest you become an ENEMY OF AMERICA. Or the repeated attempts to silence the media. If we consider the Kennedy Center you brought up, Trump's name was on there, then removed by court order. His response was to close it in spite. The Kennedy Center remains closed to this day, until he gets his way.
Trump has tried to violate most of the Bill of Rights. There are reasons people see every day for why NoKings sticks and resonates.
I do agree NoKings (and broadly the far left) have really bad messaging, a product of echo chambers (imo). I suspect the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the midterms... sigh.
Like first of all I would call a person who tries to pass the checks and balances of a democracy, even if they fail, the target of the ideals or “no kings”
And while we can disagree with the extent to which any one act or bribe elevates someone to dictator, and whether or not all the accusations are true, can you not understand why someone caught up in the narrative ecosystem happening over the past few years may develop the perspective that Trump is trying to consolidate power?
Also “no folks who incrementally Test the limits of power and fail” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Its incredibly frustrating to talk to people that take the position of "Well eventually they gave up after pressure from the courts and legislature, so no harm no foul." There's a difference between doing things that have a reasonable legal basis that the courts disagree with and what much of this administration was doing -- sometimes fragrantly ignoring court orders until D politicians got involved to pressure compliance.
Using the 2020 coup attempt as an example, yes, the courts shot down his attempts. The issue is that *he even tried* -- the attempt was transparently not good-faith concern about election integrity.
Before I get hated out of existence, please note that I don't like either party or political tactics in general because they've devolved into politically commercialized populism without any empathy or critical thought. Just as an example, deportations under Trump are roughly on trend with Obama, Trump targeting activities are similar to Obama targeting conservative groups with the IRS, Obama lied in the SoTU about the gender wage gap, Obama was hard on journalists (highest prosecutions?) Like Trump has been, and Obama ignored court orders such as issuing immigration permits in violations of a order similar to Trump ignoring orders. I could sit here and hope that any of these abuses results in better oversight, but that would be naive based on the history.
Edit: if you're going to disagree, at least contribute to the discussion.
Obama lied in the SoTU. Um, OK? I mean, we should expect better than that, but are you seriously saying that Obama lied as much as Trump does?
For me personally, the single biggest thing was January 6, the whole "alternate electors" thing, and Trump pressuring Pence to accept the alternate (fake) ones. That was a full-blown attempt to steal an election that he lost. That I do not forget and do not forgive. And if you can show me something Obama did that's on that scale, well, I'll be surprised.
Is there good data for that or is it observation bias?
I'm not saying scale is the same. I'm saying that these abuses will continue to happen without accountability. The scale argument is not an excuse, merely a manifestation of cognitive dissonance.
Plenty of lies and corruption on any president if you care to look. https://lists.grabien.com/list/complete-guide-scandals-obama...
In fact there is, these numbers are published by the government. Trump has still not averaged what Obama did, nor topped the the greatest numbers of all time, so Obama is still greater than Trump, much to Midas's chagrin I suppose, given how much Trump talks about Obama, like Obama lives rent free in Trump's head. /s !/s
One example: https://latinonewsnetwork.com/community/who-deported-more-mi...