A friend of mine sits on the board of the largest Christian school in our valley. He loves this country, loves his neighbors, loves God (or at least he’s working on it, same as the rest of us). So why did he respond to millions of peaceful fellow citizens exercising their constitutional rights with laughing emojis? That question has been gnawing at me for months. This episode tries to answer it.

When millions of Americans took to the streets last month in the No Kings rallies, peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights, the response from Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress, and leading voices in the MAGA movement was contempt. Not critique. Not engagement. Contempt. This solo episode asks why, and works through what that contempt actually costs us: constitutionally and civically.

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Key Takeaways

The laughing emojis aren’t about politics. More in Common’s research into Trump voters found one thread running through every category of the broader MAGA coalition: deep, abiding resentment toward the left. Not policy disagreement. Resentment. Years of accumulated grievance about cancel culture, political correctness, and perceived condescension. The laughing emojis are that resentment expressing itself, not a constitutional argument.

The constitutional inventory is not abstract. Article One gives Congress, not the president, the power to levy taxes — yet sweeping tariff schemes were imposed anyway. Article One gives Congress the sole power to declare war — yet Iran was attacked without a declaration, without consulting Congress, and without a coherent plan. The Supreme Court, including three Republican-appointed justices, told the administration directly that it had grabbed power the Constitution never granted it.

The First Amendment protections being invoked by No Kings protesters are the same ones being systematically pressured. Trump threatened, attacked, and sued CBS, ABC, and the Des Moines Register for coverage he didn’t like. Outlets were banned from the Pentagon for declining to sign loyalty pledges to the president rather than the Constitution. An aggressive ICE presence in city streets has turned the right to peaceably assemble into a theoretical right for millions of people.

Whataboutism is cauterization, not argument. “But what about Obama” and “what about Hunter Biden” don’t refute a single fact presented in this episode. They don’t explain away the Supreme Court ruling on tariffs. They don’t restore one deported citizen. They don’t account for the dead. What they do is create enough noise to make facing the truth feel optional — burning the nerve endings so the pain stops registering.

The Constitution is a covenant, not a rulebook. It doesn’t grade on a curve based on how much you resent the other side. It’s a promise the founders made to future generations that we recommit to each other every time we stand up for it — or fail to. As Chief Justice John Roberts put it when the solicitor general argued we live in a new world demanding a new reading: “It’s the same Constitution.”

Links and Resources

More in Common's Beyond MAGA study — beyondmaga.us

USA Today / Susan Page's piece — www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/29/no-kings-rallies-a-red-flare-for-trump/89306058007/

Jonah Goldberg / The Dispatch — thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/no-kings-protests-tea-parties-bothsidesism

Captain Robert Gustine (28-year Navy veteran) and Dr. Roger Herbert (former Naval Special Warfare Officer, ethics professor at the US Naval Academy) — substack.com/@gusgusentinerogerherbert/p-190864101

American Immigration Council — www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/immigration-detention

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