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A
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B
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C
Foreign. Welcome to Talking Feds One on One Deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host Harry Littman. Welcome to another Talking Feds One on one. Except this is a Talking Feds one on two. It's with a high wattage powerhouse couple that have been instrumental in in organizing public opposition to the Trump administration, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, who are the co founders and co executive directors of the Indivisible Project, the group most powering the no Kings rallies. Lee is a longtime political organizer and before Indivisible she worked on Capitol Hill for former Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello. Ezra worked in Texas Democratic organizing, in particular for former Congressman Lloyd Doggett. He was also associate director of federal policy for a national anti poverty nonprofit. They've both been fighting Trump hard since he first took office over 10 years ago. Leah Ezra, really great to meet you. Thanks so much for joining Talking Feds.
- [01:53]
A
Pleasure to be here talking with you, Harry.
- [01:55]
C
So we're speaking in the wake of the third round of no Kings rallies that took place around the country a few weeks weekends ago on March 28th. How do you think it compared with the previous two? And how did, how did you two spend your days?
- [02:10]
A
It was bigger. It was bigger than the previous one. So for the third time, we've had the largest protests in American history. The first largest was no Kings 1, which had about 5 million people at 2100 protests. Then we had no Kings 2 last October where we had 2700 protests and 7 million people. And, and this protest, I know when we were building up we said this is going to be the largest protest in history. And it sounds like bravado, it sounds like bluster. But look, it's the third time and I think it's a reflection both of how many people around the country want something different than what we're seeing from this regime. And how much organization has been developed over the last 16 months? This doesn't just happen automatically. We had 3,300 protests in every single congressional district on every single continent. We with more than 8 million people showing up. And that was at a time when the White House and national Republicans were very tight lipped about no Kings. They refused to even utter the words after the disastrous outcome when they spent three or four weeks attacking us as extremists or as antifa or violent agitators. They called out the National Guard in some states for no kings too. They were very quiet leading up to no Kings 3 and it was still the largest protest in history.
- [03:29]
B
I agree with all that. And one other thing that I think is really important to name when we're looking at the overall impact is that we're reaching farther into red and rural and suburban areas than ever before. A lot of the growth that we saw was really coming from people who pulled together a protest in a location that maybe has never had a progressive or an anti Trump protest before. And those are important to us not just because it means we've got visibility in places we didn't have, but because those often formed the nucleus for, for local organizing on an ongoing basis.
- [03:59]
C
Yeah, that seems super important to me. You know, I'm going to go off script already because when you said it, Ezra, I'm thinking from the inauguration in 2017, you have these big demonstrations and there's huge debate. Was it no 3 million, no 11 million? What is the deal there? And how do you get your accurate estimates of crowds?
- [04:24]
A
The great question, and what I would say is crowd counting is both an art and a science. And we are very committed to not drinking our own Kool Aid on movement strength. I think that's really important. I've seen estimates for every nookings, including this one, where people come out and say, no, it's 11 million people. It was 15 million people. I'm like, look, I want us to be bigger. I think we need more people in. The number in our heads when we're organizing is the number that comes out of anti authoritarian experts like Erica Chenoweth and Maria Steffen. This 3.5% figure. The finding in other countries that have taken on authoritarianism is that if you get about 3.5% of the population not just showing up on a single day, but actively engaged in opposing the regime, something akin to what we saw in the Twin Cities when Trump tried to put his boot down on those two cities, then that's enough. That repels the regime in the US context, that's 11 or 12 million people. For us, that means hands off last April with 3 million people followed by 5 million people for no Kings 1, followed by 7 million people for no Kings 2, followed by more than 8 million people for. For no Kings 3. That's growth, and we're headed in the right direction, but we still need more people. In the way that we get these numbers is we do a lot of work talking to the organizers on the ground. So there are one on one conversations between the organizer who is organizing the event and our national team that has a big, complicated spreadsheet that totals up everything. But that's only ever going to be partial data, Harry. You know that, like there are 3,300 events, there aren't going to be one on one conversations with every single person. So then you match that with other reports on the ground, RSVP data, and this all comes together to say, what can we extrapolate and say with some level of confidence, yeah, we're confident we can defend that. And that's how we get to for no kings 3, more than 8 million people for no kings 2 and no kings 1. They were also independently verified by outside sources. That may happen again for no Kings 3. We're running our own poll, a national poll right now, to check in and see how many people say that they participated, which is yet another data point to say, okay, we can try to get at an answer that is indeed defensible and believable.
- [06:22]
C
You know, I want to return to your point and the efficacy. It's hugely impressive, and it grows and grows. I want to go to this notion of rallies in red areas. You think of other important rallies in US History. They've often been kind of small, but what they have been is catalysts for public opinion. Some 600 people are marching over the bridge in Selma, for example. Huge achievement to mount them at all in red areas. Do you have a sense, though, of whether some of the people there and the growing numbers are literally former Trump voters? Because we know there's a cadre now of people that are powering his plummeting ratings that literally, you know, are. Have buyers remorse. Does no Kings bring them in? Or is it just a big demonstration of people who began the day no Trump and ended the day no Trump?
- [07:23]
B
Yeah, well, you know, I would say it's. It's a little bit of everything. Right. Certainly a lot of our core organizers are people who've been opposed to Trump.
- [07:31]
C
Yeah.
- [07:31]
B
Vote voted in 2024, organized in 2024. The whole nine yards. But what they are reporting, and particularly in places that are not super Democratic territory in general, is that a lot of people who identify as independent, as former Republican, as people who don't vote normally because there's, that's a big as well, are fed up. They are furious about the war. They are furious about masked secret police coming into their communities and taking their neighbors. They are furious as their costs are rising and as it's very clear that the Trump administration's priority is on enriching itself and accumulating its power instead of helping them with anything in their lives. What we've seen, and this is actually true really almost since the beginning, when we started to see big crowds showing up at ruby red congressional districts, at town halls back in March and April of last year, is that there is a very powerful cross partisan reaction to what is happening going on across the country.
- [08:26]
A
You look at the organizing that we were seeing in the Twin Cities, people showing up to help their neighbors to push back against ice, to monitor ice. Those people weren't Kamala Harris voters primarily. They weren't Democratic voters primarily. They were primarily neighbors. Harry. And I think if we are building a responsible pro democracy movement, we're not just trying to juice up the Democratic turnout. That's not the goal. The goal is actually to welcome everybody, everybody. And to have an ideologically diverse movement that might not agree on everything that should come next, but can agree on one simple thing now. No. And that is a big goal of indivisibles and of a broader no Kings coalition. We want everybody who agrees on that fundamental foundational statement that we don't do kings in this country to be welcome and to be absorbed into this movement, because that's how you hit the numbers that you need in order to successfully push back.
- [09:19]
C
Yeah, Minnesota really is quite a paradigm. And I think it's the right. The administration realized it, totally overreached and it exactly incited or instigated the kind of neighborly personal sort of. It made it real for a lot of people. Leah, back to your point about people who don't vote. And when I hear about that cohort, I think always as a lifelong Democrat of the frustration of young people who are might be, you know, on, on the hustings, rabble rousers. And then what the hell happens at the actual time? Now, I've been to your rallies and I would say the demographic is much more my generation than yours. How what do you make of that? Is it accurate nationwide? And what are you doing to have greater Diversity of ages.
- [10:19]
B
Yeah. Well, I think first we've got to look really directly at some of the currents and some of the history and some of the experiences of young people that are driving disparities in who's showing up for a protest like no Kings, right? A pro democracy coalition in America is always going to bring together people who are trying to preserve something, right? Trying to fight for democracy, trying to fight for something about the existing order and people who don't experience the existing order as working for them at all, people who don't believe in the system, people who feel like they've been pretty screwed by American democracy. Those feelings are not going to be equally held across different generations. What we tend to see with older people who are showing up, I don't want to generalize too much, but much more likely people are going to come in and say I want to save democracy. Whereas, you know, if I'm talking to an audience of young people who, if I'm talking to Gen Z and I go in and I say we gotta save democracy, they're gonna be like, what the hell are you talking about? Like what part of my experience in the last few years feels like democracy? And that's before we even get to some of the most formative experiences of this generation which have been massive protests against the Biden administration's policies in Gaza, the genocide in Gaza, and very visible on campus and off campus repression of those protests. And so I think there's in the very recent memory of a lot of the people who should be the next rising generation of organizers within a pro democracy fight and who are in fact often doing that work in one way or another. There's a lot of reason to be skeptical of kind of the big mass protest as the major model for change. It doesn't mean that they're not doing work. We've seen a lot of young people who are very heavily involved in ICE Watch, in neighborhood protection, in, in really direct engagement to try and mutual aid. But it might mean that the big protests are going to draw more from the people who are more bought into the idea that expressing their outrage translates into some reaction from the political system and grow over time as more people come to that conclusion.
- [12:24]
C
You know, I feel this personally in my little nerdy world because I, not just from my age, but from having been in DOJ so long. I'm completely outraged at what's happening with the rule of law and democratic norms. But it feels a bit abstract and you know, and trying to render in a way where the stakes are Clean, I think, is a challenge. You've made a sort of general point, both of you here, about the kind of divide between what you've called, you know, cultural elite opinion. And really, so many of the people who are in the rally, they don't care a seat in those terms. They just, you know, want to fight fascism. In what ways would you say does that? I'm. I'm interested in that divide. And, you know, do you think it's just a 10 year on the part of the cultural elites? Do you just sort of set them to the side? How do you try to actually, you know, coalesce those kinds of opinions with just the ones who, like. I don't want to talk about that. This is much more basic.
- [13:32]
B
I would say that again, just to take it a step back. Right. I think what we saw immediately after the election of Donald Trump was a sort of collapse of elites. Somebody. Of elites. Yeah, somebody in political science will come up with a better version, a better articulation of this at some point. But when in 2017, Trump was elected, you saw businesses throwing in to collectively push back the. Issuing the statement saying, we're going to protect our employees and filing suits and all of that stuff.
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A
You saw universities, remember, democracies, die in the dark. That was the slogan of the Washington Post.
- [14:05]
B
Exactly.
- [14:06]
C
You know, you see law firms. Yeah. People had spine, right?
- [14:12]
B
Yeah, right. You saw a bunch of different elite actors across various parts of American society, not just partisan parts, but like, you know, business, law firms, media, higher education, et cetera, all rushed to uphold some set of basic principles, and that was almost entirely absent in 2024 into 2025. And, and so I think it's important to understand the reaction that we are seeing and the mass participation in the no Kings protests partly in reaction to that. The sense that the parts of society that are supposed to be doing their part to uphold some portion of American norms, American democracy, are not doing it. And so we've got to collectively come out and push back and create for everyone the understanding that this guy's not inevitable, that he's not going to consolidate power, that he is, in fact, going to face a very powerful opposition for us as people who are organizing. That was apparent from pretty early on. And there was this, like, very weird dynamic where reporters would call us in November, December, January, and they'd say, where's the resistance? And we'd say, they're everywhere. Are you kidding me? We cannot, we cannot cope with how many people are flooding in, they're having meetings that are overflowing we can send you to one, et cetera. But until you get the big moment of protest, none of that counts for folks. And so there was this disconnect between the absolute sea of organizing and protest that was actually starting on the ground level and the elite discourse about kind of, you know, Trump's got this. He's. He's consolidating power. He's inevitable. We got to get out of the way to.
- [15:41]
A
Two things to add to that, because that is all very true. One is some of the elites that collapsed were within the Democratic Party itself. The conventional wisdom, the conventional thinking within national Democratic Party leadership was Trump was all powerful. The Democrats needed to demonstrate how reasonable they were by cutting deals with Trump and moving over his side. And that the reason that they were going to blame on Kamala Harris's loss was because of the grassroots, because of the groups. And so it was not just that they were strategically taking this direction. They felt like they had to. They had to put the groups in their place. They had to put the grassroots in their place. And that was them doing their job. When for those of us who were organizing on the ground against America's Mussolini, after the election, didn't suddenly come to the decision that, well, we'll just gonna work with him. And that's where normal rank and file Democrats were, too. To Leah's point, there were masses of people who had never been engaged in politics before that were driven to start organizing. One, because of how heinous Trump's Project 2025 agenda was, but two, because of this sense that the Democratic Party was entirely unprepared for this moment and unwilling to fight back. Keep in mind, the day that Trump came into office, he. He had at his desk, Lake and Riley, a bill passed with bipartisan support to strengthen ICE and weaken the hand of civil society, to protect immigrants from a terrorizing force that was on his desk when he was sworn in. And it came from this place of, well, we can't fight back too much. We've got to show that we can work with Trump. And I do think that's why there's been this surge of engagement of grassroots organizing at historic levels. The goal of that is in part to drive home the point that democracy is indeed going to reassert itself. The pathway through which you do that is to convince Democrats they gotta play catch up. They can't keep on playing this game that they were playing back in January 24th. They see the crowds and they say, oh, gosh, that's where the people are. I Guess I've got to go there. And I do. I think the story of 2025 is in part, as Leah was talking about, the story of a leak collapse. It's also the story of normal, everyday people coming together, organizing and dragging the opposition party in their direction day by day, week by week, month by month, to the point that right now we exist still in a DHS shutdown because Democrats are holding firm in the Senate for the first time in the last 16 months. They're holding firm. Finally, finally, they are playing catch up to where the grassroots has been since Trump got elected again in 24.
- [18:19]
C
Yeah, I mean, it does feel like two sides of the same coin. And the teeth gnashing definitely continues among Democrats, potential candidates or others. How much do you have to let him have his way? And there's been so many ways in which he's been able to influence civil society. I think you're right. Well, actually, let me. Let's follow up with that. So it does feel like, to me, part of the blowback powering no Kings is more than anger at Trump, but also anger at Democrats in Washington that voters think are not doing enough to fight Trump themselves. I know you two feel some of that anger. You called for or Indivisible called for Chuck Schumer to step down as Senate Minority Leader over a year ago. What part of your overall program is specifically designed to foster a new, more assertive brand of Democratic leadership?
- [19:17]
B
Yeah. Well, so I would say it's two pieces, right. The first is our ongoing advocacy work. Right. Like in between an event like no Kings Indivisible is consistently giving people strategy guidance on what is going on in the Hill. What our best analysis is, how you can plug in based on are you in a red state? Are you in a blue state? Here are the targets for the current thing. Here are the senators that we're worried are a little squishy on this bill that's coming up, et cetera. So continuing to just keep people in formation. So much of our original founding theory was, you know, corporate interests have lobbying groups that pay a lot of attention, decipher all the stuff that's going on, and make that information legible to their clients. And we want to make sure that regular people have the same level of understanding of what is happening on Capitol Hill. So, you know, when we get to a call like asking for Tuck Schumer to step down, that's partly because of an ongoing cycle of regular engagement from folks in New York and folks around the country that's been ongoing on for a long time. And so continuing to hold people accountable on stuff like the shutdown, push people to stand up on stuff like holding DHS funding on war funding, et cetera. That's ongoing work. The other thing that is big this cycle is primaries. We are seeing a lot of people who are getting more involved than they've ever been before in open primaries or in primary challenges around incumbents, you know, all, all oriented around this basic idea of like, we need to have fighters in the Democratic Party. And, and one thing that I would name, that I think is important for us to call out is that, you know, we're a progressive organization, but we recognize that a lot of what's happening right now is not inherently ideological. It's about your orientation to fighting for democracy. It is about, do you think we are in a crisis that merits the use of all of the possible tools or not? Are you standing up and rejecting corporate money fascism funders, or are you not? Are you actually doing things differently in response to what is happening or is it business as usual? And what we're seeing is that people are gravitating around the country to candid who are really speaking to that need.
- [21:18]
A
Harry And I would add to this. This isn't a problem that just we have with the Democratic Party. I think for those of us who are in the pro democracy camp, a hard truth that we shouldn't shy away from is that the Democratic Party is less popular than the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is less popular than Donald Trump. At a time when we have an authoritarian in the White House, we have leading the Democratic Party in the Senate, literally the least popular popular political figure in the country. Chuck Schumer is literally the least popular political figure in America today and he leads the Democratic efforts in the Senate. Now, regardless of what your ideological position is as a Democrat, you probably want to win in November. I sure do. I want to defeat the regime thoroughly. I want massive majorities in the House. I want to get a victory in the Senate. That's what I want to do. It is very difficult to do that when the Democratic Party has such a. A damaging brand problem that it takes into every single district. Now, when we're talking about primaries right now, disproportionately, what we're talking about are safe districts. I just did a kickoff call for voter contact in Georgia 13. This is Jasmine Clark is challenging David Scott. This is a district that went for Kamala Harris by 42 points. It's going to have a Democrat. The question is what kind of Democrat David Scott hasn't voted in the last seven elections. He voted to thank ICE for their service last year. And he represents a Democrat president plus 42 district. What are we doing here, Harry? Why don't we have Democrats representing Democratic districts that act like Democrats? That's something that we can do to improve the Democratic brand, but will also improve their strategy when they get in. It means that they're not going to be searching for ways to agree with Trump. They're actually going to represent a position. And like it or hate it, at least you're going to know where Democrats stand.
- [23:01]
C
You know, back to young people. It really is remarkable. You got to think that if you're 25, your whole adult life has been in the Trump or Biden, which is still a kind of a Trump era. And you can see how the Schumers of the world, it's all different shades of gray. And breaking out of that, I can see, is quite a challenge. Let me ask how has the war changed the kind of dynamic of the no Kings rallies or just generally the mission of indivisible.
- [23:36]
B
Yeah, well, what we are seeing is a lot of people are horrified. It is reaching and allowing us to reach new people who do not want war. Do not understand why you would be putting American troops in harm's way, why you would be harming innocent people abroad. Certainly don't understand why you'd be paying a billion dollars a day, money that's going from, you know, healthcare and roads and schools to bombs abroad that are going to blow up girls schools. What we're seeing in general and what we saw with the no Kings coalition was there was this pivot around making sure that this was a really clear front and center part of our messaging. A lot of times what we saw with protests around the country was people were kind of moving to this informal hashtag of no Kings, no ice, no war. There was a real collective effort to bring this to the front and, and to use no Kings as a moment to collectively show that there was mass anti war sentiment in the country. And I think we were able to successfully land that message. I'm thinking of the was it San Diego where they did the giant sea from space, no war sign where they arranged the crowd?
- [24:40]
A
They've done that for San Diego for no Kings. They've always done that incredible spell out with humans message.
- [24:49]
B
And that's continuing on. What we're seeing, particularly today, we're talking about on a day when Donald Trump is threatening in the most horrifying terms like genocidal war crimes against Iran. What we are seeing is people are horrified. They are shocked. They are also baffled at how we could have a political system that is allowing him to pull this mad king act where he's taken the country to a war that nobody wants.
- [25:17]
C
And just interrupt for a second. The people are. But are they new and different and adding people?
- [25:24]
A
Harry, right now, as we talk to you, who is out against Trump in this war right now? Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson. His own coalition is fracturing over this. I don't want to get dinner or drinks with those folks. They're not people who I think of my ideological best friends. But you cannot deny that they were core aspects of the Trump coalition and this war is driving them away. And what I would say is we do not have to be best friends with Trump's opponents. We can make common cause right now and then go back to fighting each other afterwards. But I think it is undeniable that there are a set of people who voted for Donald Trump, even though they didn't really like him. Maybe they didn't agree with some of his policies, but he promised to be the no more worse candidate. He explicitly promised not to start a war with Iran. And right now, people's prices are jacked up, whether it's health care or eggs or bread or anything else. And he is saying we can't afford to pay for that, but we can't afford to spend more than $1 billion a day on a war that nobody wanted. That absolutely is driving people overside and we should welcome them in.
- [26:24]
B
I would also make a bit of a distinction because sometimes I think we talk about, does this bring people out into the streets? And does this allow us to reach new voters in the same breath? And actually, like, you know, most of the voters we are hoping to flip are never going to show up to the big protest. But something like this might both bring out some new people to the streets and also allow us to reach a totally different set of folks who are activated. I would also just note, I think there's like a.
- [26:50]
C
How does that work concretely? Cause that really is. That's part of what I meant by the impressive numbers. But what does it translate into?
- [26:59]
A
So there's political science research on this, and there are two studies recently that covered a protest during the Tea Party in April of 2010, and looking to see, well, where those protests were rained out. So there were small sizes of protests or there were no protests in those
- [27:14]
C
areas, which was one of your. You actually took one of our pages
- [27:19]
A
from the Tea Party right there are anti inspiration. The very first chapter of the original indivisible guide is what did the Tea Party get right? Look, they were bigoted, they were racist, they were sometimes violent, but gosh, they knew how to organize, they were smart about some things here. So. Absolutely. So the Tea Party had lots of protests in April. And political science research, where were there rainstorms during those protests? So that there weren't big protests, there Was turnout worse. Was it the same? Was there any different? And what they found is places that had Tea party protests in 2010 had better Republican outcomes in the 2010 shellacking, where the Republicans took control of the House. Same basic dynamic in 2017-2018 where there were large women marches. In 2017 you saw better Democratic outcomes. But more recently, look to last November where Democrats ran the table from everywhere, from New York City to the Deep south to California. Where did that take place? In the same places where we had the largest protest in American history two and a half weeks earlier with no Kings too. I think there is a direct, well documented connection between nonviolent widespread protests and electoral outcomes. To Leah's point, the people in rural Texas or rural Georgia or in Alaska who are going to determine whether or not we have a Democratic Senate or not, they are more likely to live within 30 minutes of a no Kings protest now than they were last year. That means more people are gonna be activated. Cuz they see they're not alone. They see that there's a community that agrees with them and they. Maybe they show up at that protest, maybe they don't, but. But they know that they're not weirdos for having the beliefs that they believe.
- [28:53]
C
Right? As they tried to say. Anyone who goes to these rallies are dorks, I think was the latest MAGA mantra. But no, it's. Look, it's important. Not only communities, it seems to me, but communities they recognize because with the hyperpolarization in the country, you know, there are people fomenting out there somewhere. But these guys shop at the same hardware store and go to the same diner and that kind of stuff. And even if they're different, they're much harder to dehumanize.
- [29:29]
A
I'm Michael Waldman, host of the Briefing Podcast.
- [29:32]
C
I'm a former White House speechwriter, lawyer and a constitutional scholar. And I'm president of the Brennan center for Justice. We work to repair and strengthen American democracy. From gerrymandering to abuse of presidential power,
- [29:45]
A
from Supreme Court reform to congressional corruption and more. What fun you're going to hear new
- [29:50]
C
ideas in this podcast, and you're going to hear about the strategies and the legal and political fights that will shape
- [29:56]
A
the next phase of American politics.
- [29:58]
C
If you care about our democracy, the briefing is a podcast for you. I want to give you a chance, Lee, especially to respond to criticism as I was preparing for this that I know is often leveled, which is maybe this goes with the territory of the huge numbers you're drawing. But no Kings or indivisible. There's not a concrete goal or demand. It's bigger than that. And I've heard you say in response, that's intentional, that's an asset. Can you explain why you think that and what your response is when you hear that kind of criticism?
- [30:35]
B
Sure. So I would root us in a strategy, right? Because fundamentally, no Kings is a tactic. It is often kind of approached because it gets so much attention as if it is the whole strategy, whereas in reality it's actually one tactic within a strategy of fostering mass defiance, to oppose and defeat and restrain consolidation of authoritarianism. And so the basic idea when we launched the first no Kings back in June of 2025 was there is this broad societal chilling effect that is happening with a would be authoritarian who is cracking down on alternate sources of power, who is on the verge in this moment of throwing himself a birthday party show of force with the military parade in Washington, D.C. what we are going to do is get as many people out as possible in as many places as possible to dispute that aura of inevitability, to dispute that sense that he is powerful, that he is representative, that he is inevitably going to consolidate the ability to rule over us. That was the core idea. And part of the thinking behind that was that we had found in past efforts that the one issue protest wasn't working quite the same way that it used to be, that there was a need to actually pull people together collectively and hold up each other's issues, rather than trying to rapid response, mobilize on every individual outrage. Because if we were showing up for every single horrible thing that they did, we were going to be showing up five times a day and we were going to burn ourselves out. So the basic idea was, let's build the biggest possible coalition we within this umbrella container of a story, a story about unaccountable, imperious governance that is ruling over us, that is harming us, and that's manifesting in all kinds of different ways at the same time, where we're all coming together and holding up that story together. And so that was the core idea behind the first no Kings and carries over, where we're just trying to basically show American society is not folding to a would be authoritarian. There are more of us. We're growing every time, we're building our strength every time. And. And we are collectively capable of pushing back. And you should be, whoever you are in American society, whether you are a Democratic politician or a Republican politician, or the head of a university or the head of a media company, you should be as worried about the rest of us as you were worried about Donald Trump. That's the core idea. Now, the other piece of no Kings that's really important is that it is a mass catalyst of local organizing. Because the entire theory all the way through was we're not going to try and do one single place. We're not going to try to all Mass in Washington or in one city for a show of force, although there will certainly be very big protests in a lot of those major cities. We're going to ask people to organize where they are, and we're going to ask people to use those organizing moments as the catalyst for ongoing local engagement. So when we do a no Kings, we have indivisible groups and 50, 51 groups and, you know, League of Women Voters and DSA and really Pretty much everybody across the full ideological spectrum of the broad popular front who are using these as moments to bring more into ongoing activism, engagement, cycles of absorption that allow them to do all of the work that fuels that mass, mass resistance, mass defiance on an ongoing basis. So the people who organize this stuff the next week, they're doing mutual aid, they are doing Ice Watch trainings, they are doing community support activities, they're doing advocacy to stop the war, they're doing voter registration and electoral organizing. But because they did endow kings, they've got twice as many people who are doing it now. So there's this ongoing cycle of both the mass show of defiance and then the reinforcing cycles of absorption and local activism that builds power.
- [34:09]
C
If the Supreme Court fails us and if Trump is able to go forward and I mean, do you see an end game where the Republic is saved literally by popular resistance even, you know, if the. If things are purloined at the ballot box and the like or, you know, at that point, are we. I can say this. It's my damn podcast. Well and truly fucked.
- [34:34]
A
I think we should expect that Trump is trying to sabotage the midterm elections. And we should expect that because he is telling us that. Yeah, I think we should believe that the reason why he is sending ICE agents out to the airports is not just to terrorize immigrants. It's partly that, but it's also as a dress rehearsal for what he intends to do in the midterms.
- [34:55]
C
Steve Bannon told us that directly. Right.
- [34:57]
A
Steve Bannon is telling us directly. And look, we are at the place right now in our republic where we. I can't change Trump's mind directly. I can't change the fact that he is an authoritarian and the fact that authoritarians do not willingly give up power. And that a traditional flashpoint for authoritarians is indeed national elections, where they have to decide and the public has to decide and the institutions have to decide. What are we really? Are we still a republic? Are we still a democracy? Or are we in competitive authoritarianism? Now, that is a fight that is coming. What we know about those fights around the world is they are determined as much by whether people get engaged in that moment as by what the institutions do. Because ultimately, all power. This seems like a high school textbook, but it is true. And it's probably important for us to remind ourselves all legitimate political power in this country comes from the people. That is where everything comes from. So if we want a democracy, we've got it. We've got to do the work to keep it, but we've got it. The reason why we do things like no Kings is in part to send a message that democracy is going to reassert itself. But to Leah's point, a big part of it is to recruit more and more people with an easy on ramp into local organizing. Because when that moment comes, Harry, it's not going to be enough for us to hit 11 or 12 million people on a Saturday and then all whistle to work on Monday like nothing happened. What it's going to require is matching the breadth of organizing and mobilizing that we've seen with no Kings with the depth of oppositional organizing that we saw in a place like the Twin Cities, where you saw 3, 4, 5% of an entire city organized linking arms against an authoritarian force. This is why the main action item coming out of no Kings 3 was not. And here's the next no Kings where we all show up again in a big protest. No, it's in fact May Day on May 1. A day without business as usual. A day modeled on the Minnesota Day of Truth in Action, where there were tens of thousands of clergy and teachers and nurses and neighbors coming out together in sub zero temperatures to say, no, this isn't normal. We're not gonna put up with this. We're not gonna just move on like it's fine. And that was what's preceded the regime basically announcing defeat as best it could and, and more or less stopping what its campaign was against the Twin Cities. We're going to have to build towards that. And Mayday is what's known in some quarters as a structure test for the movement to understand where are we? Are we able to pull this off? What numbers do we need and where, what capabilities do we need and don't have? Where do we need to focus on building? Because we're going to need it come November, and we don't want November to be a dry run.
- [37:52]
C
Okay, what's the general scope then between now and November? So that's the next big landmark. We're seven months away. I assume you've given real thought to an overall architecture of effective use of the movement you've built and the movement that's growing to dovetail with the midterms. What's next for no kings or indivisible, I should say.
- [38:17]
B
Well, for indivisible, we're building towards Mayday. We think that is going to be a crucial day for us to collectively come out and to push back against the war, against this out of control government, against its billionaire cronies, put workers first and flex our power. That is going to be a crucial moment. And also we're heading into an election season and we both have to win that election and we have to protect that election. And so we're going to be continuing to double down on that hyperlocal organizing that actually builds up the strength that is necessary in the event of election subversion, election sabotage. And we're also going to be making sure we throw everything that we've got at winning this election. Because fundamentally, the way that we are going to stop Donald Trump from trying to go for his third term is if he suffers the most resounding, historic, epic midterm defeat in American history and then he is unable to steal the election afterwards, that is where we got to go.
- [39:12]
C
It does seem to me that his strategies in 2020, but now worse, because he has levers of power and he's able to get more sort of tools, but really do depend on, you know, for him, 11,780 votes can be a close election. But really the, the, the issue is will he have operating room? And I think he is ceding the ground to wherever it's close to go forward. But if there's very few places or overall he can't affect the national verdict, then that that's. That's, I think, a big A big difference. Ezra Final thoughts about what's next for no Kings, including after Mayday.
- [39:54]
A
I I think Leah said it brilliantly. I was tempted to meet.
- [39:58]
C
I should mention you guys are married.
- [40:02]
A
I'm biased, so. But I think Leah did did the perfect job on that one.
- [40:09]
C
Thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube or where we are posting full episodes and daily updates on Top legal Stories. Check us out on substack harry littman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Fez has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in, and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansuma Hadrenathan, Emma Maynard, and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Doledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.