The number one thing on the No Kings coalition’s wish list should be obvious to anyone familiar with its nationwide rallies: Vote out as many Trump-appeasing congressional Republicans as possible in November and replace them with Democrats.
That’s where the focus was during this past Saturday’s “No Kings: Vote Early” events. Unlike the previous No Kings mass protests, Saturday wasn’t about delivering a message of resistance, it was about delivering the votes needed to back it up.
But if voters do restore Democrats to congressional power in November, the fight isn’t over—and what happens next will be just as crucial. In a series of interviews with movement leaders, a Step Two is coming into view: making sure that when Democrats take over one or both chambers of Congress, they don’t wimp out.
“I talk to so many people who are like, ‘It doesn’t really matter who I vote for because it’s not going to make a difference. Both parties are the same,’” says Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led political action organization.
“And I think there’s a lot of ways in which the next two years could prove them right, if nothing happens or if they don’t hear about anyone who they voted for at all.”
Democrats in Congress have so far been “both unable and unwilling to really stand up to Trump in the ways that really matter,” Shiney-Ajay says. In the next two years, they need “to show that they are willing to fight.” Her hope is that by the time the 2028 presidential elections roll around, “we are able to say: ‘Here’s what’s different because of what you did.’”
“If the Democrats take back Congress, it isn’t because of a milquetoast agenda,” says Neidi Dominguez, executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, a worker rights organization that is part of the May Day Strong Coalition. “They have to be responsive to that,” in a way that “breaks through to the everyday person,” she says.
Democrats are running “on an argument of corruption and affordability,” says Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots organization with over 2,500 local chapters. “If you then don’t use the power available to you, you will undermine your party’s reputation—for good reason—because you will have demonstrated that on the campaign trail, you’ll say whatever it takes to get elected, but once you’re governing, you’re not going to do shit.”
Levin says, “That’s the number one problem that the Democrats face now and in the future. It’s not an individual policy disagreement that they have with the voters. It’s that most voters think Democrats are feckless and don’t mean what they say. And so, a major project at the Democratic Party over the next two years has to be to revitalize its brand; prove [to] the voters that when you elect us, change happens.”
Older progressives remember what can happen when a mass movement stands down. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign famously built a grassroots machine of two million supporters—“super-activists” prepared to engage in large-scale organizing to support his vision of hope and change. But Obama basically shut that operation down after he became president. He abandoned the “transformational” model promised by his campaign in favor of a transactional one. He hired archetypal political operator Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff; he deferred on financial matters to a group of “confidence men” whose sympathies were with Wall Street. His most ardent progressive supporters were ignored and let down.
The No Kings coalition has made it clear to Democratic leaders that it doesn’t intend to let that happen again.
“What I’m telling them is that the movements that put together the mass mobilizations in ’25 and ’26 aren’t evaporating on January 3 of ’27,” Levin says. “They’re looking for who is actually going to fight because that’s who they voted for.”
Realistically, even in the most optimistic scenarios, there’s only so much Democrats can do with Trump in the White House. He has the power of the veto, as well as a history of ignoring both congressional budgets and subpoenas.
Expectations should be attainable, says Hunter Dunn, national press coordinator for the grassroots 50501 movement. “We have repeatedly called for the abolition and prosecution of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the dismantling of Department of Homeland Security, and a pathway to citizenship for all people living within the United States. That’s going to require someone who isn’t Trump to be president. Same deal with things like Medicare for All, Green New Deal, and expanding the Supreme Court.
“I think, obviously, some people are going to be disappointed when some of those things don’t pass,” Dunn says. “But I also don’t think people think Abdul El-Sayed is running on passing Medicare for All in 2027. He’s running on trying to get it passed in 2029. And I think people are aware of that.”
“There are far fewer opportunities to unilaterally bring the change than I would like when you just take control of Congress,” says Levin. “We don’t have a parliamentary system, that’s reality. But there are some levers. There are some things you can do.”
So what’s to be done? What the No Kings movement wants more than anything is for Democrats to develop a bold agenda, craft it into legislation, and hold floor votes on bill after bill after bill—even if Republicans are likely to block them in the Senate or Trump is likely to exercise his veto. By staking out bold territory on policy, Democrats can make what’s at stake in 2028 more vivid.
In the short run, that could mean well-publicized votes on ending the war in Iran, curbing inhumane and lawless immigration policies, and stopping weapons sales to Israel. In the longer run, they can get started on work for the future, and craft legislation that advances Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, a path to citizenship, and expanding the Supreme Court.
“We need clear contrast,” says Levin. “There needs to be a clear, compelling vision for what a post-Trump America looks like. And you don’t get that if everything gets just bottled up in committees and dies before it hits the floor.”
In a way, they welcome Trump’s vetoes. “I want to make him fight popular stuff and create the conflict,” Levin says. “That’s healthy conflict. That allows the public to see which side we’re on and which side they’re on.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy and government-watchdog group, argues that “setting up a policy agenda that puts forth what you hope to accomplish when you can” would have “a meaningful impact” on voters. Each bill would be a “statement of care,” she says: “‘We care about housing. We care about grocery prices. We care about fighting corruption and fixing government.’ These are the sort of statements that Democrats should be making with their legislation.”
Even if the bills don’t become law, Gilbert says, “it still feels important to me to do the thing, to come out with bold policy prescriptions that demonstrate commitment to unrigging the system, fighting corruption, creating progressive economic policy—all the things that will help people and that they’re demanding.”
Dunn describes the goal bluntly: “This is building towards a future next administration, one without the stench of the Trump regime.” A Democratic majority that shows that Democrats “know what they’re doing and have an efficient standard for how they get things done” will bring increased credibility to their 2028 campaigns, he argues.
And as a bonus, making Republicans vote on popular Democratic proposals will “force them to either pass these bills or take an even worse electoral wipeout in 2028,” Dunn says.
The No Kings crowd worries that the current Democratic leadership—particularly Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer—aren’t wartime consiglieres and lack the stomach to mount this kind of aggressive legislative campaign. (Indivisible, for instance, only endorsed Senate candidates who committed to opposing Schumer as majority leader.)
They are concerned that the current leadership would be too willing to make concessions to Trump rather than stand and fight.
That’s certainly Trump’s expectation. He was asked by a local TV news reporter in Florida on Friday whether he could work with a Democratic Congress. “It’ll work because I’ll be vetoing everything,” he said. “And then they’re going to call and say, ‘how do we get something passed?’ and we’ll make a deal.”
But there is also cause for optimism. “We’re seeing an incoming class of Democrats that includes some of the most movement-aligned Democrats that we’ve really ever seen,” says Shiney-Ajay. Many of them are up for “getting dirty and fighting.”
“I mean, this isn’t just politics as usual anymore,” she says. “There’s just so many things that have become existential because of the Democrats’ refusal to stand up to this newly fascist Republican Party.”
Accountability is also a huge issue for the No Kings movement, and leaders intend to push Democrats to engage in aggressive oversight, including the use of subpoenas and public investigations to expose the inner workings of any number of Trump-era scandals and outrages.
The goal, Dunn says, is to “get as much information as possible into the hands of the American people, revealing the extent of the rot and corruption.”
There are two schools of thought about oversight. One the one hand, there is a clear desire for Democrats to go on offense against Trump administration officials who undermined the Constitution and broke laws. At the same time, there is a pragmatic consensus that oversight should focus on issues like affordability that have a more material impact on voters.
Gilbert is advocating for oversight that focuses on “how the corruption of the moment—both corporate corruption and Trump administration corruption—are connected to harms that people are experiencing in their real lives.” Oversight efforts would ideally “center investigative priorities on accountability, transparency, and affordability—how to protect regular Americans from the abuses of power and corporate misconduct we’re seeing.”
“It’s kind of trying to tie together the real urge to kind of give everyone a pound of flesh,” Gilbert says, “and also make it meaningful, so that people pay attention.”
Dunn wants to see televised hearings about links between Jeffrey Epstein and Trump. And he wants to see impeachment proceedings. His group, 50501, has called for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other complicit officials.
And while Trump’s conviction by a two-thirds vote of the Senate is hard to imagine, Dunn still thinks it’s worth impeaching him in the House. “You can use it as a way to launch a number of investigations and get public information out there, which puts pressure on either removing him or, more likely, makes it easier to impeach, convict, and remove Hegseth or Patel or other complicit officials who are less popular.”
Dunn wants Democrats to start with Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “When it comes to RFK Jr., you can definitely impeach, convict, and remove that guy. That guy is not incredibly popular amongst Senate Republicans based on what I have heard. Like he is a very vulnerable Cabinet official.”
The most leverage Democrats are likely to have in the next two years will come when their votes are needed for legislation to keep the government open. Among several possibilities—depending on what happens during the lame-duck Congress—the most likely is a bill to raise the debt ceiling. Similarly, if they control the Senate, Democrats would be able to pass a budget reconciliation bill with a simple majority in both chambers. In both those cases, Democrats will be able to threaten a government shutdown if their demands aren’t met.
So what should those demands be? There is widespread agreement within the No Kings community and among Democratic leaders that restoring three of Trump’s devastating attacks on the safety net is a top priority. That means:
- repealing requirements and funding changes that threw five million people out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP;
- restoring enhanced tax credits for Affordable Care Act enrollees, whose elimination led 4.6 million people to lose their health insurance, while millions more are now paying higher premiums for lousier plans; and
- rolling back rule changes that go into effect in December that will kick as many as 10 million people off Medicaid next year.
“Trump and his Big Ugly Law have done immeasurable damage to the health care system, and people are furious,” says Gilbert. “So there are remedies that you can absolutely move by simple majority and attach to a budget reconciliation bill. That feels like a great place to dare Trump to veto.”
But there could be more—like increasing taxes on billionaires, she says. “You can’t do everything via reconciliation, but you can do a lot. And it’s going to be a really important vehicle for making statements—if Democrats have both chambers, daring him not to sign something that’s going to be so incredibly popular.”
For Dunn, an even higher priority is cutting funding for ICE. That’s a particularly ambitious goal since Congress in the last two years has front-loaded ICE and other immigration-enforcement operations with nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars to spend over the next three years—a massive sum that insulates ICE from the annual budget process.
But Dunn wants to hold must-pass legislation hostage in order to “grab back as much money from that slush fund as possible.” He explains: “Giving them less money to do damage with is the most important thing.” Congress “can’t make ICE less evil,” he says. But it can “make ICE weaker.”
Levin agrees that ICE must be defunded. “The Republicans won’t like that,” he says, “but that’s the cost of having a secret police goon squad murdering Americans in the streets.”
Is there any major legislation that enough Republicans would support to override a presidential veto—or force Trump to go along?
Shiney-Ajay thinks a consensus is forming over imposing a data center moratorium. “I mean, it’s an 80–20 issue; you just see massive support. And I think that’s the type of thing that if the Democratic Party decided to pick a fight on it, the Republican Party and Trump would have a really hard choice on their hands: of, piss off the vast majority of Americans, versus, actually say ‘yes’ to something.”
Regulating crypto and AI are also increasingly important priorities for No Kings, although leaders are realistic about the influence the industry is buying with members of both parties. “Obviously, AI and crypto are throwing around their money like nobody’s business,” Dunn says. But regulating AI “is another thing that I think a majority-Democratic House and Senate could get passed and force Trump to—at the very least—leave it unsigned and allow it to come into law.”
That’s what happened with a major housing affordability bill that passed both chambers by huge margins in June.
“It’s not impossible that you could get a solid infrastructure bill that helps American people through a divided but blue Congress and Senate and then get it on the president’s desk and put pressure on him to sign,” Dunn says.
He’s also keen on Democrats pushing for veterans’ health reforms. “That’s something that I think could, with the right pressure, be passed under Trump,” he says. “And not because Trump’s a good guy, but because the optics of him not passing it would be disastrous. I don’t think he could veto a bill called ‘Make Veterans’ Health Care Great Again.’”
“You change the Democratic Party either through advocacy or through electing new leaders,” Levin says. And he wants both.
If Democrats take the Senate, “the majority will be made up of new folks who came in saying we don’t want Schumer,” Levin says. Keeping Schumer as Democratic leader “will feel like a betrayal of the voters who built the wave,” he says.
“We can try to organize against that and other bad strategic moves they might make that will undermine them in 2028.
“Whether or not Democratic electeds actually listen is directly related to how much of a political threat they think that grassroots energy is,” Levin says. “If you get a few hundred, a few thousand people organized in a congressional district who are unified in purpose and are paying attention to what their member of Congress does, it affects how they think. That’s true in swing districts when it comes to general elections, and it’s true everywhere when it comes to primaries.”
So Indivisible chapters, like they have for the last 10 years, will continue to organize their communities, protest offices, run advocacy campaigns, raise money, recruit candidates, hold town halls, and write letters to the editor, Levin says.
But there’s going to be a significant shift in emphasis. “After the election, depending on how the election shakes out, but certainly in some way, we will be in a new political reality,” Levin says. “It’s no longer just about limiting harm from an out-of-control authoritarian. That’s a piece of it—but we should also be preparing for the next step, and that means going on offense.”