We Have Friends Everywhere

The Defiance is expanding, even to small rural towns. Plus, the danger of war with Iran and more on the ongoing debate on changing the Democratic playbook.

According to data journalist G. Elliott Morris’s unofficial, crowd-sourced tally of the 2100+ “No Kings” protest rallies that took place last Saturday, somewhere between 4.3 million and 5.8 million people showed up, making June 14^th one of the largest days of protest in American history. In terms of sheer numbers, with an estimated half million protestors, Boston outpaced larger cities like Los Angeles (200,000), New York (200,000), Chicago (100,000) and San Francisco (100,000).

If the main value of mass protest is that it shows people that they are not alone and it spreads millions of word-of-mouth stories to bystanders, helping to shift public opinion away from support for the regime, then for my money the most important of the No Kings protests weren’t the ones in all the reliably blue cities. Instead, it’s places like Bradford, Iowa (100 protestors); Slater, Iowa (125 protestors); High Springs, Florida (100); Flint Hill, Virginia (150); Dothan, Alabama (150); Westcliffe, Colorado (170); Winchester, Tennessee (200); Siren, Wisconsin (250); Dunkirk, Maryland (300); and Brunswick, Georgia (300) that stand out as hopeful bellwethers. That’s because they are places that tilt more red than blue, where the population density is less than 900 people per square mile. (Places more crowded than that shade more Democratic.)

Truth be told, the great majority of No Kings protests took place in urban and suburban cities and towns; as I eyeballed the turnout tally of 900+ rallies crowd-sourced by Morris and his minions, perhaps five percent were in places like Siren and Dunkirk that qualify as low-density rural. But blocking Trumpism requires winning more hearts and minds in precisely those places, where resentment of coastal elites and a steady diet of rightwing media has many people in thrall. A place like Vinton, Iowa, home to one of the regional headquarters of the National Civilian Community Corps programs blown up by DOGE, has been having regular anti-Trump protests for several weeks going back to April, Jo Carter, one of the organizers, told me. Seventy-five people showed up for No Kings in Vinton’s Celebration Park (along with others who attended a parallel Pride event).

Map of June 14 protests by We (the People) Dissent

One thing is for sure—when people in these places start asking questions, be it about Trump’s tariffs or immigration raids or any number of other wacko policies, we can’t respond the way Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark—a leading #NeverTrump outlet--stomped on the people of Kennett, Missouri after the New York Times reported on their efforts to protect a beloved resident of their town from ICE. He called them “idiots” and wrote:

Does anyone in Kennett have the cognitive capacity to understand that a world exists outside their field of vision? Do they think Carol is the only “good” person being deported? Do they not understand that other “good” parts of America have their own Carols? Do they not understand that the “bad” parts of America—like New York City—have people like Carol, too? Do these moral monsters have any capacity for empathy for people they do not personally know?

Last is a good writer and his perspective, coming as a Republican who is aghast at what his party has become, is usually welcome. But as hard as it may be to do, like any church that wants to grow, we have to welcome the sinners, not attack them for the mistake of voting for Trump. The human connection the people of Kennett feel towards one beloved Chinese immigrant can be the crack that starts to let more divergent thoughts in. And it’s quite clear from polling that the more Trump’s “mass deportation” policy gets converted into masked men forcibly grabbing people on the street and tearing apart families and communities, the less people support it.

Speaking of sparsely populated zip codes where people turned out for “No Kings,” one that had a very high percentage of Democrats on hand this past Saturday, but somehow didn’t host a “No Kings” protest was 11976, the home of Water Mill, New York, a hamlet inside the town of Southampton on Long Island. What brought former White House royals Bill and Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff; Congressional royals Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi; and cultural eminences like Vogue editor Anna Wintour and late night host Jimmy Fallon to the Hamptons instead of to the hustings? The wedding of Alex Soros, one of George Soros’s sons, and Huma Abedin, a close aide to Hillary who was previously married to Rep. Anthony Weiner (aka “Carlos Danger.”) Like paying your taxes, I guess showing up to defend democracy is for the little people?

P.S. My hat is off for New York City Comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who was arrested yesterday by masked officers outside immigration court in downtown Manhattan after linking arms with a person ICE agents were trying to detain. This is the third time this month that Lander has gone to observe proceedings at the court, he told reporters.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran?

“No Kings” is a great slogan to unify around when the president is defying the courts, deploying heavily armed and masked agents to kidnap people off the streets and kick them out of the country, threatening law firms and universities, pardoning cronies and people who stuff money in his pockets, wielding government spending as his personal tool of retribution, and seeking to enrich himself and other billionaires at everyone else’s expense—and the Supreme Court has given him immunity from criminal prosecution. But as the now-open war between Israel and Iran escalates, we should remember that the American president has long had unchecked king-like powers.

And it’s not just his unilateral power to press The Button—it’s all the powers he has over foreign policy, from ordering drone strikes to full-scale war. The latter is supposed to be up to Congress, but the War Powers Resolution has been basically suspended since 2002. As I write, Trump is reportedly deciding whether he should send B-2 bombers with giant “bunker buster” 30,000-pound bombs to try to destroy Iran’s buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo. He’s talking like this is just another tactic in a negotiating strategy aimed at getting Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions, though he is also demanding “unconditional surrender” which hardly seems likely to induce the Iranians to make a deal. The way things are going, the “No Kings” organizers might want to update to a new slogan, something like “Stop the Mad King’s War.”

It's very frustrating, depressing even, to see so many Democratic as well as Republican politicians fall in line in support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-long crusade against the Iranian regime. The echoes of 2001-2, when George Bush and Dick Cheney decided that regime change was necessary to stop Saddam Hussein from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, are clear. And if you think it would be bad for Iran to get nuclear weapons, please explain why it’s okay for Israel to have them.

Kudos to Democrats Ro Khanna and Tim Kaine and Republican Thomas Massie, who are pushing a Congressional resolution that would require Trump to get that body’s approval before going to war with Iran. Senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul and also expressing dissent. Perhaps even more important, here is an online petition initiated by an Israeli and Iranian dialogue group, which I got from my friend Hillel Schenker, longtime co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal. As of this morning, more that 1,900 people had signed it. It reads:

Iranians and Israelis call for ceasefire and diplomacy

We, Iranians and Israelis, share grave concerns for the future of our countries and the region. Israel and Iran have been engaged in indirect conflict for decades; a conflict that puts the entire region in danger, and especially the people of these countries. Following the exchange of fire last year, the Israeli attacks starting Friday morning, and the Iranian attacks starting Friday night, the conflict has now entered us into a new phase. Already around 200 civilians have been killed in Iran and at least 23 in Israel. This is a reminder of the price paid by citizens in war.

Iranians, Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in safety and dignity. Attacks on civilians should be condemned everywhere. The respective governments of our country have helped plunge our people into this war that doesn’t represent our interests. Continued bloodshed won’t bring security for any of our nations.

We call on both sides and the international community to take immediate steps toward ending the violence. They must find a way to bring all parties on the path of diplomacy. An immediate ceasefire should be the first step toward a broader diplomatic solution.

We refuse to accept the inevitability of violent conflict as the only way forward between our nations, Israel and Iran, or their positioning as eternal arch-enemies. The endless and senseless wars of this region won’t benefit our people, all of whom have the right to live in peace and security.

Changing the Democratic Playbook (Continued Some More)

Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker have a long piece in The Atlantic (gift link) that delves into the internal divide between the Biden/Harris campaign operation and Future Forward, the $900 million SuperPAC that ran a parallel paid media effort. What interests me most about this piece is not so much the divergence between the two over how much to emphasize Trump’s threat to democracy vs how the election would affect voters’ pocketbooks, though if you are already a connoisseur of the infighting, dig in. What’s most interesting is what Scherer and Parker report about Future Forward’s current influence on national Democratic strategy. They write:

Since the election, Future Forward has continued to churn out voter-survey data with the aim of shaping how Democrats communicate with voters. The regular “Doppler” emails, which are sent privately to a select group of Democratic officials and strategists, test everything from the social-media posts of lawmakers to podcast appearances by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and excerpts of rallies featuring Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In these messages, party leaders are still urged to ‘make criticism of Trump economic and personal,’ avoid personal attacks, use specific numbers such as ‘$880 billion in Medicaid cuts,’ and create ‘vivid contrasts’ such as ‘tax breaks for the wealthy vs. food aid cuts.’

What’s missing from this advice? Any suggestion that Democrats hammer Trump for his cruel treatment of immigrants, for starters. But it looks like Future Forward isn’t even testing messages about Trump’s destruction of scientific research—a sleeper issue if you ask me.

Chauncey McLean, the founder of Future Forward, doesn’t talk much to the media. Back in mid-March, in fact, he did his very first podcast interview—a conversation with Amy Walter of The Cook Report. It’s a fairly anodyne conversation, but three things stood out to me:

—Talking in the early spring, with plenty of evidence already of Trump’s desire to break American democracy, McLean is firmly on Earth One, speaking as if the 2026 elections will be free and fair and the traditional tendency for the out-party to gain seats during midterms will tilt the playing field his way. “Let’s fight the war we’re in,” he says at one point, focusing not on the current crisis but on his complacent assumption that that means a normal mid-term.

—McLean thinks that the economy is the main, if not the only issue, that Democrats should be talking about. “At the end of the election, by a 12-point margin, people said that [Trump] would be better for their bottom line than Kamala Harris, and now it’s his, I think potentially, Achilles heel,” he tells Walter. In other words, he is still fighting the last war.

—He’s clearly a hidden but substantial influence on major Democratic funders. Bragging about how much polling and social media monitoring Future Forward is still doing, McClean tells Walter, “We have the ability to put our ear to the ground in all of these spaces. The donor ecosystem has the infrastructure necessary to know what's going on in all of these spaces.”

Will Robinson, a veteran Democratic strategist, has a must-read critique of Future Forward’s whole approach to battling Trump on his Substack. Here’s a snippet:

“They raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help defeat Donald Trump. And then they muffled the message, undercut the candidate, and disregarded the central challenge of the race: fighting a fascist movement with more than just economic talking points and bar graphs.

Let’s be clear: I don’t blame data. I blame what Future Forward did with it. This wasn’t science - it was scientism. They believed randomized-controlled ad tests could replace judgment, timing, and narrative sense. That you could A/B test your way to a moral confrontation. That “top-testing” economic spots could hold back an authoritarian tide. It was the triumph of precision over perspective - and the wrong kind of precision at that….

One of the most dangerous blind spots in Future Forward’s approach was its fundamental misunderstanding of modern political psychology. They believed voters could be persuaded by resume and economic contrast alone. But we live in a time where culture crushes credentials.

Trump didn’t win hearts with white papers - he won with defiance, identity, and story. Meanwhile, Future Forward had no story. They had a box full of “best-testing” spots and zero message architecture. No coherent theory of audience, no framework for repetition, no values-forward narrative that could anchor persuasion and mobilization.

Why does this matter? Because we’re in a titanic struggle to defend democracy and the rule of law, and McClean’s influence on the “donor ecosystem” is substantial. In 2024, Dustin Moskovitz, one of the original founders of Facebook and the founder of Asana, gave $50 million dollars to Future Forward PAC between August 28 and October 22. He also made large hard money contributions to the DNC and to every state Democratic party. Michael Bloomberg gave $19 million to Future Forward PAC. Christian Larsen of Ripple gave $10.5 million. Reid Hoffman gave $10 million. James Simons of Euclidean Capital gave $6.6 million. Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois gave $5 million. There’s a long list of other donors who wrote six- and seven-figure checks. These big Democratic donors have been almost completely AWOL since the beginning of Trump II, spending almost nothing on political donations in the first quarter of 2025.

As I said above, like paying taxes, maybe showing up to defend democracy is just for the little people. Let’s not forget who was there, and who wasn’t, when the time comes to rebuild.

End Times

Nick Cave says it well (h/t my yoga teacher Cass Ghiorse).