A week ago, the best defense of the No Kings protests was that they were never supposed to change Donald Trump in one Saturday. They were supposed to test whether the anti-Trump energy spreading through smaller cities and suburbs could become something sturdier than a viral crowd shot. If the week that followed had gone flat, critics would have had a clean line: nice signs, nice catharsis, nothing more. Instead, Trump spent the next seven days giving protesters the kind of material they usually have to piece together themselves.
That does not mean the movement won. It means the diagnosis got easier to defend. CNN put Trump at 35%, a new second-term low, with his economic approval at 31%. His standing with independents now looks worse than Nixon’s at Watergate, according to CNN’s chief data analyst. And yet Democrats are only around D+5.5 on Nate Silver’s generic-ballot average, with Morning Consult even tighter. That is not a wave. That is the gap.
A steady fall into the abyss for Trump’s net approval, as it falls into Death Valley. He’s now at a term 2 low: -18 pts.
Big reason why: Independents. Trump’s at -45 pts.
The worst for any prez at this point in term 2. Worse than Nixon (-36 pts) at the height of Watergate! pic.twitter.com/DLbtXDzrkP
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) March 31, 2026
The Week Kept Writing the Protesters’ Signs for Them
No Kings was built around a simple accusation: Trump governs like public institutions exist to feed his own mythology. A week later, Florida signed the bill renaming Palm Beach International Airport after him. His Miami presidential library renderings looked less like an archive than a monument, gold statue included. His signature is being added to new U.S. paper currency this summer — the first time a sitting president will sign American money — with his name already affixed to the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a planned class of Navy warships. Call those harmless tributes if you want. They still sound exactly like what No Kings was warning about.
Then came the White House Easter lunch. Trump joked about being called a king. Paula White-Cain, a senior adviser in the White House Faith Office, compared his political suffering to Christ’s story. Trump called people who reject his religious framing of America “crazy” and fit to be “cast aside.” Then Pope Leo, without naming him, used Palm Sunday to warn that God rejects the prayers of leaders who wage war with “hands full of blood.” One side was wrapping power in sacred language. The other was using Holy Week to strip that language bare.
The Iran Reality Gap Got Harder To Ignore
If the monarchy imagery made the protests look culturally prescient, Iran made them look politically relevant. In his April 1 prime-time address, Trump said Iran’s radar was “100% annihilated” and that America was “unstoppable as a military force.” Two days later, a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iranian territory, the first known incident of its kind in the war. Both crew members were eventually rescued, but only after a high-risk recovery operation under Iranian fire. Two U.S. helicopters were hit during the mission.
Trump supporters can still call him strong, decisive, and willing to act where softer presidents hesitated. Fair enough. But strength looks different when the victory lap and the downed aircraft are 48 hours apart.
The Hardest Question Did Not Get Answered by Any of This
This is the part that protest movements hate hearing. Being right about the mood is not the same as being ready for the election. The third No Kings wave hit more than 3,200 cities, with a noticeable rise in smaller communities — the places where midterms actually get decided. But one number should kill the victory lap: 74% of Americans, including 55% of Democrats or Democratic leaners, said congressional Democrats do not have the right priorities. The soft disapprovers are still waiting. They dislike the chaos, the war drift, and the self-glorifying spectacle — and still haven’t decided the other side deserves the keys.
Congressional Dems’ numbers with Dems are atrociously awful. (Even worse among all voters.)
Most Dems (55%) think their party has the wrong priorities!
Unlike 2006 or 2018, Dem leaders have a negative net approval with Dems!
Schumer is on thin ice to hold his job next year. pic.twitter.com/ZByeIidfNL
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 2, 2026
Democrats have flipped more than two dozen GOP-held state legislative seats and special-election races since Trump returned to office, including one in the Florida district that includes Mar-a-Lago. The Women’s March of 2017 looked like therapy at the time. By the 2018 midterms, it looked more like a runway. History does not repeat cleanly, but it sometimes offers a useful precedent.
What it never offers is a guarantee.
The signs were right. The crowds were real. The week gave the movement more than it could have scripted. None of that votes in November 2026. People do. The machine protesters said they were building still has to turn marchers in Idaho, Wyoming, and the Phoenix suburbs into ballots when it counts. If it does, the dress rehearsal mattered. If it doesn’t, this was better-produced therapy with signs.
Time is running out.
