FALLS CHURCH, Virginia — The baby boomers waving American flags and the Vietnam Vets hats were one thing. It was the “Sic Semper Tyrannis” signs and flags, the various barbs at George III, and the countless references to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution that brought back memories of 2010.
This “No Kings” rally right outside Washington, D.C., was a couple of tricorn hats away from being a knockoff tea party rally.
The anti-Trump rally was full of patriotism and reverence for our founding. It was mostly folks in their 50s and 60s, and it was overwhelmingly white. The crowd was well behaved, and they cleaned up after themselves. When they booed a Cybertruck (because Teslas are bad now), they felt a bit bad about it.
This was part of a deliberate effort by Democratic activists to look more like the Obama-era Right than the activist Left of the past couple of decades.
One of dozens of such rallies organized as counterprogramming to President Donald Trump’s military parade that fell on his birthday, Flag Day, and the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday, the Falls Church rally lined Broad Street, the main drag of this small municipality that calls itself “The Little City.”
Protesters stood on both sides of Broad, for about half a mile on each side, waving American flags and hundreds of handmade signs. The most common theme in the signs was attacking Trump for subverting democracy and the rule of law and wanting to be a king. The “No Kings” branding came from a resistance group called Indivisible.
The patriotism at this No Kings rally differed from the standard left-wing protests of recent times, either on college campuses after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel or in various cities after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police.
This weekend’s left-of-center protesters were, for the most part, all-in on the whole America thing. Among the thousand or so protesters, there were about a dozen full-sized American flags and just as many flag-colored shirts. Hundreds of the assembled waved smaller flags, ranging from 12 inches in length to 3 inches.
Two men in their 20s carried signs saying “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” and a third carried a Virginia flag, which bears the same motto.
More than one sign declared that “we fought a war” to get rid of kings, and plenty cited 1776 or the Declaration of Independence. If you had fallen asleep in 2010 and woken up on Broad Street in 2025, your first impression would have been that you were at another anti-Obamacare rally.
“We’re all patriots,” said Julie Crain, a middle-aged mother at the rally with her college-aged daughter. Crain noted that the American flags at the Falls Church rally weren’t the altered ones popular at MAGA rallies but “the regular, plain-old, traditional U.S. flag.”
Margaret, a middle-aged local woman, invoked the Constitution and lamented the lack of congressional checks on the executive branch.
Two veterans standing on Broad Street, Doyle and Tom, also seemed like characters from a 2010 tea party rally. The retired, Vietnam-vet, buddy vibe was unmistakable with these two. Doyle had a long, gray beard, and Tom’s Hawaiian shirt was not fully buttoned on this sweltering June day. The two have spent the last few months traveling to protests together.
“We don’t believe that we should have kings in this country,” Doyle said. “We believe this. We believe our voices are being stifled. We want to speak up. And I’m a vet, so it’s especially important for me.”
This same criticism was leveled against then-President Barack Obama 15 years ago. Obama was worshipped in the news media, and his supporters lionized him in a way unlike any president of our lifetime. This was part of what worried and upset the tea party protesters.
Beyond the patriotic and constitutional talk were the rhetorical nods to fiscal conservatism. “I thought we were supposed to be saving money,” one baby boom-aged protester said.
The similarities to the tea party aren’t accidental. The group behind these “No Kings” protests explicitly modeled itself after the tea party. Its founding documents said as much:
“The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party,” the Democratic activists behind the group Indivisible wrote. “We saw these activists take on a popular president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress. We saw them organize locally and convince their own members of Congress to reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with racism – and they won. We believe that protecting our values and neighbors will require mounting a similar resistance to the Trump agenda.”
Those tactics include waving the U.S. flag rather than burning it.
That said, some of the crowd didn’t buy into the patriotic branding. “This is less about celebrating America than trying to save it,” said Allie Crain, Julie’s daughter.
MIKE LEE CONDEMNS NC LAWMAKER’S ‘NO KINGS’ VIDEO
A handful of protesters carried the American flag upside-down, a traditional sign of distress that was attacked as insurrection.
And one middle-aged, long-haired, balding protester, while wearing a tacky patriotic American flag shirt, simultaneously adopted the odd messaging of the violent anti-deportation rallies in Los Angeles, and waved a large Mexican flag, as he stood before the brand-new Whole Foods.