Americans were not in the streets last Saturday because they are angry. They were there because, beneath the noise of politics and the numbness of repetition, they remembered something older than the Constitution: the people are the source of authority, not its audience. The “No Kings” marches were not protests in the familiar modern sense; they are the reappearance of a constitutional instinct — sovereignty resurfacing after a long sleep.

Most commentary treated last Saturday’s crowds as a civic reflex: another round in the endless choreography of grievance and counter-grievance. But watching them closely revealed that the nation’s citizenry was not petitioning power. They are refusing subordination. These were not people trying to extract favors from a ruler. They were reminding a wannabe ruler that the throne is already occupied.

The brilliance of America’s founding wasn’t the architecture of government — separation of powers existed in embryo long before 1787. The breakthrough was jurisdictional: the state’s power does not descend to the people; it originates from them. The “No Kings” movement has rediscovered — almost by instinct — that sovereignty is not a branch of government. It is the ground on which the branches of the American government stand.

For years, Americans have been conditioned to experience politics as spectators: voters, commenters, sufferers, observers. The people became the audience to their own democracy — a public waiting to be governed rather than a public governing itself. Whether one speaks of the Supreme Court’s creeping capture, the Senate’s minoritarian grip, the presidency’s slide toward personal fiefdom — all have been made possible by one quiet civic displacement: the people were pushed off the field and into the gallery.

Now they are stepping back onto the floor. 

It is not rage that animates these marches — it is belonging. These crowds were not acting against something; they were acting from something: a jurisdiction older than party loyalty, political branding, and even the union itself — the self-governing claim of the governed. They were not — are not — auditioning for power. They are remembering that they are the landlord.

Once people remember they are the landlords, kings become squatters.

This agency is why the No Kings movement feels different. It is not tied to a candidate, faction, or news cycle. It is anchored in a pre-political truth: Government is legitimate only as long as the governed continue to consent. Consent is not a mood. It is not sentiment. It is not approval or enthusiasm. Consent is authority. The moment the governed withdraw it, sovereignty shifts — instantly, and without asking permission.

That is what is beginning to trickle back into public consciousness. The crowds were not testing the government. They are testing themselves. They are rediscovering whether they still mean what the founding generation swore: that no man, no faction, no robe, and no throne stands above the people whose liberty justifies the state.

There is nothing the Supreme Court’s current conservative supermajority or the wannabe monarch fears more than a citizenry reacquainted with its original jurisdiction.

Because once the public recalls that sovereignty is not a gift but a possession, the spell of power collapses. The robes shrink. The bully pulpit turns into a lectern without a crowd. The illusion of inevitability dissolves because it depends on passivity, and passivity is the first thing that dies when people remember they are not subjects.

The marches are signaling — without yet naming — the threshold moment: the recognition that the fight for democracy is not about preserving old norms. It is about re-entering ownership. A public that understands itself as the owner does not plead for rescue. It does not wait for institutions to save it. It reminds institutions who they serve, and under what terms.

This is why the 2026 electoral cycle is already beginning — not on cable news, not in campaign rollouts, but in the streets. The ballot box is not where sovereignty begins. It is where sovereignty reports back on the will that preceded it. The election will not create the people’s authority — it will merely register whether they still claim it.

Many observers still misread the moment. They think Americans are fighting against Trump. They are wrong. Americans are fighting for the title of their own country. If Trump is dethroned, it will not be because the public rejected a man. It will be because the public rejected the coronation of a man who mistook office for entitlement.

The hinge of history is not whether Trump wishes to rule like a king. The hinge is whether the people still remember they do not have one — or want one.

The question now is not whether Americans will protest again. They already have. The real question — unspoken but gathering force — is whether they have begun to withdraw consent from the idea that any single man or captured institution may substitute itself for the sovereign public.

If that continues — if that recognition deepens — then 2026 will not merely be an election. It will be a jurisdictional ruling delivered by the only branch of government that cannot be overruled: the people themselves.

The marches were not a warning.

They are a rehearsal.

The people have stepped back onto the field.

The only question now is whether they intend to stay there.

~Dunneagin