No Kings: America’s 3.5% Moment
Episode 34 • 18th October 2025 • Beneath the Cypress and Star • BlueRidge Pundit
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Summary

The 3.5 percent rule offers a way to examine mass participation, but it is not a promise of political victory. This October 18, 2025 episode considers the No Kings movement through research on civil resistance and nonviolent protest. These updated notes separate the research finding from turnout claims and ask how a large demonstration can develop into sustained civic influence.

Key Takeaway

  • The 3.5% rule describes a historical pattern, with limitations and exceptions.
  • A large turnout does not by itself establish that a movement reached 3.5% of the population.
  • Participation, organization, strategic choices, and staying power belong in the same analysis.
  • Protest slogans, movement organizations, and bills sharing a name are different things.

What Is the 3.5 Percent Rule?

So, what is the 3.5 percent rule? Erica Chenoweth’s Harvard Kennedy School discussion of the research and its cautions explains that the figure came from historical campaigns with substantial peak participation. The 3.5 rule is descriptive, rather than a universal threshold that guarantees success. Chenoweth identifies an exception and notes that many successful campaigns mobilized less than 3.5%.

The research also emphasizes organization, momentum, leadership, and sustainability. Applying the finding to a contemporary campaign requires care about what counts as participation and what counts as success. A one-day crowd estimate and a campaign’s ability to sustain pressure are related questions, not interchangeable measures.

No Kings Turnout: What the Evidence Supports

In an October 22 follow-up, the American Civil Liberties Union reported more than seven million participants at the October 18 demonstrations across all fifty states. The ACLU participated in the coalition, so that number should be attributed to the organization rather than treated as an independently verified census.

The earlier version of these notes asserted that roughly 3.5% of the country had already participated. The cited material does not establish that conclusion. The more useful question is how the reported turnout was estimated, whether people were counted once, and which population provides the denominator. A striking headline cannot substitute for those details.

The No Kings organizers’ website provides the coalition’s own account of its aims and activities. Read it as a participant’s source alongside independent reporting and the historical research. The episode explores the movement’s claim that presidential power should remain subject to democratic accountability.

From a Demonstration to Lasting Civic Influence

As this series’ pillar on grassroots resistance, the episode connects protest scale with the institutions people seek to influence. Its analytical question is what happens after the signs come down: whether participants keep working together, how demands become specific, and how claims of progress can be evaluated.

Explore activism and the middle path to change and the history of the progressive movement for companion discussions. In a later chapter of the series, No Kings protests after the strike call extend the organizing debate beyond this October 2025 episode.

Two additional case studies connect this pillar to individual rights: free speech consequences after Charlie Kirk’s death and the Portland ICE protest timeline and court rulings. The discussion of Russell Vought’s Project 2025 shutdown strategy offers related context on executive authority.

For the institutional side of this debate, explore elite theory and the drift of democracy, which asks how organized leadership and unequal resources can shape public influence.

Participation also matters between elections. Explore participatory budgeting and fair governance for a practical look at how residents can help decide public spending and track the results.

Informed participation also depends on access to trustworthy information. Explore AI-assisted tax-law research and public understanding and astroturf politics and the authenticity of public support for two further perspectives on how people understand and influence institutions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: Does the 3.5 percent rule guarantee success?

No. It is a historical pattern with exceptions, not a prediction that any particular campaign will win.

Q2: Did October 18 establish participation by 3.5% of Americans?

No such conclusion is established here. The ACLU’s reported turnout and a verified national participation percentage are different measures.

Q3: Are “no kings no masters” and “no masters no kings” the movement’s formal name?

Those phrases should not be used interchangeably with the name of a named organization. Check the specific speaker, group, and context; the coalition source linked here uses No Kings.

Q4: Is “No Kings Act 2025” the same as the protests?

No. Legislation and demonstrations are distinct. For readers checking No Kings Act status 2025, Congress.gov’s record of S.4973 identifies a proposal introduced in 2024 in the 118th Congress. Check the bill number and congressional session before interpreting any status claim.

Q5: What does this episode mean by nonviolent protest?

It examines public collective action pursued without violence, alongside the broader questions of participation and accountability central to civil resistance.

Related Episodes

Sources & Further Reading

Transcripts

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No thrones, no crowns, no kings. That was the slogan, and it was quite a stark one, a revolutionary challenge, really. Absolutely. And for the organizers behind the No Kings movement, that day was intended to be, well, potentially the largest single-day peaceful protest in modern American history. We're talking millions expected across the country. The sheer scale was something else. Yeah, that kind of mobilization, especially now, you know, in this political climate,

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It absolutely demands a closer look, a deep dive. So our mission today is really to get past the headlines, right, to analyze what seems to be the core conflict here. This massive popular protest movement responding to what critics are calling a, well, a radical concentration of presidential power.

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And it's a very direct confrontation. You've got the public pushing back against a specific, quite complex constitutional philosophy, the Unitary Executives Theory, or UAT. This is an ideological project. It's about concentrating executive power, arguably absolute power. And it's been pushed hard by key figures in the administration, Russell Vought especially.

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Danielle Pletka, Russell Vought. We'll definitely need to unpack his role. Now, what takes this, I think, beyond just political commentary is this idea of the 3.5 percent rule. Ah, yes. The political science angle. Exactly. It's this theory suggesting that if, you know, even a relatively small minority of the population, 3.5 percent, actively protests and does it nonviolently, political change isn't just possible. It's historically been inevitable. That's the finding. Yeah. It's a powerful metric.

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So we really have to measure the No Kings movement, its scale against that 3.5 percent number, because if they got anywhere near that kind of critical mass. Then we could be looking at a fundamental shift, a structural shift in the country's power dynamic, really, regardless of what happens immediately in Congress or the courts. So understanding the theory being protested, the UET and the theory driving the protest strategy, that 3.5 percent rule, that seems essential to really grasp what's happening right now in America. Agreed. That's the core tension.

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OK, so let's shift gears a bit. Let's move from the huge public reaction back to the spark. What exactly is the deep constitutional idea, the philosophy that's driving the actions that pushed millions of people onto the streets? Right. So we need to talk about the unitary executive theory.

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UET. Now, it's not brand new, but the way it's being interpreted and applied now, that's what has a lot of legal scholars concerned. OK. At his heart, UET is the belief that the president holds essentially absolute and unchecked authority over the entire executive branch. Total control.

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Absolutely. And unchecked where where in the Constitution do they find that seems counterintuitive to the whole checks and balances idea? Well, the main justification comes from Article two, specifically the vesting clause. It says the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America. Proponents of you focus heavily on that word vested.

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They argue it means all executive power is given solely to the president. So all the agencies, departments, everyone working in them. They're just extensions of the president's will. So it sounds like an interpretation designed to kind of sideline Congress and the courts, especially when it comes to overseeing all those federal agencies. That's exactly the implication. UET supporters argue this presidential authority exists outside of any real constraints from Congress, even though Congress creates and funds these agencies or the courts.

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So the goal is? The goal is a system where the president is the only one who really gets to interpret the Constitution within the executive branch, the only one enforcing it, the only protector. It effectively allows the president to, well, steamroll the other branches if they try to put limits on executive action. He can pass precedents, historical checks.

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In this view, many of those are seen as basically legal mistakes, errors that improperly limited presidential power over the last couple of centuries and, you know, need to be corrected. OK, so UET is the framework, maybe a fringe one historically, but gaining traction. Who's the person really turning this academic theory into like a practical plan, an administrative blueprint? For that, you really have to look at Russell Vaught. He was the director of the Office of Management and Budget, OMB. OMB. Sounds technical.

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It is. And Vaught himself is often described as, you know, physically unremarkable, quiet, glasses. But don't let that fool you.

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He's widely seen as the key operational mind behind these big structural changes that people were protesting. So not just giving advice, but actually building the engine for this, this overhaul critics fear. That's a good way to put it. Vaught is a major architect of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Ah, Project 2025. We've heard a lot about that. Right. It's this huge, like 900 page blueprint.

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It details exactly how to implement this UET vision across the entire government, starting on day one of a potential second term. Steve Bannon even called him a true believer. Not an anarchist, Bannon said, but someone methodically aiming for total overhaul. And Vought's own justification. What's his stated reason for wanting this massive change?

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He talks about two things mainly, taming the bureaucracy and crushing the deep state. The deep state? Yeah. From the UNT perspective, career civil servants, the nonpolitical staff who work across different administrations, are seen as unaccountable, as ideological actors who actively block the president's agenda, the mandate from the election.

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So getting rid of them or controlling them is seen as restoring proper constitutional authority? Exactly. That's the argument. Eliminating this perceived deep state is necessary, in their view, to let the elected president actually govern as Article 2 supposedly intends.

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OK, so this philosophy, it's not just abstract. It translates directly into concrete actions, actions that really fueled the No Kings protests. Let's start with the personnel changes that seems to hit right at the core of how government works. It's probably the most fundamental change, potentially the most lasting. We're talking about bringing back the power under an old executive order 14171. It creates something called Schedule F. Schedule F. OK, tell us about that. It sounds bureaucratic, but it seems like it's much more than just changing job titles.

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Oh, absolutely. Schedule F is basically an attempt to roll back about 140 years of civil service reform. It's designed to reclassify potentially tens of thousands of federal jobs. Tens of thousands? Yeah, the estimate is up to 50,000 roles. Think about policy advisors, budget analysts, regulatory experts, people who shape and implement policy. Schedule F would take their jobs out of the standard competitive civil service system.

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And the effect of taking them out of that system, what does that mean practically? It means stripping away their job protections, protections that have been in place since the Pendleton Act back in 1883. That act was designed to ensure federal hiring and firing was based on merit, on qualifications and performance, not political loyalty.

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Right. To prevent the old spoils system. Exactly. Schedule F basically dismantles that for a huge chunk of the government workforce. It gives the White House the power to hire and fire these people quickly, perhaps arbitrarily. The main qualification becomes loyalty to the president's agenda, not expertise or experience.

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So that's UET in action, making sure the entire government machine answers only to the president. It's a very practical application, yes. Ensuring total responsiveness to the president's will. And beyond the personnel, we also saw moves against independent agencies, right? Directly challenging Congress's power to structure the government how it sees fit.

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That's another key area where UET manifests. For instance, the administration moved to effectively shut down USA, the agency for international development, place workers on paid leave, put the whole thing under the State Department. Even though USA was set up by Congress as an independent agency.

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Precisely. Congress established it that way, and Congress never gave the president the authority to just abolish it or fold it into another department unilaterally. But the action asserts that the president's Article 2 foreign policy power overrides Congress's structural decisions. It's a direct power struggle. It is. And we saw similar things with inspectors general. Over a dozen were fired, often without the legally required notification to Congress. The internal watchdogs. Exactly.

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Watchdogs that Congress created specifically to monitor the executive branch independently. Firing them like that is another assertion of absolute presidential control over all executive functions, ignoring the statutory independence Congress intended. And maybe the most explosive claim, constitutionally speaking, involved government spending itself, the power of the purse.

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This one is huge because it goes right to the heart of congressional power. Russell Vaught stated publicly his belief that the White House, the executive branch, has the ultimate say over how federal money is spent. Regardless of what Congress appropriates. Regardless of the laws Congress passes saying where the money should go. This flatly contradicts Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which explicitly gives Congress the power to tax and spend. The power of the purse.

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So if the executive can just ignore appropriations, that basically neuters one of Congress's biggest checks on the president. It effectively makes Congress just an advisory body on spending. They can suggest, but the president decides. Vaught even complained publicly about lawyers in the source term who kept saying certain actions weren't legal. Implying the plan now is to just ignore those legal constraints.

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The implication seems to be ignore precedent, ignore those legal interpretations, argue that the president's actions are unchallengeable because they flow directly from Article two, placing them beyond traditional legal and congressional oversight. This whole package, the personnel changes, the agency dismantling the spending,

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It claims it's a systematic philosophical assault on the existing structure of government. That's the threat the No Kings protests were responding to. So you have this really quite technical constitutional threat brewing, this calculated effort to build an unchecked presidency. Which brings us to the big question. How did the American public, most people aren't constitutional lawyers, right? How did they react to these complex moves?

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Well, they reacted with a clarity and, frankly, a scale that seemed to catch a lot of political watchers by surprise. And the name they chose, No Kings, was incredibly smart. Very effective branding. Yeah. It immediately takes that technical UET threat and translates it into something visceral, something historical that resonates deeply in the American psyche. It's a profoundly historical reference, isn't it? Yeah. A revolutionary challenge.

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The organizers explicitly said they chose the slogan, no thrones, no crowns, no kings, because they felt the administration's actions, the defiance of checks, maybe even the perceived vanity, it all signaled a president acting more like a monarch than a leader in a democracy.

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Right. It forces the argument back to 1776, back to the basic idea that America is supposed to be a government of laws, not rulers. Exactly. Laws, not men. And the scale they achieved was just massive. It showed this feeling wasn't just inside the Beltway or among academics.

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The organization behind it was immense. They planned somewhere between 2500 and 2700 rallies all across the country. 2700. Wow. Yeah. And their prediction, which turned out to be pretty accurate, was that it would be the largest single day peaceful protest in modern U.S. history. Millions participating. This wasn't just a spontaneous outburst. It was highly coordinated.

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And what's really interesting is the strategy behind that huge number of rallies. They specifically went for breadth, not depth, right? They didn't just aim for one giant rally in D.C. That's a critical point. And it speaks to the strategic thinking we'll get into later with the 3.5 percent rule. Ezra Levin, one of the co-founders of Indivisible, explained it. He said having one massive D.C. photo op was less important strategically than making sure almost everybody in America is no more than around an hour's drive to their local event.

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So the goal was visibility everywhere to show this wasn't just a coastal elite thing or big city anger. Precisely. Ubiquity. It did two things. First, it made it physically possible for more people to participate. People who couldn't afford a trip to D.C. or New York. That increases the demographic diversity. And second, it sends a powerful message to the public and the political system. This opposition to the UET agenda isn't just some niche phenomenon. It's widespread.

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And the locations really showed that rallies popped up all over the map. Oh, yeah. You had the huge crowds in the places you'd expect New York, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Boston. But the real strategic win was seeing significant turnouts in places like Mansfield, Ohio. Right.

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Vero Beach in Florida, Silver Spring, Maryland, Fort Collins, Colorado, small towns, suburbs, cities across the heartland. That geographical spread just hammered home the message. This is a national rejection of what people saw as authoritarian overreach. And pulling that off required a really diverse coalition, didn't it? Groups that don't always work together had to find common ground.

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The coalition was incredibly broad, which itself reflects how widely the impacts of these UMT-driven policies were felt. You had major players like the ACLU, the American Federation of Teachers, Indivisible Move On, Public Citizen, United We Dream. A real mix, labor, civil liberties, immigration, good government groups.

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Exactly. When you see groups covering that whole spectrum, uniting under a banner like No Kings, it tells you the perceived threat is fundamental. It's about the basic ability to operate within a constitutional system. And crucially, it was the local activists, often using the networks of these national groups, who actually organized and led those thousands of smaller local protests. They were asserting their right to assemble right in the face of what they saw as a government trying to undermine the whole system of checks and balances.

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OK, so you've got this broad coalition, massive attendance, but it probably took more than just the abstract threat of UAT to get millions out there. What were the specific tangible actions by the administration that really acted as the the final push, the catalyst?

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Looking at the reports, while those background structural changes were the foundation, the most immediate spark, the thing people saw and reacted to most strongly, seems to have been the president using executive power to deploy federal forces, specifically for things like heightened immigration enforcement and sending troops into cities.

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So a very visible use of that centralized power? Exactly. It's a direct demonstration of the UET idea that the president has sort of unlimited command over federal agents and even the military for internal security, potentially overriding local elected officials.

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And local officials were being overridden or at least attempts were made. Oh, definitely. Protesters were specifically calling out the deployment of National Guard units and other federal troops to cities run by Democrats. L.A., Chicago, Memphis, D.C., often explicitly against the wishes of the mayors or governors there.

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Right. I remember seeing reports about mayors pushing back hard. Very much so. Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson was really forceful. He said publicly, we will not bend. We will not bow. We will not cower. We will not submit. Strong words. Yeah.

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And in Chicago specifically, people were really angry about aggressive ICE raids, part of something called Operation Midway Blitz. There were reports of excessive force, agents kind of occupying public spaces. It made the executive power grab feel very real, very personal and immediate for people in those communities. Now, shifting from the why to the who, the sources highlight some incredibly moving stories from individual protesters, especially military veterans. Why was their participation so significant?

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Well, it powerfully reframes the whole protest, doesn't it? It frames it as patriotic, as defending the Constitution. When you have people who literally put their lives on the line, were wounded fighting for the American system, and they show up to protest, it really cuts against the narrative that these are somehow anti-American rallies. Yeah, that's a strong counterpoint. Were there specific testimonies that stood out?

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One that really sticks with me is Brian Wofford. He's an army veteran wounded in Iraq. He went to the rally in Oklahoma City wearing his service coat. And he said, there's no way I'm bending the only knee I have left for a king here in America. Wow. He continued, I can't sit idly by while rights are trampled on and ignored. I mean, the imagery there, the physical sacrifice tied directly to refusing to submit to what he sees as authoritarianism. It's incredibly powerful. And there were others, too. Marines.

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Yes, several Marine Corps veterans spoke out. Averis Guerrero emphasized his oath was to the Constitution and the people, not, as he put it, to a dictator or one political ideology. Another retired Marine, Sean Howard, marching in D.C., said he just felt democracy itself was under threat and he had to stand up.

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So the message from veterans was, protesting this is upholding the oath. That was clearly the sentiment. Resisting UET inaction was framed as defending the very principles they swore to protect. And some protest locations were chosen for their symbolism too, right? Tying current events directly back to the revolution.

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Absolutely. The rally in Lexington, Massachusetts, you know, where the first shots of the revolution were fired. That was no accident. Hundreds gathered there and speakers explicitly drew parallels between their concerns about executive overreach today and the colonists grievances against the British crown back then. You probably saw signs like no kings since 1776. Exactly. Those signs are everywhere. A very direct, very pointed history lesson.

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The sources also suggest this wasn't just the usual suspects protesting. The discontent seemed to cut across typical political divides. That's another crucial piece. It shows the breadth we talked about earlier. You had people like Kelly Christie in Mansfield, Ohio. She explicitly told reporters she'd always voted Republican. Always Republican. Why was she protesting? Her reason was simple and direct. What's going on is not Republican. What's going on is authoritarianism.

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She felt the actions violated principles she believed in, regardless of party. That shows the rejection of these UET-driven actions wasn't purely partisan. It tapped into a deeper concern about the nature of government.

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And finally, there was this other element, almost unexpected, the costumes, the inflatable dinosaurs, frogs, unicorns. What was that about? It seems kind of playful. It does seem playful, but it was actually quite strategic, a form of joyful defiance. Joyful defiance. I like that. Yeah, these inflatable costumes were everywhere. Fort Myers, Silver Spring, Rehoboth Beach. Apparently, the trend caught on after an incident in Portland where a federal agent sprayed chemical spray into the air vent of a protester's inflatable frog suit.

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Seriously. Wow. So the costumes became a symbol of what? Resilience? Absurdity? Both, I think. Organizers specifically said the costumes helped underline the absurdity of officials calling peaceful protesters terrorists or dangerous. It's hard to paint someone in an inflatable T-Rex costume as a menacing threat.

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Right. It visually undercut the fear mongering. Exactly. It was a tactic and it worked alongside the commitment to nonviolence. Despite the massive crowds, the NYPD, for example, reported zero protest related arrests in New York City. The costumes and the discipline together presented an image that was impossible to demonize effectively. It acted as a kind of shield, making any heavy handed crackdown look ridiculous.

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Okay, so you have this massive, largely peaceful, geographically diverse mobilization. If we connect that back to the political establishment, the reaction from the administration and its allies was pretty fierce, right? They didn't just ignore it. What was their counter-narrative?

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No, they definitely didn't ignore it. The main narrative pushed very quickly and consistently was to label them hate America rallies. Hate America. That's pretty blunt. Yeah. House Speaker Mike Johnson used that term repeatedly. He tried to paint the protesters as a sort of monolithic block of, let me see the quote, Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists and the pro Hamas wing of the far left Democrat Party.

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So basically trying to shrink the coalition in the public eye, slap the most extreme labels on everyone there, ignoring the veterans, the teachers, the Republicans like Kelly Christie we just talked about. Exactly. And they also immediately tried to link the protests to other political issues. Specifically, they blamed the demonstrations for making the 18 day government shutdown last longer. How did they connect those? The argument was that Democrats were too busy catering to these supposedly radical protesters

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to negotiate in good faith on the budget. Ah, okay. Guilt by association, essentially. Right. And then there was the trolling, the use of official government social media for what looked like pretty direct political mockery. That was notable. It really speaks to that concern about politicizing the executive branch, which is central to the critique of UAT. What specifically happened there?

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Well, the administration's official political account put out AI-generated pictures of the president wearing a crown, sort of leaning into the No Kings slogan to mock it. But maybe more striking, the official Department of Transportation's social media account, not a political account, shared an image targeting Democratic leaders. It depicted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dressed up as Disney princesses with the caption, No Kings.

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Wow. The Department of Transportation posting something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Using an official agency account for that kind of partisan attack on opposition leaders. It certainly raises questions about neutrality, doesn't it? It's almost a textbook example of what UET critics worry about government machinery being used for political fights. But the administration also tried a different angle, didn't they? Kind of arguing the protests actually proved their point.

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Yeah, that was an interesting bit of logic. Kevin Hassett, a White House economist, basically dismissed the whole thing. He said the protests made no sense because the very fact they were allowed to happen proved there isn't a king. Right. So the argument is because you still have free speech, you can't complain about potential authoritarianism. Pretty much. It equates allowing a basic constitutional right assembly and speech

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With proof that the executive isn't actually consolidating power through those administrative actions like Schedule F or defying Congress on spending, which were the actual things being protested. Right. It ignores the substance of the grievances.

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But despite that dismissal, the official security response from some state governments was anything but dismissive. It was pretty intense, actually, mobilizing forces before these peaceful protests even happened. Yeah, that was significant. We saw Republican governors in Virginia and Texas, Youngkin and Abbott, mobilize their national guards and state police before the events. And their justification. They cited the need to prevent potential violence and property damage.

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Governor Abbott specifically referred to planned demonstrations in Austin as Antifa-linked beforehand, sort of pre-labeling them as dangerous. What did that mobilization look like on the ground in Virginia, for instance? In Virginia, it was quite substantial. The National Guard activated a Quick Reaction Force, or QRF, and a Ready Reaction Force. These are units typically reserved for major emergencies or a serious civil unrest.

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a QRF for a planned peaceful protest. Yes. And critically, according to reports, that included a specialized non-lethal weapons platoon that was staged just outside Richmond. So bringing in troops trained in crowd control with non-lethal weapons, anticipating trouble from a protest movement that had explicitly trained its participants in de-escalation, that sends a message.

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It certainly does. It demonstrates a kind of preemptive escalation from the state executive. It creates this visual, this dynamic of state power being arrayed against citizens exercising their constitutional rights even before anything happens. It has a chilling effect regardless of the actual threat level. Which in the end turned out to be minimal. Exactly. That's the striking contrast. You had these official warnings, military mobilization, and then the events themselves are overwhelmingly peaceful.

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We mentioned the zero arrests in NYC. Right. The organizers had stressed nonviolence. They trained people and it paid off. That commitment to discipline proved crucial, not just morally, but strategically. It denied the administration and those governors any real justification for the crackdown they seem prepared for.

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Okay, so we've dug into the philosophy, the UET threat. We've seen the massive discipline response from the No Kings movement. But that leaves the biggest question, really. Does it actually work? Does this level of protest, even if huge and peaceful, lead to real political change? Or is it just, you know, letting off steam? Symbolic.

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And that's where we pivot from the philosophy to the political science, to the really groundbreaking research by Erica Chenoweth on civil resistance. Her work provides a solid data-driven basis for why the No Kings organizers might have pursued that massive decentralized strategy. It offers a theory of success. OK, Chenoweth's research. What did you find about nonviolent versus violent movements? Is one actually more effective?

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Grammatically so. Her analysis of hundreds of campaigns throughout history found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their stated goals as violent ones. Twice as likely. What are the numbers? The success rate was about 53 percent for nonviolent campaigns compared to only 26 percent for violent campaigns. And that's not about morality. It's purely about strategic effectiveness. Why? What makes nonviolence so much more successful in practice?

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It really boils down to participation. Nonviolent movements have a much greater potential to attract broad, diverse support from across society. Violence, by its nature, tends to exclude most people, the elderly, children, many women, people with disabilities, people unwilling to risk death or serious injury. Makes sense. It narrows the base. Exactly. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is accessible. It allows for participation from veterans, teachers, Republicans like Kelly Christie, students, families. The whole cross-section we saw in the No Kings movement

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And that broad participation does what? It creates several advantages. It makes the movement harder to discredit. It increases the pressure points on the regime. And crucially, it can start to erode the loyalty of the regime's pillars of support, including the security forces, business elites, state media. It makes the status quo just too costly politically and economically to maintain. OK, so broad participation is key, which brings us to the specific number, the 3.5 percent rule. What exactly is that?

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This is the most startling finding from Chenoweth's work. She analyzed campaigns going back over a century and found a clear threshold. Nonviolent campaigns that managed to achieve active participation from just 3.5% of the population.

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Only 3.5%. That seems small. It sounds small, but actively mobilizing 3.5% of an entire country is incredibly difficult. But here's the kicker. According to her data, no campaign that reached that 3.5% threshold of active participation has ever failed to bring about major political change. Regime change, significant policy shifts. Never failed. That's an astonishing claim. A historical guarantee, almost. Based on the historical data analyzed, yes. It seems to represent a critical mass.

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Enough people actively involved that the movement becomes too large, too widespread, too disruptive for the existing power structure to withstand without key elements like the army or police refusing orders or switching sides. OK, let's make that concrete. What does 3.5 percent mean in the U.S. today? How many people is that? Right. Based on current U.S. population, 3.5 percent is roughly 11 million people. 11 million.

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11 million. And it's crucial to stress that's active participants, not just sympathizers, not people clicking like online, people actually showing up, taking action, participating in rallies, strikes, boycotts, whatever the nonviolent tactics are. 11 million. Just for perspective, that's more people than live in New York City. Exactly. It's a massive number to mobilize actively.

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So the fact that the No Kings organizers were talking about millions and specifically chose that breadth, not depth strategy to maximize accessibility across the country, it sounds like they knew about this role, like they were deliberately aiming for that critical mass.

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It certainly looks that way. The strategy aligns perfectly with Tinneweth's findings. Hosting thousands of local events makes it easier for more people to participate actively. It's a direct attempt to build that broad coalition, to reach a cross divides geographic political demographic to get closer to that 3.5%, that 11 million figure. It suggests the movement wasn't just about expressing anger. It was strategically designed for maximum political leverage based on proven historical patterns.

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And there are historical examples where this worked, where hitting that number led to rapid change. Yes, absolutely. The People Power Revolution in the Philippines in 1986 is a classic example. They hit that critical mass, huge numbers of civilians, non-violently blocking tanks. And the Marcos regime basically collapsed in four days because the military wouldn't fire on the crowds. Oh. Yeah. And the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 is another example.

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Again, massive, disciplined, nonviolent protests reached a point where the security forces and other state actors essentially stood down or even joined the protesters. It's the power of making the country ungovernable through sheer, coordinated, nonviolent people power. That's the leverage point the 3.5% rule identifies and seemingly what the No Kinks movement was aiming for. Hashtag Tag2Gastro.

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So when you pull it all together, what we've really dissected today is this fundamental collision playing out in American politics right now. On one side, you have this push for radical consolidation of presidential power rooted in the unitary executive theory and meticulously planned by figures like Russell Vaught through things like Project 2025. A very top down, centralized vision of power.

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And on the other side, you have this massive bottom-up response. The largest decentralized nonviolent protest movement in modern U.S. history, the No Kings rallies, directly challenging that vision. And the specific grievances, the plan for Schedule F, trying to control spending against Congress's will, using federal forces in cities, those aren't random complaints. They're direct results of that UET philosophy being put into practice.

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Absolutely. And the response wasn't just anger. It was strategically smart. It was disciplined, overwhelmingly peaceful, framed in terms of constitutional principles and patriotism. And it used tactics straight out of the playbook of successful mass nonviolent resistance movements.

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With that potential endgame in mind, hitting the 3.5% threshold, the 11 million active participants that history suggests guarantees major change. Now, did the No Kings protests actually hit that 11 million number? That remains the big open question. It's hard to say definitively, but what's clear is they demonstrated the capability to mobilize millions across the entire country using a strategy explicitly aligned with that 3.5% model. They showed they have the organizational muscle and the strategic know-how.

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So maybe the final thought for you, our listeners, is this. You have the unitary executive theory, a project designed to concentrate power and arguably override traditional checks and balances. And you have the 3.5% rule, a political science finding that suggests a specific threshold of nonviolent active participation can effectively dismantle that kind of power.

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Right. The ultimate test might be whether that UET structure, however carefully planned, can actually withstand a movement that knows this rule, that has shown it can mobilize on an unprecedented scale and seems determined to reach that critical mass. Just the existence of a movement with that knowledge and that demonstrated capacity, it may have already shifted the power dynamic in ways we don't fully grasp yet. That's the tension to watch.

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