On Saturday, June 14, millions of people across the country took part in the “No Kings” protests against Donald Trump’s regime and the onslaught of authoritarian policies he’s enacted since his inauguration. Organizers estimated the rallies drew around five million people, including “tens of thousands” in Los Angeles, and 50,000 in New York City.
Consistent with Trump’s anti-protester messaging, police in Los Angeles issued a dispersal order against No Kings protesters, deploying smoke and flash-bang grenades to dissolve the crowd. Protesters faced more than dispersal actions by law enforcement, as several cities saw anti-protester violence involving shootings, vehicular assaults, and threats. The violence directed at No Kings protesters serves as a dangerous escalation of political violence against Americans and the normalization of violent actions against those who don’t support Trump, the result of violent rhetoric employed by Trump and his acolytes towards his political opponents, which include journalists, the judiciary, and the citizens protesting him.
The protests coincided with Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Army and, perhaps more importantly, Trump’s 79th birthday. On June 10, Trump stated that any protests against the parade would be “met with very big force.” Meanwhile, white supremacists and other far-right groups, such as the Proud Boys, who saw many of their members pardoned by Trump for their roles in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, disseminated information about the No Kings protests on their Telegram channels, calling for their members to disrupt or violently attack protesters, including suggestions they run them over.
Leading up to the No Kings protests, white supremacists, such as the Proud Boys, explicitly called for violence against protesters (Source: Telegram).
Political Assassinations
This past Saturday began with a stunning act of political violence that further escalated tensions in a brutally divided United States. Vance Luther Boelter’s assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband reveals disturbing ties between radical Christian nationalism and America’s surge in political bloodshed. At 57, Vance Boelter allegedly masqueraded as law enforcement before executing Hortman and her husband in their home. His spiritual education reportedly deepened at Christ for the Nations Institute — a nondenominational, charismatic Bible college in Dallas. Many of the Institute’s prominent alumni were steeped in Christian nationalism and its related strain, the New Apostolic Reformation, which has been linked to the theological foundations of the January 6th insurrection.
In Boetler’s car, investigators found a notebook listing additional lawmakers, abortion advocates, and medical professionals — essentially a hit list of those whose politics went against his faith. Anti-Trump No Kings rally flyers in his vehicle suggest he interpreted democratic opposition as spiritual warfare, demanding lethal force. (For more information on Baulter’s radicalization, read GPAHE’s reporting).
Anti-Protester Violence
After several far-right groups and individuals, many of whom support Trump, advocated for violence at Saturday’s No Kings protests, there were several threats, shootings, and hit-and-runs perpetrated by agitators, counter-protesters, and others during the protests.
Most notably, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, an innocent bystander, was shot and killed by civilian “peacekeepers” in Salt Lake City, Utah, after they spotted 24-year-old Arturo Gamboa moving away from the crowd and holding an AR-15 rifle in “a firing position.” A peacekeeper fired three rounds at Gamboa, hitting him once and fatally wounding Ah Loo. Gamboa faces a murder charge for Ah Loo’s murder, since, according to police, he “developed probable cause that Gamboa acted under circumstances that showed a depraved indifference to human life, knowingly engaged in conduct that created a grave risk of death and ultimately caused the death of an innocent community member.”
At the No Kings protest in Phoenix, Arizona, a masked man pulled a gun in a crowd of protesters, prompting calls for help. The man wielding the gun was promptly arrested. In Nashville, Tennessee, 19-year-old Elijah Miller was arrested after “brandishing” a handgun during a confrontation with a few protesters. Miller was wearing a hat with the symbol of the “Dark Enlightenment,” an authoritarian movement with ties to far-right tech influencers Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, and was documented saying “Seig fucking heil” while performing the Roman Salute, which was used by Nazis to declare allegiance to Hitler.
Authorities found he had a “long history of fascination with Nazis and mass murderers,” including those whose murder sprees were inspired by beliefs in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. In Burnsville, North Carolina, eyewitnesses reported a man driving a red pickup trick featuring a fake mounted gun pointed at the crowd along with several pro-Trump flags. The driver reportedly got into an altercation with a 73-year-old man, knocking him to the ground, rendering him unconscious, and drawing blood. The Burnsville Police Department is currently investigating the incident.
There were several documented hit-and-runs targeting No Kings protesters throughout the weekend. In Culpeper, Virginia, 21-year-old Joseph Checklick, Jr., intentionally drove an SUV into a crowd of protesters, hitting at least one person. Checklick, Jr., was arrested and charged with reckless driving, and as of June 16 is being held without bond at the Culpeper County Jail. In San Francisco, California, a motorist, now detained, hit at least four protesters before fleeing the scene. Officials are considering the crash “a possible intentional act.” In Riverside, California, a driver was documented running into several protesters, with one hospitalized with “significant injuries,” according to police. As some protests continued into Sunday, a hit-and-run driver struck and injured a woman in downtown Los Angeles, who was subsequently rushed to the hospital with a leg injury.
There were also violent threats made against lawmakers and protesters, some of which led to arrests. On June 14, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) identified a “credible threat toward state lawmakers planning to attend a protest” at the Texas State Capitol. The Capitol and its grounds were subsequently evacuated. Texas DPS arrested one person “in connection with threats against state lawmakers” during a traffic stop in La Grange, Texas.
In Palm Springs, California, 28-year-old Edward Miranda threatened to commit a shooting at a No Kings rally planned for Saturday night. Police identified and detained Miranda on Friday, June 13, finding a pistol in one of his residences after executing a search warrant. Miranda is expected to be charged with one felony count of criminal threats, and one misdemeanor count of threatening to interfere with civil rights. Similarly, Richard Charles Bertram, based in Golden Valley, Arizona, was taken into custody on June 13 after allegedly threatening to shoot protesters in a social media post. Bertram will likely be charged with making a terroristic threat and a misdemeanor charge for threatening.
Far-right counter-protesters
Incidents involving organized far-right groups also occurred over the weekend. Prior to the nationwide demonstrations, groups such as the “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys and the white nationalist White Lives Matter (WLM) movement posted in their online channels about the possibility of attending events with the intention of disrupting them (see Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s (GPAHE) previous reporting here). In several Proud Boy channels on Telegram, for example, posts could be found of members referring to the protests as “planned riots” and advocating for participants to be run over by cars.
In Georgia, about a dozen Proud Boys attended a No Kings event in Atlanta in full yellow-and-black attire and carrying flags in an effort to intimidate protest attendees. In Kingwood, Texas, members of the local white nationalist group Patriot Front gathered to protest the “counter-national” No Kings rally taking place there. At one point, the Patriot Front gathered with a banner reading “deport invaders,” a reference to immigrants perceived to be fulfilling the absurd conspiratorial belief in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, in which political elites are claimed to be responsible for “replacing” white Americans with non-white immigrants. In Louisiana, members of the neo–Nazi Blood Tribe appeared at an event to provoke protest attendees with obscenities, hate speech, and Nazi salutes.
Jake Lang, a participant in the January 6 insurrection who received a pardon from Trump, was present at the Washington, D.C., anti-Trump protest. After protesters heckled him and a fellow MAGA sympathizer, the two left the event while directing Nazi salutes to the crowd. Lang was originally prosecuted for fighting police with a baseball bat and shield on January 6, 2021, and since being pardoned, posted online that “we are taking over the capitol again” in his announcement to run for now Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s former Florida Senate seat.
As the Trump administration continues its assault on democracy, GPAHE has been warning of the far-right’s propensity for violence, especially when targeting political opponents. Inflammatory rhetoric coming from the Trump administration is already connected to an increase in violent rhetoric against the judiciary, which has manifested in real-world threats against judges. Continued vitriolic rhetoric against the so-called “enemies” of our political leaders will likely only encourage more to take a page out of the far-right playbook, attacking peaceful protesters as they exercise their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.
