Scenes from the Opposition...

An up close and personal view of the sights and sounds of Santa Barbara's vibrant, robust and jumbo-sized "No Kings" anti-Trump rally on Saturday

More than 10,000 people turned out to protest the cruelty, corruption and incompetence of Donald Trump in Santa Barbara on Saturday, a kinetic expanse of diverse and mostly smiling humanity that alternately clustered, trekked and massed along a two-mile stretch of the city’s iconic shoreline.

Joining more than 2,000 other local communities across the nation that staged “No Kings” demonstrations, which drew millions to manifest opposition to Trump, Trumpism and right-wing MAGA extremism, Santa Barbara’s rally was a singular affair, a call-back to the be-ins of a half-century ago, as homemade signs, spontaneous singing and the grassroots moral clarity of opposing a mob boss president subsumed generic fist-shaking, orchestrated chanting and talking-point political speeches.

It looked like this along the sidewalk:

And this:

And this:

There were people (and, of course, small animals) in costume…

There were funny signs…

There were sad and mad signs…

And more funny signs…

There was a smattering of local media celebrities…

There were people drawing political connections between policy issues…

And so united was opposition to the game show president, that even the most bitter of rivals protested together (Go Giants!)…

Bottom line. As a political matter, Trump’s shock-and-awe campaign to dismantle the federal government, transform the military into his Praetorian guard and establish Ba’athist rule over American culture appallingly has led to the rapid capitulation of crucial institutions that might have stood up to him — big business, big law firms, big media and some big universities (fight fiercely, Harvard!) - while leaders and operatives of the Democratic Party have proven to date to be feckless, stupefied and spineless.

As a practical matter, this leaves two fundamental, potential sources of power — the courts of the judicial branch and widespread, mass, popular opposition - as the core of the opposition to Trump’s attempted authoritarian takeover of the U.S., at least during the 506 days between now and the Nov. 3, 2026 congressional mid-term elections.

That’s why Saturday’s protest matters.

¹ A note on methodology. Crowd size estimating is a tricky and uncertain endeavor, although one in which your Newsmakers Protest Correspondent gained some proficiency during decades of covering political rallies, marches, parades, conventions, caucuses, and hotel roast beef dinners. We base our estimate on having walked the two-mile long stretch of the protest along Cabrillo Blvd., where thin lines of sign-holders at Castillo and the rally’s end across from the Chromatic Gate bookended throngs between Chapala and Santa Barbara streets. Since the protest ended, we’ve seen published crowd estimates between 4,000 and 20,000. Coincidentally, ours squares with that devised by the Indy’s Jean Yamamura, who gauged the crowd at 12,000, using a more sophisticated calculus.

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