On June 14, 2025, the “No Kings” protests erupted across all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories, and 20 foreign countries. Organized by roughly 200 pro-democracy groups, including Indivisible, the ACLU, and Public Citizen, the demonstrations were estimated to have drawn four to six million participants. The message: opposition to President Donald Trump’s second-term policies, particularly his immigration enforcement actions, which critics have branded as authoritarian.
Concurrently, a wave of TikTok influencers, including lifestyle creators who usually focus on trivial topics like unboxing lip gloss, echoed nearly identical messages condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids as cruel and accusing supporters of deportations of lacking empathy.
Both the protests and influencer campaigns appeared coordinated. Failed Democrat Governor Tim Walz joined the coordinated campaign by pushing the egregious, inflammatory narrative that Trump’s immigration policies mirror Nazi atrocities, that 20,000 federal employees are the Gestapo, and that anyone who is in line with their work are morally deficient.
Protesters chanted against the “Pretender King” (referring to President Trump), echoed slogans like “No Thrones, No Crowns, No Kings” and displayed signs proclaiming “The flag doesn’t belong to Trump.” Organizers framed the protests as a rejection of authoritarianism, yet their rhetoric, as usual, often escalated into hyperbolic comparisons of Trump to Adolf Hitler and ICE raids to the Holocaust. Joining in from the comfort of their homes, TikTok influencers amplified this narrative. Kylie Perkins, a content creator with 2.5 million followers, posted videos decrying deportations as callous, without citing specific policy grievances, while telling her viewers that they did not need to be educated to speak on these issues.
In another attempt at emotional manipulation on the issue of deportation, others used a sound clip — allegedly of a child crying as their mother was taken by ICE — to stoke outrage. However, it was later discovered that the clip came from a Spanish movie, which only highlights the Left’s reliance on fabricated evidence to support their claims.
Conservative commentators have critiqued this coordinated messaging and the baseless motivations for the recent protests that seem to rely on the same fault narratives.
Christopher Rufo argued that these protests weren’t about policy; they’re about performance. “The protests are not without utility for the Left,” he said. “They are not intended to grapple with the reality of the Trump presidency but to submerge reality in fantasy. The first step in entrenching the Left’s fictions in the public mind is to cultivate a sense of hysteria.”
In that vein, the Left has continued to equate enforcing immigration laws with tyranny, ignoring the fact that every nation has borders and laws to protect its citizens. This perspective underscores the protesters’ and influencers’ failure to recognize the importance of having borders, and the dangers to innocent citizens and immigrants from cartels and traffickers, when they know there will be no ramifications for their illegal activities and human rights violations.
The victims of unchecked illegal immigration are left to deal with the horrors, as they wonder where the empathy is for them.
Likening immigration laws to those of 1930s Germany, amplified by emotional manipulation, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Comparing ICE raids to Nazi roundups is not just historically illiterate; it’s a deliberate attempt to vilify law enforcement and sow division. Jewish people during the Holocaust were persecuted for their ethnicity and religion, facing systematic extermination, not deportation for legal violations. ICE raids, conversely, target individuals who have broken immigration laws, a process governed by legal frameworks that everyone in the country is subjected to equally, regardless of race.
The influencer and protest narratives conveniently overlook the fact that a weaponized morality fails to protect innocent people. Hitler justified illegal actions, like the genocide of the Jews, by framing them as moral imperatives for the state’s “greater good.” Furthermore, as protesters and influencers speak out about the “injustice” of enforcing laws, they ignore the fact that they can advocate for laws to bring about the change they want to see. Instead, they favor disruptive actions that, despite their scale, fail to articulate their policy goals — if there are any — or effect change for the people they claim to be fighting for. This reflex protesting, as social media influencer Jeffrey Meade remarked, has turned demonstrations into “performance art for virtue signaling.”
The irony is evident: Protesters claim to defend democracy while bypassing its mechanisms.
Furthermore, the accusation that Trump is a dictator ignores his free and fair election and the term limits ensuring his exit in 2029. Unlike a monarchy or dictatorship, the U.S. allows dissent without retribution — Jewish people under Hitler could not have protested without severe consequences. The freedom to protest on a national level against the leader of the country exists because a monarch does not rule the U.S.
Ultimately, genuine empathy involves balancing the hardships of deportees with the impact of illegal immigration on law-abiding citizens. Unenforced laws strain public services, undermine legal immigration, and enable exploitation, as seen in cases of trafficked children. Ignoring consequences directly hinders the goal of true empathy. Caring for others involves respecting the Rule of Law, as laws are in place to protect society. By relying on scripted, emotionally charged rhetoric and false correlations, the “No Kings” protests and their influencer allies stifle debate, which fuels further division and prevents productive dialogue that could achieve change.
