Demonstrators across the US took to the streets over the weekend for a fourth round of No Kings demonstrations to urge Americans to cast their ballots early for the 2026 midterm elections.
The aim was to increase early voter turnout to ensure that every ballot is counted in what many consider to be one of the most important midterms in US history—and possibly the last chance to save the country's democracy.
"Our democracy is really at stake right now. It should be 'We the People' controlling the country," Connie Jeung Mills, an organiser with the anti-Trump protest group Indivisible, told The New Arab.
"Voting early will help if there’s any sort of sabotage, and to instill the idea that you don’t have to wait until election day to vote," she said.
In around 3,000 locations in towns and cities across the country (with some cities hosting multiple events), demonstrators gathered for get-out-the-vote drives. The events began in the morning and continued late into the day with block parties and performances by local musicians.
In a public display of voter participation, some smaller groups splintered off from the mass gatherings to march together to the ballot drop boxes.
Two days earlier, on Thursday, more than a hundred students from two universities in in North Carolina marched from their campus, where their voting site had been closed, to their next closest voting station 45 minutes away.
Since Trump took office for a second term nearly two years ago, at least 29 states have passed restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Centre for Justice.
Many demonstrators on Saturday experienced their own hindrance when the No Kings Instagram account was suspended for several hours during the protests, preventing people from using the app to share protest route maps and live locations. The app’s parent company Meta said suspension protest account was an error.
On Sunda, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone further elaborated with a post on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account’s ‘reading’ behaviour.”
He suggested the high volume of engagement appeared similar to bots. "These abrupt, high-volume, sequential requests in a short period resembled automated bot traffic rather than ordinary human browsing in our systems," Stone wrote.
Jay Lyon, a retiree who was trying to find the the main march in San Francisco (while the livestream of the event was suspended by Meta), told TNA, "I don’t like the Trump administration, and I'm also concerned about the upcoming race for Congress."
The latest gatherings come after a months-long lull in pro-democracy mass demonstrations, in part due to internal debates among organisers over whether or not to focus on demonstrations or voter drives. On Saturday, they did both.
Mirvette Judeh, president of the Arab American Caucus of California, says her hopes are high for the midterms, including for the voter turnout of Arabs and young people, who historically do not have high turnouts.
"My hopes are high," Judeh told TNA. "I see a lot of voter engagement and creative ways of getting people to vote. The youth are making sure their vote counts, and I know Arab Americans are coming out to vote. These groups are invested in making sure their voices are heard."
"People are angry. People are over it. People want change. They want it badly. And it looks like they’re willing to fight for it," she added.