Â鶹ÒùÔº

At the end of a week when President Donald Trump to quell protests, Americans to protest Trump's attempts to expand his power. In rallies on June 14, 2025, organized under the banner "," decried Trump's immigration roundups, cuts to government programs and what many described as his growing authoritarianism.

The , with relatively few incidents of violence.

Protests and the interactions between protesters and government authorities have . From the to the , LGBTQ uprising, the and , public protest has been a crucial aspect of efforts to advance or protect the rights of citizens.

But protests can also have other effects.

In , large numbers of anti-Trump protesters have come out in the streets across the U.S., on occasions like the protests against safety net budget cuts and government downsizing. Many of those protesters assert they are protecting American democracy.

The Trump administration has decried these protesters and , with the president recently calling protesters "troublemakers, agitators, insurrectionists." A few days before the June 14 military parade in Washington, President Donald Trump : "this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force."

Trump's current reaction is reminiscent of his of the in the summer of 2020. In 2022, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that Trump had participating in demonstrations after the 2020 shooting of George Floyd.

As co-director of , which compiles information on each day's protests in the U.S., I understand that protests can sometimes advance the goals of the protest movement. They can also shape the goals and behavior of federal or state governments and their leaders.

Opportunity for expressing or suppressing democracy

Protests are an expression of democracy, bolstered by the right to free speech and "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" in the First Amendment of .

At the same time, clamping down on protests is one way to rebut challenges to government policies and power.

For a president intent on the further centralization of executive power, or even establishing a dictatorship, multiple .

Widespread, well-attended demonstrations can represent a mass movement in favor of democracy or other issues as well as serve as an opportunity to expand participation even further. Large events often lead to significant press coverage and plenty of social media postings. The protests may heighten protesters' emotional connection to the movement and increase fundraising and membership numbers of sponsoring organizations.

Though it is not an ironclad law, research shows that when is involved in a demonstration, protesters usually prevail over their governments. That included the that toppled longtime dictator Augusto Pinochet. Chileans used not only massive demonstrations but also like a coordinated slowdown of driving and walking, neighbors banging pots outside homes simultaneously, and singing together.

Protests are rarely only about protesting. Organizers usually seek to involve participants in many other activities, whether that is contacting their elected officials, writing letters to the editor, registering to vote or running a food drive to help vulnerable populations.

In this way of thinking, participation in a major street protest like is a gateway into deeper activism.

Risks and opportunities

Of course, protest leaders cannot control everyone in or adjacent to the movement.

Other protesters with a different agenda, or agitators of any sort, can insert themselves into a movement and use confrontational tactics like violence against property or law enforcement.

In one prominent example from Los Angeles, someone set several self-driving . Other Los Angeles examples included like water bottles at officers or engaging in vandalism. Police officers also use coercive measures, such as firing chemical irritants and pepper balls at protesters.

When leaders want to concentrate executive power and establish an , protests against those moves could lead to a mass rejection of the leader's plans. That is what national protest groups like and are hoping for and why they aimed to turn out millions of people at the No Kings protests on June 14.

But while the Trump administration faces risks from protests, it also may see opportunities.

Misrepresenting and quashing dissent

Protests can serve as a justification for a nascent autocrat to further undermine democratic practices and institutions.

Take the recent demonstrations in Los Angeles protesting the Trump administration's immigration raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

independent institutions like the armed forces. The Los Angeles protests offered the opportunity for that. Trump sent troops from the California National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to contain the protests. That domestic deployment of the military is rare but not unheard of .

And the deployment was ordered of the at a U.S. military base in North Carolina. The military personnel in attendance cheered and applauded many of Trump's political statements. Both the speech and audience reactions to it the U.S. military norm of nonpartisanship.

This deployment of military personnel in a U.S. city also dovetails with the expansion of executive power characteristic of autocratic leaders. It is rare that presidents call up the National Guard; the Guard is traditionally under the control of the state governor.

Yet the White House disregarded that Los Angeles' mayor and to the deployment.

The state sued the Trump administration over the deployment. The sided with California officials, declaring the federal government action "illegal." The .

Autocrats seek to spread disinformation. In the case of the Los Angeles protests, the depicted . Reports on those characterizations. The protests, mostly peaceful, were confined to a small part of the city, about .

More generally, a strong executive leader and their supporters often want to . In the Los Angeles example, doing that has ranged from the military deployment itself to to or , a California Democrat.

The contrast on June 14 was striking. In Washington, D.C., a parade of troops, tanks and planes, leaning into a display of American military power.

At the same time, from , to , millions of protesters embraced their First Amendment rights to oppose the president. It perfectly illustrated the dynamic driving deep political division today: the executive concentrating power while a sizable segment of the people resist.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .