On March 28, 2026, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets under the “No Kings” banner in protest of the current Trump Administration. The crowds were incredibly peaceful, and the energy and passion brought from the protestors were incredibly inspiring and hopeful. The event was so successful that organizers had reported signs of protests in all 50 states.

It was inspiring. It was also ineffective.

Six months earlier, the “Hands Off” protest drew in 1.2 to 1.8 million people and changed nothing. The pattern at this point feels familiar. Americans march, the news (parts of it) covers it, and then nothing really happens. The same anti-democratic actors are still holding power, and the “king” that we have protested peacefully against for months has now started various violent global conflicts. The same institution that we have been fighting to protect remains broken.

So here’s the uncomfortable truth we need to accept: peaceful protests alone will not save the American democracy (or at least what’s left of it).

Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracy’s survival depends on two informal “guardrails”. The first is “mutual toleration,” or the act of accepting rivals as legitimate, and the other is “institutional forbearance,” or the act of refraining from overusing legal powers granted to them.

Once those norms collapse, as they have in the U.S., protesting becomes more like a band-aid. The constitution, both scientists warn, is “virtually silent on the president’s authority to act unilaterally” and contains few safeguards against authoritarian takeover.

Their proposed solutions for this? Abolishing the Electoral College, structural reforms to eliminate political tools like the filibuster, and imposing Supreme Court term limits. While these are extremely hard changes to make, none of these will be achieved by peacefully marching. They require institutional engagement and elected officials willing to fight.

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns reaching 3.5% of the population succeed 53% of the time. “There weren’t any campaigns that had failed after they had achieved 3.5% participation,” she once said.

For the US, 3.5% would be around 12 million people.

The largest “No Kings” protest drew around 4 to 6 million people, a little less than half of the percentage that was needed to achieve the “3.5% rule.” And in a country of more than 330 million people spread across 3.8 million square miles, the chances of this happening are slim.

So if anything, these protests might be keeping us on life support, but we’re not directly fighting the disease.

Political Scientist Jan-Werner Müller adds a darker and more blunt argument to this as well. Populists (in this case MAGA), he claims, believe that “they, and only they, represent the people.” What he’s saying is that when you protest, you do not just disagree, but instead you prove to the populist claim that you are not a part of the “real people.”

None of this means that protesting is useless. It builds community, solidarity, and signals mass discontent. The core problem is not us, or the more than sufficient amount of marching we have done.

It is that our senators and representatives, from both parties, have abandoned their main responsibilities.

During the March 2026 government shutdown, while DHS workers went unpaid, lawmakers were caught on vacation, Fox News and TMZ reported them “relaxing at resorts and casinos.” The New York Post added that during a “two-week vacation,” members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, “chilled in casinos and with celebs” as thousands of workers were left unpaid.

Müller states that when populists begin to “deny the legitimacy of their opponents” or “question the rules of the democratic game,” it is crucial that the opposing party politicians are the face of the group that draws the line.

This means aggressive action: censure, investigation, and then removal.

Levitsky and Ziblatt show this worked before. When Nixon abused power, “bipartisan cooperation” in Congress checked him and got him impeached and removed, effectively and efficiently. When McCarthy red-baited, the Senate censured him, and “the guardrails held.”

Today, those guardrails are gone, not because protestors failed, but because elected officials refuse continuously to do their jobs properly.

Keep protesting. It matters. It keeps the idea of democracy visible at the very least.

However, we must also demand that our elected officials stop traveling, stop fundraising, and start actually fighting this institution head-on. We need to start using harsher tactics, like removing officials who refuse to uphold or defend the basic principles of American democracy.

The “No Kings” protests were beautiful and hopeful. But beauty and hope do not save democracies. Hard, unglamorous, institutional work does. That work begins not in the streets but in the voting booth, the courtroom, and the congressional hearing rooms.