As No Kings Momentum Shifts to Midterm Elections, Beware of Expectation Traps
LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath is not taking reelection for granted
It’s a lot. And that’s what the diverse No Kings coalition promoted in organizing their historic March 28 non-violent protest. Regardless of political party or ideology, everyone was welcome to bring their issues and rally around the central constitutional concept that America has no kings, no one is above the law, and “We the People” hold the power, not some spray-painted, man-child wanna-be dictator.
More than 8 million people showed up for the nation’s third No Kings protests with 3,300 anti-authoritarian rallies in all 50 states and on every continent (except Antarctica), connecting with neighbors and strangers in venues large and small, demonstrating that resistance is not futile, as Donald Trump and his ruthless, Borg-like Christian National cult of storm troopers want the world and American voters to believe.
On Friday, April 3, No Kings will host a debriefing on “Where We’re Going.” The No Kings website also features suggestions for continued participation.
Motivating concerns abound as young people struggle with nihilism and Vietnam War-era Baby Boomers like former Vice President Al Gore still deliver dire warnings about climate change and the planet’s future.
But the immediate concern is real. “The President and his advisors are in the midst of what I believe is the greatest geopolitical disaster in the history of our country,” Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson (US Army, retired) told MS Now about the impact of Trump’s war with Iran.
The scandalous lack of promised transparency with the Epstein files and the costly, chaotic, unexplained war in Iran have awakened MAGA supporters. Giuseppe Palazzolo from Staten Island told MS Now he is pissed off because Trump promised no more wars. Now, “we’re knee deep in this illegal war and we’re closer to catastrophe than ever before. I feel so betrayed,” Palazzolo said. “It’s one lie after another. It’s like dominos falling on top of each other….This isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about truth versus deception.”
Wednesday, April 1, is a head-spinner. SCOTUS alarmingly considered the constitutionality of Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order ending birthright citizenship, followed by NASA’s Artemis 2 liftoff to the moon. Trump ends the day with a talk to the nation about Iran. April Fools.
Meanwhile, normality keeps unraveling – such as SCOTUS’ 8-1 decision to allow so-called “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids. The debunked religious-based “reparative” talk-therapy was outlawed in California Oct. 1, 2012. The bill’s sponsor, then-Calif. State Sen. Ted Lieu, called it psychological child abuse. Gov. Jerry Brown said the therapies “have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.” Now-Rep. Lieu and the Congressional Equality Caucus filed an amicus brief with SCOTUS opposing the challenge.
“This ruling is a profound failure of both logic and moral responsibility that confuses ‘free speech’ with ‘false speech’,” Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out, said in his strong condemnation of the decision.
As attention shifts to the midterm elections, the No King protests will be remembered for joy, humor, empathy, love and unity, following the neighbor-helping-neighbor example Minnesotans set protecting their undocumented neighbors and resisting the ICE madness that murdered two American citizens – lesbian poet and mother Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti – as they caused “good trouble.”
Actor/anti-Vietnam War activist Jane Fonda, 88, read a letter from Renee’s widow Becca at the St. Paul rally.
“I am so heartbroken. I miss my wife. The world now knows that my wife sparkled with sunshine and shone with kindness that was unmatched. We were robbed of an incredible human. It has made people pause, take a breath and choose sides. We choose the side of love,” Becca said in the letter. “I feel it’s my responsibility to send a message that hate has divided us and destroyed so many lives and families, but we can choose something else. We can choose radical kindness.”
California turned out – including in Orange County’s Anaheim and conservative districts like Huntington Beach where MAGA culture warriors wield electoral power, and islands of Democrats like Stockton where trans flags flew on the frontlines. Indeed, Stockton is a prime example of assumption-busting: though surrounded by ruby red Republicans, this blue gem elected out Susan Talamantes Eggman to serve on the Stockton City Council in 2005 and then in the State Legislature until her retirement in 2024.
Individuals like Ilka, 52, turned out, too, protesting in downtown LA dressed as the Statue of Liberty. “I’m German, and the similarities are really striking to what happened in Germany in the 1930s,” she told the LA Daily News. “Same rhetoric, same mental attitude, same idea, same way of thinking. And so it’s really scary and it’s really serious to me.”
Out attorney and former West Hollywood mayor/city councilmember John Duran, 66, connected historical dots at the No Kings rally in West Hollywood.
“I wear this [ACT UP] tee shirt proudly. It says ‘Silence = Death’ because we learned a very powerful lesson - that if we were silent in the face of oppression and fascism, it would surely mean our deaths. Instead, we showed up, we laid down in the streets, we protested, we ACTED UP and we changed the world,” Duran said. “And so now, here you are. And here we all are in the year 2026. You and I were meant to be here now, at this period in time, to decide whether the American Dream persists or whether it is eliminated by those same forces that raise their head every 10 or 20 years.”
Meanwhile, Trump is obsessed with voter suppression.
“Voter fraud conspiracies are like methamphetamine running through MAGA veins, stirring up equal parts passion and paranoia,” writes LA Times columnist Anita Chabria. “President Trump, of course, is the king pusher of this particular addiction, pathologically certain he won the 2020 presidential election (he did not). In his second term, and in advance of the November election, Trump has supercharged voter fraud lies; installed election deniers in key positions; and is attempting through the so-called SAVE America Act to disenfranchise poor and female voters.”
On Tuesday, March 31, Trump signed an executive order calling on Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to develop a nationwide list of verified eligible voters, bar the Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to people not on state-approved lists, and track envelops. Experts say this is wildly unconstitutional and plan democracy-saving lawsuits. A show down is ahead.
But visually, casual Californians may be intrigued by GOP Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s headline-grabbing stunts about voter fraud as he angles to become one of two Republicans in the June “jungle primaries” that decide the midterm runoff for Governor of California.
This may be a trap of voter expectation. Newsweek reported that since Trump returned to office, “Democrats have flipped over two dozen seats in special and state legislative elections nationwide” – including in Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago district – “a string of wins that has boosted the party’s outlook ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
No Kings also boosted a sense of Democratic inevitability. But great expectations are often undermined by unintended consequences.
Amy Walter, the respected out editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, delivered a warning, analyzing “How Predictive Are Special Elections?
“While Democrats are running strong in special elections, the generic ballot measure in national polls suggests a more modest advantage for Democrats — around six points,” Walters writes. “What’s more, media attention and campaign spending will be exponentially higher in November, which will generate a much different electorate than in low-turnout special elections that attract only the most highly activated voters.”
Then there’s this era’s version of the “Bradley effect” where voters tell pollsters what they think pollsters want to hear instead of how they really intend to vote, thus skewing data everyone relies on.
Social media and Trump’s constant blizzard of news often block information, even for pros. The New York Times LA-based political reporter Jennifer Medina wrote in: “Why There’s a Chance California Elects a Republican Governor:” “California — the state with the largest population, the biggest economy and some of the country’s most powerful politicians — is electing a new governor this year. If that’s news to you, you’re not alone; even some California voters seem a bit unaware,” apparently including Medina who writes that she called her Sacramento colleague to get filled in.
So who’s informing the electorate about state and local elections? Who’s fact-checking the distorted perceptions and propaganda?
Consider LA County Third District Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s reelection, for instance. Lindsey Horvath’s district stretches from the Ventura County line to Santa Monica and Hollywood to Sylmar and San Fernando with more than 2 million people, including me in West Hollywood.
Lindsey and Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger were on TV and other news outlets around the clock during the devastating wildfires last year and their websites have lots of resources.
Lindsey – who succeeded LGBTQ+ icon Sheila Kuehl as Supervisor - mixed empathy and compassion in reading the names of the dead before barely containing herself questioning contractors and County leadership after an LA Times investigation into an After Action Report.
Lindsey also went on CNN’s “The Story is with Elex Michaelson” to discuss the one year anniversary of the fires with the former FOX 11 LA anchor, telling him “answers shouldn’t be watered down.” On March 17, the Board approved Lindsey’s motion to coordinate wildlife prevention among the patchwork of federal, state, County, and local agencies plus private landowners across the Santa Monica Mountains, where 23,000 acres were burned during the 2025 fires.
But after an Aug. 2025 interview with LA Times Studio about the fires and what comes next, one commenter said: “Linsdsey is all talk no action.” After a story in CityWatchLA, a commenter wrote: “Lindsey is the Queen of Self-Promotion, campaigning 24/7 and often coming off as quite obnoxious in the process.” One small business owner on Instagram complained about Lindsey’s proposal for rent relief.
Snark aside, after deciding to run for reelection instead of running against LA Mayor Karen Bass, Lindsey drew three Republican opponents – one of whom is a Calabasas real estate agent Tonia Arey whose “Facts about Lindsey” cites “Lindsey Horvath’s Record of Extremism,” promising “receipts to show it.” Well, not really.
Arey says the “Pacific Palisades fire and its aftermath were a breaking point for me.” But “protesting from the outside wasn’t enough—we needed leadership from within the system…it’s time for a change.”
Here’s another expectation trap. Though Arey is an unknown with no record of governance – Third District voters cannot assume Lindsey’s reelection is a done deal. This year AHF’s Housing Is A Human Right division has no rent control measure on the ballot so the Big Real Estate corporations that killed two previous campaigns have money to spend. Additionally, former LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who is running for his old job, endorsed Arey and may emulate Riverside’s Bianco by pulling political stunts.
Most importantly, Democrats must stop thinking everyone agrees with them. No. This is a new era. There is no unscrambling the egg Trump broke. Politically tetherless 15 year olds watched Trump come down that escalator and give them permission to be racist. They found Charlie Kirk and White Supremacy/Christian Nationalism and sexism and transphobia. They don’t know George Orwell. They are more ideological-bent online than old school partisan and more likely to prank a pollster than tell their truth. And at 26 today, they do not trust Democrats who throw their best supporters under the bus.
Young people and deflated elders may believe evidence of positive change, however. And Lindsey Horvath has done that with Measure G – the governance reform that Supervisors and others have promised and studied for decades.
The respected political outlet Capitol Weekly wrote a 5,000+ word anatomy of how “change agent” Lindsey Horvath passed Measure G after so many other attempts failed.
“That was origin of Measure G, the revolutionary ballot measure approved by Angelenos in November 2024 that reshaped the nation’s most populated county by expanding the board of supervisors from five to nine members, made the county executive an elected official and created a county ethics commission,” Brian Joseph wrote for his Oct. 13, 2025 post.
“The measure represents not only one of the most significant governance reforms in California history, but also a breakthrough in Los Angeles County political gridlock, where changes of this nature had been discussed ad nauseum but always failed.
Reform of this gravity and consequence likely would rank as a crowning achievement for many lifelong, career politicians. Horvath pulled it off after just her first two years in big-time politics,” Joseph reported.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Lindsey talked extensively about Measure G, about what’s being done to prevents fires and help the victims and survivors of last year’s horrific catastrophe, as well as wanting to “earn that title of ally” to her West Hollywood-based LGBTQ+ community.
And, while she’s keenly aware that the Third District “has historically been very proudly blue, very proudly progressive and pragmatically progressive,” Lindsey says “I don’t take anything for granted.”
“I’m running for another term because we have begun very important transformational work in the county that I do not want to step away from,” Lindsey says. “We will not abandon anyone - no matter how hard it gets.”
Please note: this is a conversation rather than a hard news interview, presented unedited so you can get a sense of Lindsey Horvath as a person.