Accord­ing to Arti­cle 1, Sec­tion 9, the U.S. has no king and can nev­er name a king. U.S. offi­cials are barred from accept­ing gifts or titles from for­eign states with­out con­gres­sion­al con­sent. 

Despite this, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has repeat­ed­ly made com­ments about being a king or being immune from the law. Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor Vir­ginia Het­tinger said that Trump’s rhetoric, while it doesn’t sig­nal a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis, could have long-term effects on democ­ra­cy. 

“It might be a sig­nal of sig­nif­i­cant and poten­tial­ly long-term dam­age to democ­ra­cy,” she said. “It might rep­re­sent a dra­mat­ic depar­ture from the polit­i­cal sys­tem in which we’ve all lived our entire lives.”   

U.S. Sen. Chris Mur­phy, a Demo­c­rat from Con­necti­cut, warns that the coun­try is in the mid­dle of an author­i­tar­i­an takeover. 

“I think some peo­ple think that there’s a day when democ­ra­cy dies, and some­times there is,” he said. “Some­times there’s a coup in which, you know, the Pres­i­dent gets exe­cut­ed, gets hung from the gal­lows, and your democ­ra­cy is over. You know, in some places, elec­tions get can­celed, right? So you just stop hav­ing them. That’s not what’s going to hap­pen in Amer­i­ca. We’re going to still have elec­tions next Novem­ber. The ques­tion is whether they’re free and fair elec­tions.”  

Across the coun­try, Amer­i­cans have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in “No Kings” protests against Trump. Jonathan Alter, a for­mer senior edi­tor and colum­nist at Newsweek and long­time polit­i­cal ana­lyst for NBC and MSNBC, said that the protests helped Amer­i­cans focus on Trump’s monarch-like actions.  

“It was a bril­liant­ly designed protest because the phrase ‘no kings’ is broad enough to bring a lot of peo­ple togeth­er who might dis­agree on oth­er issues, but under­stand that our soci­ety, our coun­try, was found­ed on the idea of no kings,” he said.  

Alter said that with an esti­mat­ed 7 mil­lion pro­tes­tors, the Octo­ber “No Kings” protest, held in loca­tions through­out the coun­try, was col­lec­tive­ly the sec­ond largest protest in Amer­i­can His­to­ry, only beat­en by Earth Day 1970. Despite the large num­bers, Alter said the protests won’t make imme­di­ate change, but that they are caus­ing Trump’s approval num­bers to start slip­ping. 

“A lot of times peo­ple go, ‘what good did [protest­ing] do?’ I’m sure there were kids in UConn who were say­ing that noth­ing changed, but that’s not the way protest works,” he said. “It’s move­ment build­ing, and it’s cumu­la­tive so that, over time, he los­es his legit­i­ma­cy and los­es his hold over the coun­try.” 

The sec­ond round of “No Kings” protests held Oct. 18, 2025, includ­ed a gath­er­ing of thou­sands at the Con­necti­cut State Cap­i­tal in Hart­ford. Pro­tes­tor Melia Ben­sussen said that she was protest­ing because peo­ple deserve to know the truth about what their gov­ern­ment is up to. 

“No king means that you don’t redis­trict for vot­ing, you don’t make it so that no real infor­ma­tion is dis­trib­uted. It’s no fas­cism. It’s say­ing peo­ple need to be able to vote on facts and know the truth. And this gov­ern­ment is not doing that,” she said.  

Pro­tes­tor Migueli­na How­ell said that that she believes deci­sion-mak­ing pow­er in the U.S. is meant to be left to the mass­es, not one per­son or gov­ern­ment.  

“To me, ‘no kings’ means share pow­er. Share deci­sion-mak­ing process­es. We are a democ­ra­cy. We are a coun­try that makes deci­sions in lay­ers. We do not have a king. ‘No kings’ means the pow­er is in the peo­ple,” she said.

—by Mikay­la Bun­nell, UConn Jour­nal­ism. Kar­la Perez  and Lily Gold­blatt con­tributed report­ing to this arti­cle.