If you’ve been watching the “peaceful” “grassroots” protests out of Los Angeles — which are neither peaceful nor grassroots, because of course they aren’t — and have been wondering whether or not they might metastasize out of the city, surprise: That’s the plan!

At least that’s what you might say about the so-called “No Kings” demonstrations taking place across America this weekend. The rallies are nominally supposed to be about the military parade in Washington, D.C., to mark the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, although one surmises that they’re as much about that as they are about protesting Sacramento’s basketball team.

Indeed, as USA Today noted, the protests “will follow several days of nationwide protests against federal immigration raids including in Los Angeles, where Trump’s deployment of the National Guard further agitated his opponents.

“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is following the president’s cue. Abbott said Thursday that he has ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 Texas National Guard troops, along with more than 2,000 state police, in response to the ongoing demonstrations and in preparation for the ‘No Kings’ protests,” the outlet noted.

The “No Kings” protests — put together by a group that calls itself the 50501 Movement — says it wants marchers to reject what it calls the “corrupt, authoritarian politics in the United States.”

How to do that? Well, generally, it says that the “spectacle” of the military parade — which also happens to fall on Trump’s birthday and Flag Day — are things that can get people out in the streets.

“Instead of allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day: people coming together in communities across the country to reject strongman politics and corruption,” the group said in a statement.

Yes, an administration that engages in such strongman tactics that … Los Angeles basically let its own people burn parts of its city down. Call me crazy, but I kind of think a prerequisite for something being declared a “strongman” government is a central figure strong enough to both completely quell the riots and jail everyone involved, but Trump instead opted to send the National Guard and Marines in for the purposes of protecting federal agents and property while limited raids were carried out against people who were in our country illegally.

To the extent that this is more strong-armed than Joe Biden, it’s only because the Biden administration gave its favorite peeps free rein to do whatever the heck they wanted in the streets. (Don’t take the COVID jab or mask up, however, and it was an awfully different story.)

Thus, protests are planned for almost 2,000 locations, according to The Associated Press.

“The flag doesn’t belong to President Trump. It belongs to us,” the group says on its website. “On June 14th, we’re showing up everywhere he isn’t — to say no thrones, no crowns, no kings.”

To this end, they’ll be protesting in cities not named the District of Columbia on Saturday, with “a flagship march and rally in Philadelphia to draw a clear contrast between its people-powered movement and what organizers described on their website as the ‘costly, wasteful, and un-American birthday parade’ in Washington.”

Look, if they can pull this off and there’s no violence associated with it, far be it from me to shut down peaceful protests; they’ll just be “costly, wasteful, and un-American” pickets.

However, doing this as Los Angeles and other cities reel from the violence caused by professional “protesters,” it’s clear that governors and local officials should do all they can to ensure it stays that way. While “No Kings” has been uncritically reported by the mainstream media as harmless, they’re not exactly making sure to emphasize this apart from a vague statement in small print at the bottom of their website saying that organizers “expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events.” Which sounds a lot like what organizers of many of the protests in Los Angeles said, too.

Thus, better safe than sorry: It’s on local officials to follow Gov. Abbott’s lead and ensure it stays that way.

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