The organizers of the No Kings protest in Austin, Texas, on Saturday were assembling a temporary stage in the shadow of our pink granite Capitol for drag queens and a group performance of the “chicken dance” when the building was evacuated due to a “credible threat” against the Democratic lawmakers who planned to attend the event. The Austin rally had been billed with a “Kick Out the Clowns” twist since the start, promising “parody and pageantry” and aiming to “help set a national record for the most circuses held in one day.” But current events seemed to be conspiring to make a gutsy bit of counterprogramming seem something between bad taste and grim joke.

For more than a week, images of violence against protesters in Los Angeles had blanketed our screens. On Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott had preemptively called up the National Guard for Saturday’s protests. And then, in the hours before No Kings was set to kick off nationwide, a Minneapolis suburb went under lockdown after a man assassinated Democratic state Representative Melissa Hortman, the speaker of the Minnesota’s House of Representatives, and her husband. As Governor Tim Walz’s news conference played in the background, I wondered if the rally would go on—and if so, whether the brass bands, comedy, and “circus acts” they’d advertised would feel grotesquely out of tune with the mood of the crowd. If, that is, people even showed up.

But what happened at the rally was something stranger, heavier, and more honest than I expected.

By the time the protest officially started at 4 p.m., the Capitol was back open and the sprawling, shaded lawn that rolls into downtown was filled with thousands of people. The throng spilled beyond the gates partway into the streets, a cacophonous mass of types: gray-haired women handing out American flag and Pride flag stickers side by side; two young folks in midriff-baring tops holding signs citing the social justice parts of Leviticus (19:15-16, 33-34); a man and his pit bull in matching capes, each made of half the U.S. flag and half the flag of Mexico; anarchists on bicycles handing out water and popsicles; a man in a Trump wig with foundation smeared across his face, walking around with a........

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