On Saturday, more than 3,000 No Kings events took place around the world. In the U.S. and globally, a united voice spoke out to reject authoritarianism and support a mass early voting campaign.
During the celebrations, however, Meta suspended— without warning or explanation — the No Kings Coalition Instagram account for several hours. Meta’s apology cited an automatic suspension due to a “very high frequency” of posts, yet No Kings organizers and protesters think that explanation smells fishy.
Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, joins Jen to discuss concerns over Meta’s relationship with the White House and it’s increasing involvement in incidents of one-sided censorship. The pair highlights why all lawmakers must investigate these alleged assaults on democracy and hold corporations accountable.
Ezra Levin is the co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I have with me Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible. Ezra, welcome!
Ezra Levin
Jen, great to see ya.
Jen Rubin
How was the biggest day of early voting organizing in history?
Ezra Levin
Jen, it was a good day for democracy. An unexpected number of people in an unexpected number of places. More than 3,000 events all over the world this weekend. All over the world, Jen. People who were looking forward to casting their vote in Japan, in South America, in Western Europe, all over, people were saying with one clear voice, no kings. And we know the single best form of election offense is driving up the early vote as big as you possibly can get it. So, I think it was phenomenal. I went to two and a half No Kings protests myself locally, and what we saw was joy. We saw community-led people power getting people out to vote, getting people prepared to push back against any sabotage that comes our way. In essence, what we saw was the body politic rejecting this metabolized form of fascism that has been taking over these last two years. I think we’re seeing democracy reassert itself. That’s what we saw.
Jen Rubin
And I think we’re going to see a huge bump in the days that come in that early voting. Now…
Ezra Levin
And we’ve got… and we’ve got evidence, so I’m not yet ready to report, but we’ve been tracking the data. Obviously, early vote data comes in relatively slowly, not all places had early vote yet, but we have some pretty darn encouraging data that we’re going to be able to share in the next day or two on exactly what impact is having on the early vote.
Jen Rubin
Fabulous. Now, at some point during the day, Meta took down the No Kings account for 90 minutes. For 4 hours, you could not access the account.
Ezra Levin
Correct.
Jen Rubin
They gave a series of implausible explanations.
Ezra Levin
Yes.
Jen Rubin
What do you know, and what do you think happened, and what should have happened?
Ezra Levin
Here’s what I know. I was at the second, about to head to the third of my No Kings, local No Kings protest. Leah, my spouse, was out in Atlanta for one of the flagships, so I was there with the kids and taking them around. And I got a message from the team that suddenly, out of nowhere, without explanation, the No Kings main Instagram account was taken offline entirely. You could not access it, we couldn’t lock into it, nobody could see it. I rushed back home. to try to jump on this situation, and for the next several hours, we were either trying to get it back public, which we eventually got, or trying to get back into access so that we could post, and could not, as you said, for 4 hours during the height of what was the largest early vote push in American history. This is egregious. It is a flashing red light that this zillion dollar company with close ties to the Trump administration and with a long history of being complacent or actively spurring on election threats at home and abroad, interfered. In this moment, they claim it was a glitch. I’m sorry. You cannot look at the history of Meta and take at face value some technical excuse for why they interfered in the largest early vote effort in American history. So, the good news is, here’s the good news, Jen, they didn’t stop us. They did not slow down the 3,000-plus events all over the world. We are going to see historic levels of early voting and historic turnouts in this election. But I do think this should serve as an alarm for Americans everywhere that these folks do not mean to do us well, that we are headed into a potential sabotage scenario for this election that may hinge on whether or not these big social media giants allow the public voice to be heard, and it should serve as a big sign for Congress. Members of both parties should understand that these folks are not a friend to our democracy, and they should answer questions. And I was very pleased to see an ideologically diverse set of actors in Congress, Joe Morelli and Chris Van Hollen and Chris Murphy and Pramila Jayapal, the House Judiciary Dems, saying, we need answers, and there should probably be an investigation. I think that’s the right approach. The coalition, the No Kings Coalition itself, will be sending a list of demands and questions to Meta, very soon.
Jen Rubin
I’m not a technical person, but how can you… Somewhat aware person, understand this mammoth event is going on. and not be prepared for an uptick in either posting or reading, and somehow allow your system to eradicate it, to take it down. That just defies basic logic.
Ezra Levin
It especially defies basic logic, given their history with the January Sixers, given their history cozying up to Donald Trump, given a court ruling literally this past week in Brazil that demanded that Meta not unfairly benefit the authoritarian challengers to the pro-democracy party in power there. Look, Jen, I wouldn’t take that explanation at face value or orient myself in the direction of response funding that are specific technical questions, I would ask, what communication, if any, has Meta had with members of the Trump administration regarding this protest or any other pro-democracy protests? Have they had communication about voter education and mobilization in the lead-up to the 2026 midterms? Does Meta have any kind of internal directives or policies where they are directly looking at folks who are exercising free speech and pro-democracy protests? I think we should ask a lot of basic questions. of any company, but especially one that has a monopolistic stranglehold on billions of people, and on some of our democratic institutions, and a direct line to this White House that has repeatedly demonstrated that they mean to do ill to people who are exercising their constitutional rights. Look. We got questions now. I think they bit off more than they can chew with this. I think this was a mistake. I think more people have now learned about No Kings as a result, and I think Congress is now primed to do something about it, when indeed we have the ability to do something about it. Our job right now is to not let them off the hook, make sure people are aware of the threat, and make sure people do not view this as a, therefore nothing matters, therefore we’re screwed, therefore democracy is dead. They are on the defense, they are flailing, and we, when we organize nonviolently in support of our constitutional rights, they might overreach, but they will not win. We will win.
Jen Rubin
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that you would have a company that is so powerful, so big. controls so much of the marketplace, for which there is no recourse, there is no instant remedy. Have these companies just gotten too big and too powerful? If they are incompetent, maybe we need more competition.
Ezra Levin
I am a thousand percent with you, Jen. Look, I don’t think this is a slap on the wrist kind of situation, because this isn’t a one-off. We have nearly two decades of Meta and these other big tech companies directly undermining the democratic processes in this country and abroad, and they have a pretty standard playbook when it comes to this. They do something bad that hurts their users or hurts democratic processes, then they say, oopsie, we’re really sorry. Then nothing happens, the world moves on, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. We see this again and again and again. In 2017, Facebook admitted that Russian operatives paid for ads that reached as many as 126 million Americans in the lead-up to the election. In 2018, he said it was, quote, my mistake that the Trump campaign data harvested 87 million users’ data. In 2021, Meta’s own internal task force found that it failed to stop the Stop the Steal movement behind the January 6th insurrection. This is what the new Aaron Serkin film is in no small part about! It is about the whistleblower who exposed that. So, we have been told time and time again what this company actually cares about, and who this company’s friends are. We should take this seriously, and I think the best way to take this seriously is to be on guard in the lead-up to this midterm elections, and to demand from our elected officials that they take this threat to democracy seriously, and use the power that we give them to investigate and hold them to account.
Jen Rubin
You know, it’s peculiar, Ezra. The mistakes all go in one direction.
Ezra Levin
Haha, yeah.
Jen Rubin
I’ve never seen a Trump campaign, a Trump rally, a Trump movement, been taken down. Do they have a good guy list and a bad guy list? How is this?
Ezra Levin
It’s something I would like to know, Jen. It’s something I would like to know. It is… what a co-inky-dink, that it’s never, oops, we majorly boosted turnout in the election for everybody. Oops, we protected democracy from right-wing violent threats. That’s never the oops. It’s always the oops in the other direction. I think there needs to be an investigation at the very least, and we should be looking at structural forms more broadly, because these companies, they’re not just spreading misinformation systematically, they don’t just have an antagonistic relationship towards democracy. We have an interview with Peter Thiel in which he’s asked, should humanity continue? One of these… one of the leaders of the AI revolution, one of the major tech billionaire Goliaths, and he has to pause thinking about whether humanity should continue. Look, y’all. are… do we want a democracy where people have constitutional rights and human rights, or don’t we? And if we do want that, this cannot be an individual or organizational solution. We have left X, Indivisible did, long, long ago. We would love to leave these platforms, but it can’t just be individuals taking action. It’s up to government to protect its citizens. and its institutions, and right now we have a Congress that’s unwilling to do that. I hope that changes in the near term.
Jen Rubin
And that is the perfect segue. In two weeks, we’re gonna elect a new Congress, governors, state legislative races, many, many offices. It’s not enough to win. What do you expect? If, in fact. candidates that you’ve supported, Democrats, frankly, do get elected. What is the kind of change that you want to see beginning in terms of controlling our economy, taking back regulation, taking back the rule of law? What’s the bar we should set for elected leaders?
Ezra Levin
Look, I’ve got this picture I just recently put on my wall. That’s Viktor Orban being protested by a pro-democracy organizer, one of the members of the opposition in their parliament. They, 6 months ago or so, had a crushing defeat against their authoritarian. Orban went down, he didn’t just go down, he went down so, so completely that he couldn’t sabotage it, that it ushered in this era of accountability and reform, and earlier this month, the first of Orban’s corrupt ministers were arrested, and there is more to come. I think what comes next is going to happen in stages, and we have to be realistic about what’s possible. When we win the election, as you say, when pro-democracy forces win the election, they will have won an opportunity to start reinstating the rule of law and making sure democracy reasserts itself. They cannot suddenly change the Constitution, they cannot suddenly enact laws over Trump’s veto, the Republicans will likely continue to back him up in Congress, almost lockstep. So what can they do? They will have gavels in the House and the Senate. They can refuse to seat more of his corrupt judges, they can instigate investigations, they can send subpoenas, they can hold him to account, they can refuse to give in to his legislative demands, they can pass their own budget, taking back money from his Gestapo forces, and start actually laying the groundwork for what a real reform era looks like, and that reform era is going to come in 2029. So we should be thinking not only what can they do unilaterally starting in January 2027 to hold these guys to account, and that means Trump’s folks, but also people outside the regime, who are buddying up with him, as we were seeing this past weekend. But what legislation are they passing that becomes H.R.1 and S1, the first bills that are passed in 2029? That should be hammered out, and we should not play footsie with this regime or with Republicans who are cooperating with this regime over the next two years. We should provide an alternative vision for the post-Trump era. I… I’m optimistic that we have a lot of fighters who are newly elected in primaries and who are coming in to make up the Democratic majorities next year that are going to be demanding that kind of vision. It’s our job on the outside to back them up and put pressure on the heels that are holding us back.
Jen Rubin
And one early test, folks, when they want to do a continuing resolution to keep the government funded, we want that as short as possible. They’re going to want to have the current regime, the current funding, go well into the future. There’s gonna be a new sheriff in town, and that’s gonna be an early test. I know, Ezra, you feel the same way.
Ezra Levin
Absolutely. I think people think, well, the election happens, and then Congress doesn’t come in until January, so it’ll all just be dead space in between then. No, you’re exactly right, Jen. The government funding runs out in December. This is one of the last acts of the current Congress, so not the folks who get elected in November, but the current Congress will vote, and it requires Democratic votes. It requires Democratic votes to pass another funding bill, and there very well may be a disagreement about whether it should be A year-long continuing resolution so that we just clear the decks and nobody has to fight over this? Or if we say, no, we’re gonna do a short gap until the new Congress comes in, and then we’ll actually pass what the new budget should be. I believe we should expect that our newly elected representatives and senators use the power that we just gave them. And that means, let’s get through the holidays, and then let’s get back to work come January.
Jen Rubin
Well, congratulations, Ezra, on a phenomenal day of organizing. what’s happening on Wednesday, so that people know?
Ezra Levin
This is… so the No Kings follow-up call is this Wednesday evening. You can join it, go to NoKings.org to RSP. This is all going to be on what did we just accomplish, and how do we rally around election defense as we lead up to the midterms. So if you are anxious, you saw what happened Saturday, and you think, oh my gosh, they’re gonna come and try to mess with us as we get into the midterms, we are concerned about that as well. The point of No Kings was to boost early vote. And to recruit for election offense. Now we need to run through the tape. So Wednesday is about us taking the next step forward in that direction.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Ezra. I know how busy you are. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Congratulations, and you heard it, folks. Run through the tape.
Ezra Levin
That’s right.
Jen Rubin
Take care, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us, Ezra. Bye-bye.
Ezra Levin
Bye.
