Who started the no kings movement?

1. The name’s origin: 50501 Movement as the coiners

Multiple reputable summaries and encyclopedic accounts credit the 50501 Movement with coining the “No Kings” moniker and promoting the 3.5% organizing logic that undergirds the campaign’s claim of mass power, identifying 50501 as the origin point for the slogan that became the movement’s brand ^{[1] [5]}.

2. From slogan to mass action: national groups that built the infrastructure

After 50501 coined the phrase, established national progressive networks — including Indivisible and MoveOn — helped convert the slogan into coordinated national days of action (June 14 and October 18) and to staff logistics, communications and event planning across thousands of sites ^{[6] [7] [4]}.

3. Named leaders and public organizers who amplified it

Prominent organizers and movement figures are frequently associated with spreading and staffing No Kings: Leah Greenberg of Indivisible is cited as describing No Kings Day as an Indivisible initiative and urging local mobilization, while other organizers such as Ezra Levin (MoveOn co-founder) are quoted discussing alliance-building and next steps for the coalition ^{[3] [4]}.

4. How the coalition worked in practice: decentralized but networked

Reporting describes No Kings as a coalition-style campaign: the slogan originated with 50501 but the protests were “largely organized” by a constellation of progressive organizations and civil liberties groups that provided local partner lists, digital mobilization and rapid-response infrastructure rather than a single hierarchical command ^{[1] [6]}.

5. Competing narratives: critics on funding and partisan alignment

Conservative outlets and some mainstream reports have highlighted donor ties and questioned partisan intent, asserting grants from foundations tied to George Soros and listing Democratic-aligned PACs among movement partners; outlets such as Fox News and Hindustan Times summarized those critiques while other outlets and the movement itself framed the activity as grassroots democratic resistance ^{[8] [9] [10]}.

6. Historical framing and intellectual supporters

Public intellectuals and commentators amplified the tagline: historians and writers drew parallels between “No Kings” and long-standing American anti-monarchical rhetoric, and public essays and columns (including Timothy Snyder’s commentary and analytical pieces) both praised the movement’s scale and debated its strategic depth, giving the campaign an intellectual as well as street-level presence ^{[11] [12]}.

7. What “started” means here — slogan, organizer, or mass movement?

If “started” is taken literally as who coined the phrase and first set the theme, the 50501 Movement is the answer in primary reporting and reference sources; if “started” means who turned that slogan into a sustained national campaign of mass protests, the answer is a coalition in which Indivisible, MoveOn and allied groups played indispensable operational roles, with named leaders like Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin providing public direction ^{[1] [6] [4]}.

Conclusion: shared origin, shared credit

The No Kings movement is therefore best understood as a slogan-born campaign initiated in name by the 50501 Movement and built into a nationwide, networked campaign by established progressive organizations and leaders; competing narratives over funding and partisan aims have become part of the movement’s public story, but contemporaneous reporting consistently points to 50501 as the coinage source and to Indivisible/MoveOn and allied groups as the entities that scaled it ^{[1] [3] [4] [8]}.