A wave of “No Kings” demonstrations swept across the United States on Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied in opposition to President Donald Trump’s administration. According to CNN, more than 2,500 protests were held in all 50 states, with organizers citing perceived threats to democracy, military deployments in U.S. cities, and sweeping federal program cuts as key grievances.
In San Francisco, The Guardian reported that crowds along Market Street surpassed 500,000 marchers, exceeding June’s turnout, according to Michelle Gutierrez Vo, president of the California Nurses Association. Demonstrators also gathered at Ocean Beach to spell out “No Kings” and “Yes on 50” with their bodies. Among them was Hayley Wingard, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, who said she had never attended a protest before. “I was actually OK with everything until I found that the military invasion in Los Angeles and Chicago and Portland – Portland bothered me the most, because I’m from Portland, and I don’t want the military in my cities. That’s scary,” she said.
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Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi joined marchers wearing a broken crown, while folk legend Joan Baez addressed the crowd afterward: “You look beautiful. There are many hundreds of thousands of you around the world. It may not be possible to turn the tide right now, but we can sure save some fishes.”
In New York City, BBC reported that Times Square overflowed with thousands chanting “Democracy not Monarchy” and “The Constitution is not optional.” The NYPD estimated more than 100,000 participants across the five boroughs and confirmed there were no protest-related arrests. “Non-violence is a core principle of No Kings events,” organizers stated on the movement’s website.
CNN also reported that Los Angeles saw at least ten peaceful demonstrations, with Mayor Karen Bass affirming that “we know he’s (President Trump) not a king, but we don’t want to see our democracy slide backwards into authoritarianism.” Bass described the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles against the governor’s wishes as “the first move toward authoritarianism.”
Peaceful demonstrations were also reported in San Diego, Charlotte, and Austin, where police departments publicly thanked participants for their cooperation.
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In Washington, D.C., federal employee Monica, who declined to give her last name, told CNN she joined the protest after being furloughed during the government shutdown. “The elimination of all these jobs are creating mass threats for people to keep a roof over their head, send their kids to college and the hope of the American dream,” she said. “A lot of people have been stressed, including myself. I was in tears. I was losing sleep, just worried about, you know, the way everything was going, whether I was going to be able to keep my job. A lot of people I know that have just started in their careers… My children and co-workers, who also have bills and want to survive, who have been really in a lot of turmoil.”
Across the nation, chants of “this is what democracy looks like” echoed through city streets, a message of resistance against what protesters describe as creeping authoritarianism.