‘No Kings’ protests pass in festival atmosphere as an estimated 7 million across US rally against Trump’s ‘authoritarianism’
‘Hey hey! Ho ho! Donald Trump has got to go!’ protesters across the country chanted
Nearly 7 million demonstrators in small towns and cities across the country showed up for No Kings protests to rally against Donald Trump’s presidency, according to organizers.
The president declared he was “not a king” on Fox News on Friday, but that didn’t stop millions of rally-goers in more than 2,500 locations across the United States from protesting the second Trump administration.
Saturday’s event marked the third mass mobilization since Trump reclaimed the White House and one of the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in U.S. history, surpassing the more than 5 million demonstrators who turned up to the first iteration of No Kings protests in June, organizers said.
“Today, millions of people showed that we, the people, will not be silenced,” Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
Protesters at rallies across the country shouted a common refrain:“Hey hey! Ho ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” Inflatable suits, Revolutionary War references, and posters depicting Trump in a crown were ubiquitous.
Organizers called the protests “overwhelmingly peaceful,” though there were scattered reports of violence and arrests, including in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where a man allegedly flashed a gun near a protest crowd.
Larger-scale arrests took place in Portland and the wider Chicago area, where crowds protested outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities amid the larger No Kings events taking place nearby.
More than 350,000 people across New York City protested Saturday, organizers said, with New York City Police making zero arrests connected to the protests. Rallies from Charlotte, North Carolina, to San Diego, California also did not see any arrests, according to police.
As millions of Americans marched against the president, Trump spent the day in Palm Beach, Florida. Online, meanwhile, he posted an AI video of himself flying a “King Trump” fighter jet that bombs a crowd of protesters with brown liquid.
Many Democratic officials made appearances at rallies, while several prominent Republicans urged Americans to stay home and watch college football after baselessly labeling the protests “Hate America” rallies.
“We call it the ‘Hate America’ rally that’ll happen Saturday,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier this week. “Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you see pro-Hamas supporters. I bet you see Antifa types. I bet you see the Marxists on full display.”
Chicago
In Chicago, where the Trump administration has deployed scores of federal immigration agents, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker addressed a massive crowd of 100,000 people to deliver a pointe