No Kings Day: What’s Really Driving the Protests?

Millions of Americans packed streets, parks and town squares across the United States Saturday for No Kings day, according to the organizers of the massive day of demonstrations protesting President Donald Trump’s administration — from his deployment of troops to cities to his targeting of political opponents.

Thousands upon thousands showed up for the second organized No Kings day in America’s largest cities like Atlanta, New York City and Chicago, to smaller metro areas and towns including Greensburg, Pennsylvania; Bismarck, North Dakota; and Hammond, Louisiana. More than 2,600 nonviolent demonstrations were planned.

The first No Kings day coincided with Trump’s military parade that occurred on his 79th birthday in June. 

Demonstrators decried Trump’s dispatch of National Guard troops to several U.S. cities, as well as ongoing immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, the nation’s capital, Portland, Oregon, and Chicago and where U.S. citizens have been swept up in raids.

Ben Grimes, of Northern Virginia, who said he spent two decades in the U.S. Army piloting helicopters and working as a military lawyer, held a sign bearing the message “I Served America Not Autocracy.” 

Grimes stood among tens of thousands of demonstrators who stretched down several blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue at the Washington, D.C., No Kings day event.

“We’re sliding very rapidly into autocracy and lawlessness,” said the 52-year-old veteran, whose career included a deployment to Baghdad. 

“Just about everything has worried me, but I am particularly concerned about the use of the deployment of military troops in the U.S. and the apparent lawless killing of civilians in the Caribbean,” Grimes said.

Peggy and Ken Greco donned clown costumes, and displayed a sign that read “Elect a Clown Expect a Circus.”

The couple drove from Augusta, Georgia, to attend the D.C. rally.

“We came because we feel very powerless about what’s going on, and we have to do something,” Peggy, 69, said, becoming emotional.

 In Chicago, Grant Park filled with thousands of people carrying symbols of repudiation of the Trump administration, particularly U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from anti-ICE signs to posters satirizing the president.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, also called on the crowd to be united and speak out. 

Thousands of people gathered in Times Square in Manhattan for New York City’s No Kings day peaceful 1.6-mile march down 7th Avenue.

Silas Perez, 21, who lives in the Bronx, said she “wants to fight for our rights while we still have them.” 

“They want to say ‘Make America Great Again.’ It was better before,” Perez said. “This is worse.” 

“Democracy requires your courage, and tyranny requires good people doing nothing … and it fails when ordinary people refuse to cooperate and they say, ‘no kings’ and mean it,” Pritzker said. 

In Lexington, Kentucky, protester Garcia O’Brien, 71, said, “I’m old, and I’ve never been scared for our democracy. I am now.” 

In Fargo, North Dakota, Ken Opheim showed up in a red hat but with an anti-Trump message: Quid Pro Quo Trump Must Go. “Everything he does, he gets something back for himself,” Opheim said.

Lawmakers, activists and celebrities spoke at rallies across the country — Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta, actor John Cusack in Chicago, Bill Nye “the Science Guy” in Washington, D.C. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Chris Murphy of Connecticut also spoke to the massive crowd in the nation’s capital.

“He has not won yet, the people still rule in this country,” Murphy, a Democrat, said. “Trump thinks that he’s a king, and he thinks he can act more corruptly when the government is shut down.”

The protesters took to the streets during the ongoing government shutdown to question Trump’s actions since he took office for his second presidential term on Jan. 20.

Trump revamped his legally questionable mass firing of federal workers on Oct. 10, this time against the backdrop of the nearly three-week government funding lapse. 

Amid the shutdown, Trump this past week authorized a $20 billion bailout for Argentina. The administration also continues to amass defense resources along the coast of Venezuela and carry out extrajudicial strikes on alleged drug running boats in the Caribbean Sea, killing dozens.

Repeatedly, Trump has threatened to use the shutdown as an opportunity to permanently cut “Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans” by canceling funding already appropriated by Congress.

A member of his own party, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, said the Government Accountability Office should sue the for his administration’s illegal impoundment of funds already written into law — something he began to do long before the shutdown.

Since January, Trump has canceled billions in foreign aid, medical research, natural disaster assistance, and funding for museums and libraries, early childhood education and energy efficiency programs for K-12 schools.

Trump’s use of power was on full display when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March and defied a federal judge’s order by sending hundreds of immigrants, many without due process, to a mega-prison in El Salvador. The mistakenly deported Kilmar Arego Garcia became the face of Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Nearly 300 partner organizations signed on to the nonviolent No Kings day, from local- and state-level groups to large national liberal advocacy bodies and labor unions, including the ACLU, Common Cause, Indivisible, the League of Women Voters and SEIU.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/PE7Xf_f7EII?si=-yTcpq6zM_jD6H69 Protesters gathered in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18, 2025, for the No Kings day demonstrations. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

Trump was not in Washington during the rally. He left the White House Friday afternoon to spend the weekend at his Florida residence and was at his golf course on Saturday, according to the White House press corps traveling with the president.

Republicans have characterized the No Kings event as anti-American. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana recently described the event on Fox News as a “hate America rally,” claiming “it’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people.”

Trump declared “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization” last month, despite the fact that such a group does not exist. “Antifa,” shorthand for anti-fascist, is an ideology disapproving of fascist governance.  He also issued a directive targeting progressive organizations, including Indivisible, according to a list the White House provided to Reuters.

Shalina Chatlani, Robbie Sequeira, Jeff Beach and Jamie Lucke contributed to this report.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.