People critical of the Trump administration’s policies rally at Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine, as part of the nationwide No Kings protests in October. The movement is preparing for its biggest day ever, as thousands of protests are planned across the country on Saturday. (Photo by Jim Neuger/Maine Morning Star)
Thousands of protests are planned across the United States on Saturday as part of the “No Kings” movement opposing President Donald Trump’s administration.
Organizers expect millions of people to turn out for the third round of No Kings demonstrations, and the movement’s official website lists more than 3,000 local events.
Previous No Kings protests in June and October 2025 were among the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history, according to Harvard University. Crowd Counting Consortiuma data project documenting political protests and other demonstrations across the country.
The No Kings movement is being driven nationally by prominent progressive organizations including Indivisible, 50501 and MoveOn. But demonstrations are organized at the local level by coalitions of hundreds of progressive groups that include a wide range of civil rights organizations, labor unions, religious communities and nonprofits working on issues such as education, climate, gun control and immigration.
“People are getting angrier and angrier. Our numbers are growing and we’re really expanding the tent of people who are going to oppose the consolidation of authoritarian power,” said Hannah Stauss, one of the organizers of the No Kings protest in New York. “Every time (Trump) attacks, we reach a new segment of people who are willing to stand with us.”
Top Republican Party leaders after dismissing last year’s No Kings protests as “I hate America“rallies supported by”radical leftists”, were mostly still before the latest planned protests.
But with the weekend promising massive crowds and spectacles across the country, political observers and protesters are wondering whether the demonstrations signal a coming wave of changes at polling places or whether momentum will fade as crowds go home.
Democrats and other progressives are good at mobilizing people for large-scale protests, pay attention to some expertsbut they were there less successful than the Conservatives have in recent years in building the local infrastructure necessary to implement radical policy changes.
To this end, as No Kings enters its second edition, organizers are looking for ways to unite the disparate groups that have united under the No Kings banner. Indivisible and other national organizers have offered training, online tools and other assistance beyond protests.
“There is a traditional criticism of protests and rallies, that one-day events don’t do much and don’t encourage people to take action,” said Salvador Espinoza, a board member of Hands Off Central Texas, a progressive nonprofit that is one of the main organizers of the No Kings event in Austin. “That’s why we’ve consciously taken steps to reshape these events, starting with the second No Kings and now No Kings 3.”
A sense of momentum
Trump’s approval rating this month is lowest has passed since his re-election. His administration is governing amid national and global unrest that includes an unpopular war with Iran, a crackdown on immigration that has killed nearly two-thirds of Americans perceived as excessivea piercing enhance in gas prices and further consequences related to the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“The No Kings protests are an effective way to explain that the way President Trump has behaved is different from the way presidents have behaved in the past,” said Dan Greenberg, senior staff attorney at the conservative Cato Institute.
No Kings is not an organization itself, but the movement’s protests support national progressive groups like Indivisible, which solicit donations to provide training, digital tools and marketing assistance. In 2023, Indivisible received the award two years, $3 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, which funds various groups supporting democracy and human rights. It was founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, long the bete noire of conservatives.
It is a non-profit organization called Home of the Brave runs a $1 million advertising campaign in hundreds of newspapers across the country promoting the event. Meanwhile, local groups provide their own organizational support at the local level, such as event logistics and volunteer coordination.
No Kings rallies were planned along with a press advertising campaign
Previous No Kings events have included marches in enormous cities with tens of thousands of participants, as well as demonstrations in diminutive towns with only a handful of protesters. They occurred in fiercely Democratic states as well as in ruby-red Republican strongholds.
This year in Fairfield County, Connecticut, the progressive group REBs are planning a costumed dance along a four-lane highway in Wilton.
In Austin, Texas, organizers expect tens of thousands of people at a downtown rally accompanied by live music, art and performances.
Jenny Horner expects at least 50 people to show up in Red Oak, Iowa, to protest in her diminutive, conservative farming community. Horner is a Spanish teacher and immigrant advocate who is scheduled to speak at an event in her hometown.
“I never thought in my life that there would be so many problems at any given time that were terrible and scary and needed to be solved,” she said. “But here we are.”
Power expansion
The idea and anger behind the No Kings protests stem from the belief that Trump governs as if Congress and the courts should be subservient to him rather than being co-equal branches of government, said Shannon O’Brien, a political scientist and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies American presidents.
She dislikes calling his behavior “royal” because she thinks the term can be hyperbolic and inflammatory. But she said Trump has worked to expand the power of the government’s executive branch and pushed the boundaries of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.
“We have a director who doesn’t believe in reducing guardrails, and I think he truly believes that the bureaucracy exists to serve him, not the American people,” O’Brien said.
Some of Trump’s actions have irked Americans, evoking the trappings of a monarchy or dictatorship, such as hanging massive banners with his face on the facades of the USA government buildings or trying rename public buildings after myself.
“It’s grotesque in the same way that an American king is grotesque for someone to want his name plastered on government buildings,” said Greenberg of the conservative Cato Institute. “We consider this royal behavior, not presidential behavior.”
O’Brien also noted the belief promoted by his supporters and some of his government that Trump was divinelyanointed” Or ordainedor that his decisions, such as going to war with Iran, are so blessed by God. This is the type of belief that underlies monarchy.
Such thinking, she said, leads “down the slippery slope of kingship, infallibility, being blessed by God and being chosen.”
Lasting impact
The first No Kings event, held last June in Austin, Texas, was a conventional rally on the steps of the state Capitol. But the most vital lesson I took away afterward, Espinoza said, was that organizers felt they could have done more to push viewers to the next step of becoming more deeply involved in a cause they cared about. For the second No Kings event, and the third on Saturday, they will stage a conventional protest march from City Hall to a enormous outdoor venue that will feature speakers and performers but will also be filled with booths from local progressive groups.
“We created a garden of opportunities so that everyone can find an organization that matches their values,” Espinoza said. “From mutual aid to civil rights, students and young people, workers, LGBTQ+ groups. The goal to change events was to connect and act.”
In Huntsville, Alabama, a mid-sized city in the northern part of the state, No Kings organizers plan to group Saturday’s rally participants by neighborhoods so people can start building their own networks around local issues.
We want people to know that they don’t have to wait for us to organize.
– Brittney Whitehead, vice president of the Undivided Chapter in Huntsville, Alabama
Participants are encouraged to write the name of their neighborhood on the protest signs to make it easier to find each other.
“We want people to know they don’t have to wait for us to organize,” said Brittney Whitehead, vice president of the local Indivisible chapter. She said that while Indivisible would like more volunteers, the group primarily wants to assist people connect and organize around any local issues that are vital to them.
“They can organize and they can do it faster rather than waiting for us to reach them, so we will try to create connections and networks in all our neighborhoods and bring them all together in a larger network.”
She said that since Trump’s inauguration, her Indivisible chapter has seen an enhance in people volunteering with her and her coalition groups, which include voter encouragement organizations, civil rights and disability advocates, and indigenous groups.
She said more volunteers have signed up to canvass politically after the upcoming state primary. Others join local groups monitoring immigration-related incidents.
Horner, Iowa, hopes the No Kings protests won’t be a repeat of the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, a progressive movement that featured plenty of spectacle but little lasting change. He remembers it as a “fractured” movement in which there is no powerful consensus on how to solve problems.
“I wonder if we could do something like Occupy Wall Street, but this time not break the organization so it can actually get the traction it needs and stay strong and grow,” she said.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at: avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by state linewhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes Pennsylvania Capital-Star, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
