Protests from Alabama to Wyoming — and on the Arctic Circle: What to know about Saturday’s third ‘No Kings’ rally
By Rebekah Riess, Chris Youd, CNN
(CNN) — Millions of people are expected to join a national rally on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s policies, the higher cost of living and the war against Iran, event organizers say.
More than 3,100 “No Kings” demonstrations – about as many events as there are counties in the US – are expected in all fifty states, including an Alaskan city inside the Arctic Circle, fueled by a suburban groundswell of support.
“The people of America are pissed” and “are the ones powering this movement,” organizer Sarah Parker, a national coordinator with grassroots movement 50501, who helped organize the events, said at a No Kings Coalition news conference on Thursday.
Nearly 7 million people attended thousands of “No Kings” events nationwide last fall, organizers said, before clashes over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown had reached a frenzy.
Since then, Trump’s nationwide immigration enforcement blitz has come and gone in several major cities, leaving behind marred communities and two Americans dead through the actions of federal law enforcement. Now, Americans are facing skyrocketing gas prices and a flagging economy due to the war with Iran.
A suburban show of support
Two-thirds of the people who have RSVPed for this weekend’s event live outside of major urban centers, up nearly 40 percent compared with the first “No Kings” event in June 2025, statistics provided by the organizers show.
Racial diversity and rising educational levels have resulted in the political axis shifting in many suburban communities.
“I’m seeing people from the PTA or the neighborhood who would have never joined a protest in the past, who are now asking how they can get involved,” Allison Posner, a 42-year-old mother from Maplewood, New Jersey, told The Associated Press. “This is not some other people’s fight. This is our fight.”
The “No Kings” organizers also said a significant number of protests are planned in GOP stronghold states like Texas and Florida.
“Almost 50% of No Kings events are in either a red state or a battleground area for this year,” Eunic Epstein-Ortiz, who is with the No Kings Coalition, said at the news conference on Thursday.
The No Kings Coalition organizes the demonstrations and includes organizations like 50501, Indivisible, AFT, MoveOn, the ACLU, Public Citizen and SEIU, among others.
Texas, Florida and Ohio each have over 100 events scheduled for Saturday, and states like Idaho, Wyoming and Utah have events in the double digits, according to the event organizers.
“We’re seeing huge RSVP surges in highly competitive bellwether suburban areas,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the Indivisible Project, the nonprofit organizing the protest. “Voters who decide elections, the people who do the door knocking and the voter registration and all of the work of turning protest into power, they are taking to the streets right now and they are furious.”
The Twin Cities back in focus
The flagship “No Kings” protest will be a star‑studded lineup of cultural icons and political leaders rallying at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, with an expected in attendance of at least 100,000 people, according to a “No Kings” organizer.
Minneapolis and St. Paul were the epicenter of Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration enforcement operation in US history, that led to weeks of protest in the Twin Cities over the winter, particularly after federal agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Federal agents used pepper balls, tear gas and pepper spray against protesters during these clashes, and images from the confrontations prompted concerns from some Trump administration officials over the optics of the immigration crackdown, leading to the withdrawal of some federal law enforcement personnel from the Twin Cities.
This Saturday’s protest, the first major one expected since Operation Metro Surge wound down last month, has a much different tone – music legend Bruce Springsteen is expected to perform, and demonstrators are encouraged to bring sunscreen.
“Minnesotans have already shown we’ll stand up for democracy in -10° weather, so Saturday should be a breeze! Expect a beautiful spring afternoon and don’t forget the SPF,” organizers for this Saturday’s event joked, referencing the thousands of people who spilled onto Minneapolis’ streets in subfreezing temperatures to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in the city in January.
The rally at the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday afternoon will feature speakers and performers including famed folk singer and activist Joan Baez, award-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda, singer Maggie Rogers and political figures such as Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Minnesota Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Springsteen, one of America’s greatest song writers and musicians, told the Minnesota Star-Tribune this week that he decided to perform his “Streets of Minneapolis” at the flagship “No Kings” event.
The anti-ICE song was released earlier this year and the musician dedicated the song to the city’s residents, including Pretti and Good.
Leaders call for peace
A core principle behind all “No Kings” events, organizers say, is “a commitment to nonviolent action.” Participants should not bring any weapons to the events and are urged to act lawfully and de-escalate any potential confrontation.
“Peaceful resistance is the antidote to repression. And it’s the antidote to the despair and powerlessness that repression is trying to make us feel,” said ACLU Chief Political and Advocacy Officer Deirdre Schifeling at the news conference on Thursday.
Tens of thousands of people showed up for the first “No Kings” rallies last June. The events coincided with a military parade in Washington, DC, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US Army, which was also President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
While the protests were largely peaceful, some protesters clashed with police in downtown Los Angeles ahead of a nighttime curfew. Protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown and the deployment of the National Guard in LA were a flashpoint at that time. Other pockets of violence, including a deadly shooting, and arrests were also reported throughout the country.
The second round of “No Kings” events last October were also peaceful for the most part, with police reporting very few incidents or arrests in large cities. Those protests took place in the shadow of what would become the longest government shutdown in history, lasting for 43 days.
Demonstrators voiced outrage at a range of Trump’s policies but some key themes took center stage, including perceived threats to democracy, the administration’s ICE raids and troop deployments in US cities, and cuts to federal programs, especially health care.
This week in Minnesota, the St. Paul Police Department said it is preparing for Saturday’s protests like they do for all special events.
“Obviously, public safety is our number one concern,” Jesse Mollner, senior commander with St. Paul Police Special Operations Unit, told CNN affiliate WCCO. “We want to make sure that we hold a safe event … we want to mitigate any sort of risk associated with large-scale events.”
“We support their rights but we also expect them to be lawful obviously.”
What Trump has said about the protests
When asked about Saturday’s “No Kings” events, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said on Thursday, “The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them.”
In the past, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have responded with mockery to the events.
They both posted AI memes to social media depicting Trump in a crown. Trump shared a mocked-up vision of himself flying a fighter jet emblazoned with “KING TRUMP” appearing to dump raw sewage on protesters. In Vance’s social media post, prominent Democrats knelt as supplicants in a royal court before Trump.
The president also called October’s mass protests a “joke” and described them as “very small, very ineffective.” The people who took part were “whacked out,” Trump said.
“When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One the day after.
But organizers remain undeterred. “Each time we show up, we disrupt President Trump’s attempts to rule through repression and remind the country, and the world, that people power is our path to a truly free America,” the “No Kings” website says.
“It is not just some abstract protest. It is a movement that has seen numbers across racial lines and economic lines,” civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton said at Thursday’s news conference. “We may not all agree on some issues, but we all agree that if we do not protect the right to vote and protect democracy, it doesn’t matter where we disagree, we will all be muted and ineffective.”
New flashpoints, same fight
In the months between “No Kings” rallies over the past year, the backdrop of current events has changed – from National Guard deployments to immigration enforcement crackdowns and now the war with Iran.
But many issues remain the same, organizers said.
“When I stood at the first ‘No Kings’ rally, we were fighting to protect democracy at home and against federal agents and troops that were deployed on American streets, against a government that was manufacturing a crisis to justify using its power against its own people. Today, we’re still fighting that same fight, but now that manufactured crisis has gone global,” said Naveed Shah, a US Army veteran and the political director of Common Defense.
“Our members will be turning out peacefully in the streets because they believe in a better future for this country, and they can’t sit by on the sidelines about what Trump and his administration are doing to our home,” said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn. “Let’s be clear, the Trump administration has become a threat to the American people at every level. They are waging violence at home and abroad.”
“Where’s the money for people struggling to afford their rent, groceries, gas, or health care?”
Americans, organizers said, are fed up with “constant chaos, and they’re ready to stand in solidarity against the Trump administration’s overreach.”
“That’s why millions of us are rising up from all walks of life, from rural communities to big cities at ‘No Kings.’ And as we do so, we will send the loudest, clearest message yet that this country does not belong to kings, dictators, tyrants,” Bethell said.
“It belongs to us, and together we have the power to build the country we dream of.”
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CNN’s Emily Goodwin and Kara Devlin contributed to this report.
