Millions of Americans took to the streets Saturday for No Kings Day, a coordinated wave of anti-Trump demonstrations that organizers say targeted what they’re calling an unprecedented grab for executive power under President Donald Trump.
Washington drew some of the largest crowds. The day’s action kicked off at Memorial Circle, just below Arlington National Cemetery, with thousands assembling before they crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge and pushed into the district. Metro gates backed up as commuters and protesters funneled through together. By late morning, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool area was packed wall to wall. Hundreds more filtered toward the National Mall as the afternoon stretched on, converging near the Capitol for a separate rally billed as Remove the Regime. That’s where former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn took the stage and called directly on Congress to impeach Trump. Dunn was on duty during the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol; he’s now running for a congressional seat in Maryland.
Nationally, organizers with 50501 projected more than 3,000 individual demonstrations, spread across every congressional district and coordinated on six continents. A prior No Kings march, held last October, drew millions. Saturday’s organizers said they expected turnout to match it, if not surpass it.
St. Paul, Minnesota was the national flagship. Tens of thousands descended on the state Capitol grounds. Buses were crammed. Parking vanished well past a mile out. Homemade signs reading “No War” and “1776” were everywhere as the crowd “converged on the Capitol grounds. Scheduled headliners included Bruce Springsteen, who planned to perform his new song” called “Streets of Minneapolis.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers, Jane Fonda, Gov. Tim Walz, and Rep. Ilhan Omar were all on the program.
Minnesota wasn’t chosen randomly. In January 2026, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother, during a federal enforcement operation in Minneapolis. Less than three weeks after that killing, Customs and Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, also 37, also a U.S. citizen. No federal charges have been filed against any officer in either case. Both deaths came as the Trump administration surged federal agents into the Minneapolis region as part of its immigration enforcement campaign.
In Durham, North Carolina, several thousand people filled downtown, waving American and Ukrainian flags. One demonstrator carried a Soviet-era banner with Trump’s face on it. Scenes like that played out in cities across all 50 states through Saturday afternoon and into the evening.
The 50501 network, which coordinated much of Saturday’s effort, don’t just show up and hope for the best. They’ve built a communications infrastructure that can place rallies in rural congressional districts where protests almost never happen. That’s a different operation than what existed in 2021, and it didn’t appear accidentally.
According to reporting from the Newhampshirebulletin, No Kings Day events began rolling out early Saturday morning across the country and won’t wind down until well after dark in western time zones.
Dunn said the Remove the Regime rally was specifically designed to keep pressure on Congress rather than on the courts or the press. “We’re here because Congress can act,” Dunn said. “They won’t do it unless we make them.”
The 03/28 date, chosen by organizers to mark the 2026 calendar’s first major mobilization window, brought out participants who hadn’t attended the earlier No Kings marches. Crowd demographics in multiple cities skewed noticeably younger than prior cycles, according to on-the-ground observers in Washington and St. Paul.
Saturday’s demonstrations weren’t a spontaneous outburst. They were 03-planned, 50501-coordinated, and months in the making.
