Four months ago, more than five million Americans gathered in small towns and major cities across the country to denounce what they described as President Donald Trump’s expansion of executive power. The coordinated “No Kings” protests became one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history—and the biggest since Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
Now, organizers are preparing for a second “No Kings” day on Oct. 18, with marches and rallies planned in more than 2,500 locations nationwide—including the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The movement, organized by Indivisible and a broad coalition of labor unions and activist networks, is positioning the October demonstrations as a referendum on what they call repeated “authoritarian power grabs” by the Trump Administration, including the recent deployment of federal forces in American cities and attempted censorship of late night TV hosts. Organizers have called on Americans to gather peacefully across the nation to “remind President Trump and his enablers: America has No Kings.”
The protests are set to come amid a government shutdown that has left large parts of the federal workforce furloughed or fired. Several prominent Republicans in recent days have accused Democrats of prolonging the government shutdown to align with the upcoming “No Kings” protests. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News that Democrats wouldn’t vote to reopen the government until after Saturday’s “hate America rally” because “they can’t face their rabid base.”
But protest leaders say the movement’s tone will be festive and peaceful, and that their protest is not a factor in the shutdown negotiations. “What this is about is everybody coming together and demonstrating—we don’t do kings in America,” Indivisible’s executive director Ezra Levin told MSNBC last week. “They’re going to have funny signs, there’s going to be chanting, there’s going to be dancing,…
