Was The No Kings Protest The Largest In Us History

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 26, 2025, 5:29 AM

was the no kings protest the largest in us history

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Democracy Now! Amy Goodman We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution. An estimated 7 million people took part in No Kings rallies Saturday to protest President Trump’s authoritarian policies. Organizers say protests were held at about 2,600 sites across all 50 states in what was one of the largest days of protest in U.S.

history, surpassing the first No Kings day of action in June. One of the biggest mobilizations was in Washington, D.C., where Trump has fired thousands of federal workers and sent in National Guard troops to patrol the streets. Democracy Now! covered the action and spoke to people about what brought them out to protest. “We need to make it clear that we can’t have an authoritarian government, a government that’s turned into nothing but a weapon,” says Paul Osadebe, who says he was fired from his job as... AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.

I’m Amy Goodman. This resonnated so very deeply with me: Part of the aim of protests is also about the emotional resonance of being joyful in a like-minded group. “Nothing makes the oppressors more furious than seeing the oppressed having a good time,” said a trombonist who played amidst the protests. An ACTION PLAN is Prepared Based on this Article’s Research: The evidence of large protests increasing is perfect for leading to the creation of a WORLD-WIDE UNITY CAMPAIGN based on a commonality so that the people in every country participate. By working together for a commonality, we can resolve our differences.

Research has shown that the basic common denominators to unite are the “welfare of the children” and “no violence.” The people in every country want their children to grow up in a safe and... Therefore, a new global peace movement is planned as an “EMERGENCY PLAN “to unite the people” of the world – A Global Movement of Nonviolence, For the Children (GMofNV). A GMofNV is designed to unite the peace and climate movements, other movements (ex: labor, youth, and indigenous, BLM, PPC), unite all the religions and spiritual organizations, and unite the mayors and community leaders... The “No Kings” protests in every state may have been the biggest day of demonstrations in American history, a data analyst has suggested. “Based on hundreds of crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don’t have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6m people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday,” independent data journalist G Elliott posted to X Sunday.

For reference, that’d mean Saturday’s demonstrations featured 1-2 percent of the total population of 340 million taking to the streets in more than 2,000 cities to voice their opposition to the increasingly authoritarian, far-right... Based on hundreds of crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don't have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6m people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday. Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/DOEjJ9DA30 The “No Kings” rallies follow after a spate of demonstrations against immigration raids carried out in Los Angeles and the surrounding area last week, to which Trump deployed 4,000 members of the National Guard...

Millions of people turned out nationwide on Oct. 18 to protest actions by the Trump administration and celebrate their Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly. The crowds at an estimated 2,700 rallies across the country included older Americans who protested Vietnam or never protested anything before, veterans who said they didn't fight for a country led by a dictator,... Many said they were upset by the Trump administration's treatment of immigrants and other vulnerable populations. If crowd estimates hold, the one-day "No Kings" event was the largest civil action in the United States since the first Earth Day, 55 years ago. No major incidents or arrests were reported during the day.

Republican leaders spoke out ahead of the Saturday protests, blaming them for the current government shutdown and labeling them "hate America" rallies. In Cathedral City, California, protesters waved handmade signs and one carried a Trump-lookalike mannequin. In Fort Collins, Colorado, one man brought his horse to the protest. Several protesters in Fort Myers, Florida, were seen wearing inflatable costumes, as they lined the side of a highway. The national No Kings protest on Oct. 18 flooded social media with images of retirees wielding signs, Statue of Liberty impersonators and many frog costumes.

Organizers said these protests focused on President Donald Trump's so-called “crackdowns on First Amendment rights,” which attracted over 7 million people throughout 2,700 communities, big and small. That would make it the second-largest single-day protest in the United States. The Oct. 18 protests exceeded the turnout from the previous June 14 turnout by about 2 million, but No Kings still didn’t come close to beating the largest single-day protest in the United States. The Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 would have been No. 1, at 26 million, but they were continuous from June to August, not on a single day.

Here are the top five largest single-day protests in the United States: The latest ‘No Kings’ march has become the largest protest in U.S. history Even for a jaded old political warrior like me, said William Kristol in The Bulwark, last weekend’s nationwide “No Kings” protests were deeply moving. In what was likely the largest single protest in the nation’s history, some 7 million people “assembled peacefully and patriotically” in major cities and rural towns like Macon, Ga., and Plano, Texas, “to protest... Republicans had ludicrously predicted that No Kings would be violent gatherings of antifa radicals who “hate America,” but the rally’s “obvious success” triggered Trump.

He posted a childish video of a jet emblazoned with “KING TRUMP” dumping torrents of excrement on the protesters. In interviews, he ominously warned that he could invoke the Insurrection Act in response to large protests—an indication he finds dissent intolerable. Trump has good reason to be threatened by No Kings, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. His growing authoritarian control of the nation depends heavily on the perception that he’s “the authentic tribune of the people.” The images of millions of outraged Americans filling the streets present “a direct rebuke”... All those “wine moms” and gray-haired people with punny anti-Trump signs reminding America of our democratic ideals, the Right claimed, were earnest, uncool, “cringe”—in contrast to the cynical, macho MAGA ethos. But as idealistic as it was, the massive show of defiance struck an important blow against fatalism, and could help rally disheartened voters to organize to defeat Trump and his allies.

No Kings was a good start, said Ronald Brownstein in Bloomberg, but “to convey the urgency of the moment,” the loyal opposition needs “an edgier tool”: a general strike. Millions of workers across multiple sectors of the economy could withdraw their labor for days. General strikes can create attention, urgency, and solidarity, and were effectively used to defeat autocracy in Poland and Brazil. Discussion of this strategy among Trump’s opponents “is intensifying—as a supplement, not a substitute, to mass public protest.” Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Madagascar’s army takes over as Gen Z protesters topple another government, Trump Administration revokes visas of foreigners who ‘celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s death, and more 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... 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.” Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

The “No Kings” protests were organized to protest the second presidency of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, focusing on his allegedly fascist policies and statements about being a king. They were among the largest protests in U.S. history. Five million demonstrators attended the first “No Kings” rallies on June 14, 2025, and almost seven million attended the second round of rallies on October 18, 2025.

Americans are protesting against Pres. Donald Trump because of his administration’s crackdowns on immigration, his allegedly antidemocratic policies, and his prior statements about being a king. In the time between the first and second rounds of protest, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids intensified, leading more protesters to take to the streets. The protests were largely organized by such liberal organizations as MoveOn, the 50501 Movement, and Indivisible. The term “No Kings” was coined by 50501 Movement.

Was The No Kings Protest The Largest In Us History

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