When Katia Calix sees the mass deportations unfolding across the U.S., she thinks of her mother and father. Immigrants from Honduras, they lived for years with temporary protected status, one of the immigration pathways U.S. President Donald Trump is now trying to curtail.
“It breaks my heart,” the 23-year-old nurse said of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. “If this had happened a few years ago before they got permanent residency, that could have been my parents.”
Added her friend Adriana Yanez, a 27-year-old server: “It’s terrifying to think people have to go out to work without knowing if they’re going to make it home. Our kids are growing up in this.”
On Saturday, Ms. Calix and Ms. Yanez were among the hundreds of thousands who filled Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for the No Kings protest against Mr. Trump. It was the flagship event of more than 2,500 planned demonstrations from major cities to small towns across the country.
In addition to Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, the protesters took aim at a wide range of the President’s policies: cutting the country’s social safety net, demanding the arrests of political opponents and perceived enemies, and deploying National Guard troops to city streets.
The protests also unfolded on the 18th day of a federal government shutdown, in which the opposition Democrats have refused to pass a spending bill until Mr. Trump’s Republicans agree to add a provision extending health care tax credits that will otherwise expire at the end of the year. Mr. Trump has vowed to use the shutdown to permanently fire more government workers and shut down programs, in addition to hundreds of thousands of layoffs rolled out earlier this year.
It was the second series of No Kings demonstrations and the first to feature a protest in Washington. During the first round of No Kings events in June, organizers avoided the U.S. capital city because Mr. Trump was staging a military parade there on the same day.
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Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy accused Mr. Trump of trying to curb free speech and the right to protest by suing media companies and threatening to take away broadcasting licences, and by sending – or attempting to send – troops into Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Portland, Ore.
“We are not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover – we are in the middle of an authoritarian takeover,” Mr. Murphy told the crowd near the foot of Capitol Hill.
Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who identifies as a socialist, pointed to Mr. Trump’s calls for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to be jailed over their opposition to his immigration raids. Meanwhile, he said, the President’s tax cuts are set to benefit billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Bernie Sanders addresses a large crowd on Saturday during the No Kings Day protest in Washington.CAROLINE GUTMAN/The New York Times News Service
“We rejected the divine right of kings in the 1770s. We will not accept the divine right of oligarchs today,” Mr. Sanders thundered.
In a Fox Business interview on Friday, Mr. Trump bluntly pushed back against the premise of the protests: “They’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” he said.
Republican House of Representative Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the protesters as “Marxists in full display” and “antifa types,” using a term adopted by some left-wing anti-fascists whom Mr. Trump has branded as terrorists.
“I encourage you to watch, we call it the ‘Hate America Rally,’ that will happen Saturday,” he said.
Kalina Spring, a social worker, travelled to Washington from West Virginia to protest Mr. Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care to the lowest-income Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, popularly known as food stamps. Mr. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut more than US$1-trillion from these two programs, vital lifelines for the low-income families with whom Ms. Spring works.
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“We’re already becoming a poor country and he’s trying to make us poorer,” said Ms. Spring, 22.
Her friend, Amy Chambers, said there was “so much hatred” in the ICE arrests, which have seen masked men grab people off the street and hustle them into vans. Agents have also raided apartment buildings, farms, restaurant kitchens and other workplaces. “Why are we tearing families apart?” she said.
Ms. Chambers, 24, was one of dozens of protesters who sported frog costumes in a tribute to demonstrators outside of an ICE facility in Portland, who have dressed up in a variety of animal outfits in recent weeks. The levity is an effort to debunk Mr. Trump’s portrayal of Portland as a “war zone” that needs soldiers to restore order.
Other protesters, meanwhile, waved American flags or dressed up as Uncle Sam and Abraham Lincoln. One group held a dance party to the music of Bad Bunny. Despite the continuing presence of the National Guard and a surge of federal police to Washington, the confrontational scenes of Chicago and Portland were absent from Saturday’s demonstration.
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Mary Debree made one sign with ping-pong balls taped to it that read: “Free balls for members of Congress,” mocking Mr. Trump’s iron rule over his legislative caucus. Another read: “Escalator 1 Trump 0,” after the President blamed the United Nations for deliberately sabotaging his entrance to the General Assembly last month.
“I want to make sure my children are part of the moment, are understanding the fight for democracy right now,” the 41-year-old said as she and her two young children waved the signs. “We all need some humour and laughs right now. And we want to stick it to them.”
A demonstrator reacts during a No Kings protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies in Washington on Saturday.Kylie Cooper/Reuters
Elizabeth Keller, 57, wore a red shirt reading “Aunt Tifa” and “Pacifist,” mocking Mr. Trump’s effort to label Antifa as a terrorist organization, even though it is a broad and somewhat nebulous term rather than an organized group.
“He says that anti-fascists are a terrorist organization, and obviously we’re not that,” Ms. Keller said.
Cathleen Cherry-Mann and Graylin Mann, meanwhile, wore T-shirts reading “Canada is not for sale,” which they picked up on a recent holiday in Montreal.
Both lost their jobs – she as an information technology program manager, he in telecommunications – as a result of government cutbacks led by Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “They have no idea what they’re doing, it’s a bunch of young puppies who think they know everything about coding but know nothing,” Ms. Cherry-Mann, 66, said.
Neither of them is Canadian and they wanted to send a message to the world that not all Americans agree with Mr. Trump – on his annexation threats or otherwise.
“We’re in a bad place,” Mr. Mann, 67, said. “We just want people to know that not all of us are like what’s in the White House.”
People carrying signs and some wearing costumes gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol to protest U.S President Donald Trump and the actions of his administration.
The Canadian Press