{"id":370602,"date":"2026-03-29T00:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T00:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/370602\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T00:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T00:37:09","slug":"minnesota-centre-stage-as-thousands-of-anti-trump-rallies-take-place-across-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/370602\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota centre stage as thousands of anti-Trump rallies take place across US \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Demonstrators decrying US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s policies took \u200cto city streets across the country on Saturday in the third edition of the \u201cNo Kings\u201d rallies, with Minnesota taking centre stage. Organisers are hopeful it will be the largest single-day nonviolent protest in US<\/a> history.<\/p>\n

More than 3,100 events have been registered in all 50 states, with more than nine million people expected to participate. Singers Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez were due to headline a rally at the state capitol in Minnesota<\/a>, where upward of 100,000 people are expected to gather in an area that became a flashpoint over Trump\u2019s crackdown on illegal immigration and the incursion of federal immigration agents into Democratic-led urban centres.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s aggressive immigration enforcement actions were just one item on a long list of protesters\u2019 grievances that also included the war in Iran and the Trump administration\u2019s rollback of transgender rights.<\/p>\n

In New York<\/a> City, Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, described Trump as the nation\u2019s \u201cbully-in-chief\u201d and said Minneapolis residents \u201cforced the wannabe king to withdraw his shock troops\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"ProtestersProtesters gather in front of Los Angeles City Hall during the ‘No Kings’ national day of protest against US president Donald Trump. Photograph: Etienne Laurent\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cThey want us all to be afraid to protest,\u201d she said during a news conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want us to be afraid that there\u2019s nothing we can do to stop them. But you know what? They are wrong \u2013 dead wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other major rallies are taking place \u200bin Los Angeles and Washington, but two-thirds of the events are happening outside major city centres, a near-40 per cent jump for smaller communities from the movement\u2019s first mobilisation last June, organisers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defining story \u2060of this Saturday\u2019s mobilisation is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,\u201d said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, the group \u200cthat \u200cstarted \u200bthe No Kings movement last year and led planning of Saturday\u2019s events.<\/p>\n

\"DemonstratorsDemonstrators in Chicago march against the Trump administration. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

With midterm elections later this year in the US, organisers say they have seen a surge in the number of people organising anti-Trump events and registering to \u2060participate in deeply Republican states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Utah.<\/p>\n

Competitive \u200bsuburban areas that have helped decide national elections are seeing \u201chuge\u201d increases in interest, \u200bGreenberg said, citing as examples Pennsylvania\u2019s Bucks and Delaware counties, East Cobb and Forsyth in Georgia, and Scottsdale and Chandler in Arizona.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters who decide elections, the people who do the door-knocking \u200cand the voter registration and all of the work \u200bof turning protests into power, they are taking to the streets right now, and they are furious,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"ActivistsActivists display large puppets of political leaders ahead of the No Kings March in Washington DC on Saturday. Photograph: Luke Johnson\/European Pressphoto Agency <\/p>\n

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement dismissed \u2060the rallies as \u201cTrump Derangement Therapy Sessions\u201d of interest only to journalists.<\/p>\n

In \u2060northern Virginia just outside Washington, DC, \u200bseveral hundred people began gathering on Saturday close to Arlington National Cemetery before a planned march across the Potomac River to the capital city\u2019s National Mall.<\/p>\n

Some passing drivers honked their horns in support but others slowed down to berate the protesters.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re all idiots,\u201d one man shouted from his car.<\/p>\n

John Ale, 57, a retired air-conditioning and heating contractor, said he drove 20 minutes from his home in Virginia to join the march.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s happening in this country is unsustainable,\u201d he said. \u201cThe middle class, the little people, can\u2019t afford to live anymore. And he (Trump) is breaking the norms, the things that made us function as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The No Kings movement launched last year on Trump\u2019s birthday, June 14, drew an estimated \u200cfour to six million people across \u2060roughly 2,100 sites nationwide. The second mobilisation in October involved an estimated 7 million participants in more than 2,700 cities, according to a crowd-sourcing analysis published by prominent data journalist G. Elliott Morris.<\/p>\n

That October event was largely fuelled by a backlash against a government shutdown, an aggressive crackdown \u200cby federal immigration authorities, and the deployment of National Guard troops to major cities. Saturday\u2019s events come amid what organisers said was a call to action against the bombardment of Iran by the US and \u200bIsrael, a conflict that is now four weeks old.<\/p>\n

Morgan Taylor, 45, attended the Washington protest with her 12-year-old son, \u200band said she was enraged by Trump\u2019s military action in Iran, which she called a \u201cstupid war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s attacking us,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need to be there.\u201d – Reuters and AP <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demonstrators decrying US president Donald Trump\u2019s policies took \u200cto city streets across the country on Saturday in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,43,40,38,41,39,90],"class_list":["post-370602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}