Protesters fill New York’s Times Square during the ‘No Kings’ protest Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. | Olga Fedorova / AP
NEW YORK—Responding to the Trump/MAGA attack on democracy, millions of people globally took to the streets Oct. 18 to declare “No Kings” in the United States and to reject the anti-democratic, fascistic, brutal, and chaos of the divisive and anti-human, anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ, racist, and warmongering Trump administration’s actions.
One of the biggest demonstrations was in New York City. Before the march there, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, which helped plan the “No Kings Day” rallies, declared, “This, without question, will be the single biggest day of protest in American history. Since we last did this, people have become far more aware of what is going wrong with this administration.”
The streets of Manhattan were filled with people for over 1.5 miles, from Times Square to Union Square, including side streets that were overflowing with more people feeding into the main march. March organizers estimated early on in the day that well over 100,000 people were marching. Estimates by participants were much higher.
In a partial repeat of dynamics seen at some previous marches, the composition of the crowd was primarily white, though it was gender and generationally diverse. In the eyes of many participants, it showed that a lot of work remains to be done to link up some of the big coalitions and organizations with the anti-MAGA resistance trends that exist among the Black, brown, Asian, and indigenous communities in New York City and elsewhere.
Over 200 organizations officially endorsed the nationwide marches, including 50501, Indivisible, ACLU, American Association of University Professors (AAUP), AFGE (federal workers union), Arab American Institute, Central Oklahoma Labor Federation AFL-CIO, Communication Workers of America (CWA), Connecticut Citizen Action Group, IFPTE, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jobs with Justice, La Iglesia del Pueblo, May Day Strong, National Nurses United, National Organization for Women, UE, Communist Party USA, Young Communist League, and many more. The complete list is available here.
Joe Sims, Co-Chair of the Communist Party USA, who marched in the New York event, said, “This march belongs to the people. It was marked by the absence of big organizational contingents; everyone was welcome.” Contradicting the MAGA Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s assertion that the protests were “hate America” rallies, Sims said, “These marches are pro-the U.S. people, pro-immigrant, pro-democracy, and militantly anti-fascist, anti-Trump, and anti-ICE.”
Communist Party USA Co-Chair Joe Sims with members of the CPUSA delegation as they form up ahead of the march in Manhattan. | Eric Brooks / People’s World
Sims continued, saying: “Trump and his supporters in Congress, over which MAGA has decisive control, supported by a corrupt and anti-constitutional Supreme Court, are undermining the rule of law, and democratic structures and norms in the United States. The people are saying ‘No!’”
A central theme of the march was that, although he swore to uphold the Constitution when he took the oath of office, Trump and his administration are shredding the rule of law daily. A range of homemade protest signs called out the president for implementing many forms of anti-democratic voter suppression, including new identification laws, gerrymandering Black and brown districts to dilute the power of their vote, and violent and warrantless attacks on peaceful migrants and people of color, including young children.
To this attack, many participants pointed out, Trump has added mass firings of federal workers, attacks on Medicaid and Social Security, gutted the Department of Education, deployed the National Guard and military to U.S. cities under the false assertion that rampant crime requires this action, ordered a military buildup against Venezuela without Congressional approval or threat from that country, and used economic tools to punish and control independent nations, many considered U.S. allies, to attempt to force compliance to his demands.
“[M]uch of Trump’s effort to extend his authority across the whole of American society depends on more or less voluntary compliance,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on the morning of the march, “from civil society and various institutions outside of government. And that, in turn, rests on the idea that Trump is the authentic tribune of the people. Reject Trump,” some may fear, “and you reject the people [who support him], who may then turn on your business or your university or, well, you.”
Bouie spoke to the importance of mass action, both protests and boycotts. “Nationwide protests comprised of millions of people are a direct rebuke to the president’s narrative. They send,” he wrote, “a signal to the most disconnected parts of the American public that the president is far from as popular as he says he is, and they send a clear warning to those institutions under pressure from the administration: Bend the knee and lose our business and support.”
In Bloomington, Ind., a university town, people came out with signs bearing slogans including, “Grab him by the Epstein,” “No one is illegal on stolen land,” “Honk for equality,” and others. According to local participant Rob Guardado, “Bloomington is alive!”
Margaret Baldridge / People’s World
Trump is distorting reality with every word he speaks, attacking universities, eradicating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts to repair historical and systemic injustices, and attempting to rewrite U.S. history to make slavery and indigenous genocide into positive events. Trump is attacking indigenous peoples’ self-determination, as well as the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude with the vile exception of enslavement for a crime.
The Black American community, like the LGBTQ and migrant communities and women, are among the most affected by Trump’s racist and anti-democratic attacks on civil society and attempts to whitewash the U.S.’s multi-ethnic and multi-gendered population.
According to Jacob Watkins, the No Kings Day march in Indianapolis was “packed all the way from the statehouse to the street and there’s been a continuous march going around the block. Couldn’t count if I wanted to.”
Both Indianapolis and Bloomington are in a red state, though it takes constant anti-democratic pressure from the statehouse to keep Indiana red. The state voted for Barack Obama, a Democrat, in 2008.
Texas Gov. Abbott activated the Texas National Guard ahead of the “No Kings” protest in Austin to try to intimidate the marchers. While the count of participants in all Texas No Kings Day protests was not yet available as of the time of writing, earlier marches in the state saw large turnouts, and the threat of the National Guard did not appear to depress turnout this time.
Baltimore had what appears to be a small but feisty group of activists expressing their resistance to the Trump/MAGA agenda. 
Following up on Saturday’s 2,600+ marches, there will be a “Mass Call: What’s Next After No Kings?” on Tuesday, Oct 21, 2025, at 8:00 PM ET / 5 PM PT. Sign up here to register.
The challenge now is to continue to build these marches in diversity and inclusiveness, to expand on the “No Kings” theme to deepen the pro-democratic content, including more explicit and effective outreach to and inclusion of African-American, migrant, Asian, and indigenous communities in the political discussions and organizational planning around the next march.
Among the chants called during the march was the old union slogan, “The people united can never be defeated.” As Trump and MAGA dismantle the gains of the working class, won after decades of struggle, to feed the greed of billionaires and their sycophants, the people are learning with each protest how to fight better, what the real impact is of the Trump policies, and the “whites only” and “rich people only” lawless direction Trump is leading the country.
There was no sense among the marchers in New York City on Saturday that there was any exhaustion or lack of commitment. Instead, there was a determination that the struggle would continue to intensify because the Trump/MAGA attacks demand that intensity. The people are not backing down; resistance is the watchword for the day.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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