Over 100,000 people took to the streets of New York City with signs, flags, and costumes to participate in the nationwide ‘No Kings’ protest against the Trump administration.
Americans gathered across the country to express their anger over President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to major cities across the United States, and the growing, aggressive ICE arrests around the country.
Under the flashy and ever-changing billboards advertising shows and clothing brands, protesters marched downtown holding homemade signs and banners and chanting anthems such as ‘hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!’
Protesters filled Father Duffy Square at 11 a.m., crowding the streets even by Times Square’s standards. For nearly the first hour, people could barely walk forward due to the sheer number of protesters.
With a slow start, the protest eventually made its way from 7th Avenue and 47th Street to Union Square via Broadway where it eventually ended around 3 p.m.
A demonstrator clad in mime makeup poses during the march on Saturday, Oct. 18th, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
A man holds onto a signpost as demonstrators march past on Saturday, Oct. 18th, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
“The march doesn’t have a lot of goals, but what it has is a lot of camaraderie and a lot of collaboration, because we all have a similar view on where the country is going, and we need to change that,” protester and Brooklyn native Amy Winn said.
A protester leads chants during the march on Saturday, Oct. 18th, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
The protest follows the first nation-wide No Kings Day, on President Trump’s birthday on June 14.
‘No Kings’ is a series of peaceful protests against what organizers say is an authoritarian power grab by President Trump. “This country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People — the people who care, who show up, and who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity,” their website says.
Organizers pointed to the government shutdown, the cuts in healthcare, the shutting down of the Department of Education, the dissolution of environmental protection programs, and the unconstitutional uses of federal power.
“We’re joining with millions of Americans around the country and probably tens of millions of others around the world to protest the Trump administration’s policies against immigrants, against people who receive food stamps, cuts in Medicaid, and Medicare. We’re here fighting the restrictions on democracy,” National Co-chairman of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) Joe Sims said.
A man braces a large sign on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
“Donald Trump broke collective bargaining rights for 1.2 million workers,” Sims said, “in addition to laying off hundreds of thousands of government workers and firing tens of thousands.”
Trump banned the bargaining rights of multiple agencies on Aug. 28, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the International Trade Administration, and the Patent and Trademark Office within the Department of Commerce.
An aid station worker passes out water bottles on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
Among the many signs and banners was a pirate flag featuring a smiling skull and crossbones wearing a straw hat. The flag comes from the 1,100-episode anime, One Piece, which Gen Z activists have adopted as a symbol of liberation and resistance to oppression and, in America’s case, fascism. It was one of many symbols borrowed from other protests around the world.
Most recently, the One Piece flag was used by Gen Z protesters while overthrowing the government in Madagascar.
“So I decided to take that symbol, put it on the American flag that my family has flown outside my house for the last 25 years, and fly it again out here,” protester JK Larkin said, motioning to the American flag he wore with the pirate face drawn over it.
A couple poses during the march on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
A man wearing an inflatable unicorn costume during the march on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Sam Brule
Protesters also wore costumes — mainly inflatable sharks and frogs. This stemmed from activists starting ‘Operation Inflation’ in Portland, OR. Protesters wore inflatable animal and cartoon character costumes to protest ICE and, according to their website, “help deflate (pun intended) the tensions surrounding protests.”
Shannon Kennedy and her fiancé, [Louie Salvagno], both wearing green frog hats and yielding ‘frogs against the machine’ signs, came from Connecticut to attend the march.
“They feel like [the frogs] can stand up to them, and people are more interested in what the frog has to say than they are what ICE has to say. The frogs represent getting rid of ice and in its place, more frogs,” Kennedy said. “We want to keep it weird.”
Winn said the nearly 7 million people who gathered across the nation, though different, shared a concern about where the country is going.
“The advantage of this [protest] is that it is unifying, and we know that the target of our outrage cares very, very much about quantity, regardless of quality,” Winn said. “He cares about ratings, he cares about popularity, and this is going to hit him where it hurts, because all of us agree we may not be in perfect alignment, but we’re in perfect alignment against you and your administration.”
A man holds a decapitated Trump mask that wears Hitler’s mustache. Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
A couple with a “DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION” sign sits at a restaurant following the march on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams
Signs and an American flag lay on the ground at the march on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Photo by Dove Williams