Collin County is known for being a Republican stronghold \u2014 but hordes of protesters participated in local No Kings protests against the Trump administration\u2019s agenda. Frisco, Plano and McKinney all hosted protests, and the turnout for all three registered in the thousands.<\/p>\n
Protesters ranging from age 8 to senior citizens waved homemade signs in the humidity along Preston Road in Plano, where drivers honked and waved in support as they drove by. The crowd wrapped around the block.<\/p>\n
About twenty minutes northwest from Plano, families in Frisco brought their kids and their dogs to the protest. The group lined a busy street outside a strip mall with shops and drive-throughs. People sang and danced to Chappell Roan\u2019s popular hit song \u201cHot To Go\u201d blasting from a portable speaker.<\/p>\n
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Hundreds of people showed up to Frisco to participate in the No Kings protest on Oct. 18, 2025. <\/p>\n
And protesters half an hour east from Frisco in McKinney were packed along the North Central expressway, their signs and clothes damp from the rain. A protester wearing a Scottish kilt walks up and down the sidewalk playing bagpipes for the crowd. Others wore blow up suits of animals, a unicorn, purple dinosaur and a baby.<\/p>\n
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Thousands of people turn up in the rain to the \u2018No Kings\u201d protest Saturday, October. 18, 2025, in McKinney, Texas. McKinney is known for being a Republican stronghold and the home base of conservative Attorney General Ken Paxton. <\/p>\n
The Collin County Democratic Party organized the local demonstrations for the No Kings<\/a> rally, a nationwide protest against President Donald Trump\u2019s agenda. Organizers estimated that 5 million people across the country participated in No Kings protests in June<\/a>.<\/p>\n Caroline Hong, who grew up in McKinney, said she wasn\u2019t expecting such a large group of people to show up for protests against President Donald Trump in her hometown.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just impressed that McKinney\u2019s even having a No Kings protest,\u201d Hong said.<\/p>\n Republicans swept the vote in Collin County last year. President Donald Trump won about 55% of the vote, 4% more than he won\u00a0in 2020<\/a>. And conservative Attorney General Ken Paxton, who\u2019s running against Sen. John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate Republican primary, calls Collin County home.<\/p>\n The region is heavily Republican, but it’s also home to Democratic state representative Mihaela Plesa from Plano.<\/p>\n Democrats point to Plesa\u2019s success as an example of partisan shifts in the area. She was the first Democrat elected to the statehouse from Collin County in 30 years when she won in 2022.<\/p>\n Population Boom<\/p>\n Jenny Colombo, who has lived in Plano for 35 years, said she noticed a political shift in the city the last decade as more people moved there.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s such a diverse population here now,\u201d Colombo said. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n Collin County is one of the fastest growing areas in the nation according to the Census Bureau. Many of the new residents are immigrants. Grocery stores like H Mart and Patel Brothers cater to the county\u2019s Asian population, which makes up about 18% of the region according to\u00a0U.S. Census data<\/a>. It\u2019s not unusual to hear people talking in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or another language in public. About a third of the county speaks a language other than English at home according to the Census.<\/p>\n Collin County isn\u2019t the only part of Texas where this trend is occurring.<\/p>\n Democratic Congresswoman Julie Johnson from Texas U.S. Congressional District 32, who represents a small part of Collin County told KERA in a previous interview Fort Bend County outside of Houston and Williamson County outside of Austin are having similar population shifts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou’re seeing incredible diversity, a lot of immigrant communities who are not happy with what the Trump administration is doing,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at SMU, said the diversity population growth brings may not be an automatic boon for Democrats, as Trump won about 48% of the Texas Hispanic vote\u00a0in 2024.<\/a>\u00a0He said the border counties, which are trending red, gave Republicans the confidence that their recent redistricting plan would succeed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe kind of simple equation of minority equals Democrat is becoming a more complicated story than it would have been even 10 years ago,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n New Boundaries<\/p>\n Johnson\u2019s district used to be historically Democratic, covering a quarter of Dallas County and 7% of Collin County. Now, the district encompasses several rural counties.<\/p>\n Texas recently passed a new Congressional district map after Trump called for a rare mid-decade redistricting that would add five Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives. \u201cI don’t think that the numbers that the Republicans are using to draw these seats, they should not be as confident in their margins that they believe they’ve buffered in as they are,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n At the Plano protest, Elise Saunders said the turnout shows people across the political spectrum in the area are concerned about the direction the country is going.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that what this says is even conservatives can recognize that we should not have a dictator,\u201d Saunders said. \u201cWe should not have a king.\u201d<\/p>\n With midterm elections are a year away, voters in historically conservative suburban areas like Collin County could be the deciding factor for Texas politics.<\/p>\n Got a tip? Email Caroline Love at\u00a0clove@kera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Statehouse Republicans used population data from the 2020 Census for the new maps. Johnson said the state\u2019s population has grown since then.<\/p>\n