Amna Nawaz:
Organizers said some eight million people showed up to the third nationwide No Kings protest over the weekend.
Demonstrators at thousands of events rallied against the war in Iran, immigration enforcement, and what they see as executive overreach by the Trump administration.
Judy Woodruff went to the protest in Minnesota to explore how No Kings fits into America’s long history of protest. It’s for her series America at a Crossroads.
Judy Woodruff:
It was a rally with big names and an even bigger crowd. Some 100,000 people marched to the state capitol in St. Paul on Saturday dressed like kings and founding fathers, carrying signs and speaking against an administration they called tyrannical.
Man:
He’s a dictator. He’s an authoritarian. What else can I say?
Woman:
They’re destroying our democracy and choosing to do whatever they want without any repercussions.
Judy Woodruff:
Organizers picked Minnesota as the flagship No Kings protest following the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown here.
For months, federal agents repeatedly clashed with residents, made thousands of arrests and killed two U.S. citizens; 34-year-old Miguel Hernandez, whose parents are from Mexico, served as a marshal during the protest.
Miguel Hernandez, Owner, Lito’s Burritos:
A lot of people are coming together, spreading all these ideas that we — yes, we should stand up against tyrants, but we should make better communities.
Judy Woodruff:
Hernandez and his family own two restaurants in the Twin Cities. And even though Operation Metro Surge has technically ended, he says both residents and businesses continue to struggle.
Miguel Hernandez:
Some of these restaurants last 80 percent of their clientele for four months. Some of their staff members aren’t coming back too. To see that bloodshed on the streets that I call home, the streets that I drive past every day that’s a great trauma a lot of us felt here.
Judy Woodruff:
But Hernandez says No Kings is about more than what’s happened in Minnesota.
Miguel Hernandez:
I’d love for more folks to say, in the face of authoritarianism, yes, you might risk something, but, at the end of the day, you will be helping someone. Step out of your comfort level and push back on something that will ultimately get worse if we do not.
Corey Brettschneider, Brown University:
What these moments call for are citizen action. That’s the thing that works, not the traditional story of the three branches of government, one branch checking another.
Judy Woodruff:
Corey Brettschneider is a political scientist at Brown University. His 2024 book, “The Presidents and the People,” tells the story of five presidents who pushed the boundaries of executive power and the citizens who pushed back.
Corey Brettschneider:
The sort of myth that we often tell that all the framers were believers in democracy is not true. There really was an authoritarian current, an understanding of the Constitution from very early on.
Judy Woodruff:
His first example is John Adams, who used the Sedition Act of 1798 to prosecute members of the press who criticized him.
Corey Brettschneider:
Adams thought the word republic was compatible actually with monarchy. The newspaper editors who fight back against Adams really use that moment in order to turn the election of 1800 into at least in part a referendum on the idea of, is there a right to dissent?
Judy Woodruff:
Adams lost that election to Thomas Jefferson.
Over the years, many presidents have been depicted as kings, including Abraham Lincoln, who during the Civil War suspended habeas corpus, a person’s right to challenge their own detention. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was also labeled a king for, among other things, serving four terms as president and attempting to pack the Supreme Court.
But Brettschneider says authoritarian only accurately applies to a much smaller group.
Corey Brettschneider:
Even if numerically, it’s far from a majority, you really only need one to succeed. In those instances, we largely did fight back. We did recover. But that’s not a guarantee of the future. There’s no law of political science that says citizens defending the Constitution from an authoritarian president will win out.
Adam Kasim, Protester:
I better be out to fight for what I believe and what the founders of America stood for, for over 200 years.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT):
I have been thinking a lot about the men and women in 1776 who announced to the world that they would no longer be ruled by the king of England. Today in 2026, our message is exactly the same, no more kings.
(Cheering)
Judy Woodruff:
Do you think of it in that vein or no?
John Hinderaker, President, Center of the American Experiment: I really don’t. I think that the Democratic Party has a platform that consists almost exclusively of hating Donald Trump.
Judy Woodruff:
John Hinderaker leads the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in the Twin Cities.
John Hinderaker:
These people are election deniers. They have never accepted the fact that Donald Trump won the 2024 election. He was selected by the American people to be the president. He’s entitled to act as the president. Every single thing he does, they automatically oppose. And they — the resistance movement started before he was even inaugurated.
They really know Trump is not a dictator. Trump is not a king. It’s perfectly safe to go out there and call Trump all the horrible names you want to call him, because he is not, in fact, a dictator.
Judy Woodruff:
Cally Proctor is a mom and writer in Minneapolis. She voted for President Trump in 2024.
Cally Proctor, Minneapolis Resident:
We have a president who still is held accountable by things like elections, by things like courts, by things like other branches of the government and systems that are still working and operating.
Judy Woodruff:
Proctor says she saw government overreach while President Biden was in office, especially around COVID restrictions.
Do you think what happened during the Biden administration is equivalent to what we’re seeing now?
Cally Proctor:
I do. And I know a lot of people — I know that a lot of people do as well, but it just — I think that if you talk to people who are at the No Kings rally, they say, why are you here, I think that it would be ironically very similar to my own concerns.
Judy Woodruff:
Cara Schulz is a libertarian who serves on the city council in the Twin Cities suburb of Burnsville.
Around 2009, Schulz attended Tea Party protests against government spending and President Obama’s health care policies. And this year, she was on the front lines as Minnesotans confronted federal agents.
Cara Schulz, Burnsville, Minnesota, City Council:
We had armed masked men coming into our neighborhoods and lobbing tear gas. But that is what government power looks like. It’s just how in your face it’s going to be or not.
We have seen this over and over and over through our country’s history, but most of the time most of us are able to turn away. And we’re at a point where it is so pervasive in our communities that we can’t turn away.
Judy Woodruff:
Still, Schulz has not participated in No Kings protests.
Cara Schulz:
A lot of the messaging is very Trump-specific, as if he is only the problem, and if he’s replaced with someone else the problem goes away.
Judy Woodruff:
She says her biggest concern is that authoritarianism has become normalized. According to preliminary results from a 2025 survey, about a third of U.S. adults believe having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy.
But during Saturday’s protests at least, that idea was nowhere to be found.
It’s a No Kings rally. What does that say to you?
Katelyn Thomas, Protester:
Democracy. I mean, that’s what this country was founded on. And I love this country. I don’t want to see that go away.
Miguel Hernandez:
There’s been a lot of people who’ve done this in the past and it’s kept America from tilting too far in the direction of authoritarian government. And I think it should always be that way. And we should always — our government should listen to the people.
Man:
Thank you, Minnesota!
Judy Woodruff:
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Judy Woodruff in St. Paul, Minnesota.
