Anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protests rock US cities
Demonstrators decrying US President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts, war in Iran and other policies took to streets across the country on Saturday in the third round of the ‘No Kings’ rallies. More than 3,200 events had been planned in all 50 states, after the two previous nationwide events attracted millions.
Large rallies took place in New York, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, but two-thirds of ‘No Kings’ events were happening outside major cities, organisers said.
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In Minnesota, a flashpoint in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, a massive rally was held outside the state capitol in Saint Paul. Many held aloft posters bearing photos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, US citizens fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis this year.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024, told the crowd that their resistance to Trump and his policies made them “the heart and soul” of everything good about the US. “They call us radicals,” Walz said.
“You’re damn right, we’ve been radicalised — radicalised by compassion, radicalised by decency, radicalised by due process, radicalised by democracy and radicalised to do
all we can to oppose authoritarianism.”
US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Trump critic who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, also addressed the event in Minnesota. Musician Bruce Springsteen performed his song “Streets of Minneapolis” — a ballad criticising Trump’s immigration crackdown and lamenting the deaths of Good and Pretti.
