Millions of people are gathering across the nation – and in Southern California – for “No Kings” demonstrations on Saturday to protest the policies of President Donald Trump, or what Republican leaders have dubbed “Hate America” rallies.
This is the third mass mobilization and second No Kings Day since Trump’s return to the White House, and it comes amid a government shutdown and what organizers warn is a move toward American authoritarianism.
More than 2,600 rallies are planned in cities large and small, including dozens in Southern California.
In Torrance, around 4,000 people lined the streets and parking lots near City Hall on Saturday morning.
Demonstrators dressed in rainbows, waving American flags and holding signs such as, “No hate. No fear. Immigrants are welcomed here,” and “Respect my existence or expect my resistance.”
Katharine Nhyus with Indivisible South Bay, the group that organized the Torrance protest, encouraged those present to vote yes on Prop. 50, California’s redistricting ballot proposition, which seeks to favor Democrats in California’s congressional elections as a way to counter similar, Republican-led plans elsewhere in the country to boost the GOP.
“The way we make a difference is by doing things like this,” Nhyus told the cheering crowd.
“I think it’s more important than ever to stand up for the First Amendment,” said Lawndale resident Tom Tran, 42. “If we don’t use it ,then there’s a real danger that we’ll lose it. It’s a scary time we’re living in and it’s more important than ever to speak up.”
Palos Verdes resident Klarysa, 47, felt passionately about attending the No Kings protest because of her experiences living in Poland as a teenager.
Klarysa left Poland 23 years ago, but said she is seeing what she saw happen there, happen in the U.S.
“The same depletion (of rights) from every part of the system,” she said. “From women’s rights to education to dismantling the institutions and going after judges.”
A protest along Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach drew around 3,000 people by noon. Some were in costumes. Long Beach resident Louis Mestaz wore a “Cat in the Hat” getup.
“The Cat in the Hat is a crazy kind of character,” Mestaz said, “and right now, that’s what we’re seeing in the White House. A crazy character.”
Even his sign had a Dr. Seuss vibe: “No Not for Us. We’ll not have a king. Not at all. Not at all.”
TJ Hedin, another Long Beach protester, said it was his first time attending a No Kings rally. A PhD student at UCLA, Hedin said that funding cuts and Trump’s attacks on academia are affecting his future as an educator.
“There’s been a lot of fascist behavior by the administration from all the ICE activity with no due process, cracking down on freedom of speech, actions they’ve taken against universities,” Hedin, 34, said. “I think it’s important to show up as a community and hopefully pressure our elected officials and demonstrate that we don’t all support this.”
Nearby, Kristin G., an LAUSD teacher who asked that her last name be withheld, said she has seen enrollment go down out of parents’ and students’ fears of immigration enforcement. Some students, she said, have returned to their home countries.
“We’re close to those kids,” she said. “We know them and we know their families.”
She said protests like these remind everyone that they’re not alone.
“We’re all in this together, no matter what background we come from,” she said, “You feel like we’re in this as a nation and everybody together.”
As hundreds began gathering in Huntington Beach, lawyers Susan Westover and Dale Giali showed up with large cutouts — Giali hoisting one of Trump with the words “clownish” and “traitor” hovering above the president’s shoulders, and Westover with a cutout of Pam Bondi’s head beneath a sign reading, “Lying Lawless Despot.”
Both of them said they were registered Republicans until Trump received the Republican nomination in 2016.
Westover said that the president’s “blatant hypocrisy” and “unconstitutionality” were driving factors in their appearance Saturday, as well as at the last No Kings rally in Huntington Beach in June.
“There are a lot of people who think like us,” Giali said. “Keep the faith. Let’s take our country back.”
In Orange, several thousand people were gathered before noon at the intersection of Yorba and Chapman, near Chapman Global Medical Center. Traffic monitors were trying to manage the growing crowd.
Massive crowds took to the streets during the first No Kings protest in June to protest Trump’s policies, an event that fell on his 79th birthday. The June 14 protests were mostly peaceful until protesters and local law enforcement officers clashed in downtown LA, leading to officers deploying chemical irritants and flash bang grenades at civilians.
In downtown Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, the demonstration is to feature a 20-foot-tall balloon of President Trump wearing a diaper, a 20-foot-wide by 3-foot-tall banner that reads “No Kings for U.S.,” and thousands of handmade signs by participants as they march along a nearly two-mile stretch down Spring Street.
“Every day, it seems like there’s something worse than the day before,” Lorraine Enriquez, president of the Redlands Area Democratic Club, said ahead of the planned protest in downtown Redlands. “We’re standing up as the voice of our community.”
“We’re in the Inland Empire, an economically suppressed community,” Enriquez said. “People are not able to pay their groceries, their rent, they’re about to lose their subsidies for their health insurance. We can’t believe the rule of law has gone out the door.”
Rallies also were held in major European cities, where gatherings of a few hundred Americans chanted slogans and held signs and U.S. flags.
While the earlier nationwide protests this year — against Elon Musk’s cuts in spring, then to counter Trump’s military parade in June — drew crowds, organizers say this one is building a more unified opposition movement. Top Democrats such as Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders are joining in what organizers view as an antidote to Trump’s actions, from the administration’s clampdown on free speech to its military-style immigration raids.
“There is no greater threat to an authoritarian regime than patriotic people-power,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, among the key organizers.
As Republicans and the White House dismiss the protests as a rally of radicals, Levin said their own sign-up numbers are growing. Organizers said rallies are being planned within a one-hour drive for most Americans.
Trump was away from Washington at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Saturday.
“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” Trump said in a Fox News interview airing early Friday, before he departed for a $1 million-per-plate MAGA Inc. super PAC fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Protests were expected to occur nearby.
Republicans have sought to portray participants in Saturday’s rallies as far outside the mainstream of American politics, and a main reason for the prolonged government shutdown, now in its 18th day.
From the White House to Capitol Hill, GOP leaders disparaged the rallygoers as “communists” and “Marxists.”
They say Democratic leaders, including Schumer, are beholden to the far-left flank and willing to keep the government shut down to appease those liberal forces.
“I encourage you to watch — we call it the Hate America rally — that will happen Saturday,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said, listing groups including “antifa types,” people who “hate capitalism” and “Marxists in full display.”
In a Facebook post, former presidential contender Sanders said, “It’s a love America rally.”
“It’s a rally of millions of people all over this country who believe in our Constitution, who believe in American freedom and,” he said, pointing at the GOP leadership, “are not going to let you and Donald Trump turn this country into an authoritarian society.”
Staff writers Madeline Armstrong, Christina Merino, and Sydney Barragan and the Associated Press and City News Service contributed to this report.