The “No Kings” nationwide demonstration that has come to symbolize the resistance to the Trump administration is returning March 28, this time with a flagship event in the Twin Cities.
Organizers with Indivisible, the grassroots group behind No Kings, said it was only suitable to stage a marquee march in Minnesota in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti by immigration agents Saturday and the shooting death of Renee Good weeks earlier. Other demonstrations are again expected across the country.
Minnesota has become ground zero in the fight between the left and the White House, which dispatched its largest-ever immigration enforcement deployment to the state, with 3,000 agents.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office a year ago, Indivisible has organized nationwide actions, and each march has ballooned in size from the previous one. Indivisible estimated that 7 million people marched in No Kings rallies across the country in October.
“No Kings 3 is very clearly about the secret police force terrorizing Americans and killing some of them,” Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, said in an interview.
Levin said that since Pretti’s death, he has seen an outpouring of people stepping forward and asking what they could do to show support.
On Monday, Indivisible hosted an online training session for how to peacefully and lawfully monitor immigration agents, and it drew 200,000 viewers, the organization said. It announced that additional nationwide training sessions were to come, the next one on Feb. 5.
“This is orders of magnitude more than for any training that we’ve ever done before,” Levin said. “And it is this interesting period where we’re seeing the most inhuman, sadistic stuff coming out of this regime. And at the same time, there is just a mass display of beautiful humanity.”
The administration faces fierce public backlash to its actions Saturday with Pretti. Top Trump officials rushed to deem him a “domestic terrorist” and said he was intent on doing mass harm to federal officers. Witness videos and accounts contradicted the administration’s narrative.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is now under scrutiny, with two Republican lawmakers calling for her firing. Already, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino has been sidelined. Bovino arrived in Minnesota empowered by the administration, despite having been reprimanded by federal judges in Chicago over his agents’ — and his own — tactics.
“Undeniably, Trump is weaker now than he was before, and also weaker authoritarians who understand they’re on the verge of losing power lash out and do a lot more damage,” Levin said. “The only thing that works to push back against that is nonviolent, massive, organized people power that needs to grow.”
