Sunday, March 29, 2026
Stephen Miller’s Latest Low
Stephen Miller’s Latest Low
“Stephen Miller is pushing Republican-led states to challenge the Supreme Court’s precedent on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This move, which would deny public education funding to undocumented children, aims to weaken the amendment’s protections and reintroduce a system of caste and hierarchy. The 14th Amendment, rooted in the anti-subordination goals of the 13th Amendment, envisions a society of equals entitled to broad rights and opportunities.
The latest front in Stephen Miller’s personal and political war on the 14th Amendment, which began last January with President Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship, centers on the equal protection clause.
In 1982, in Plyler v. Doe, a 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court held that it was a violation of the equal protection clause for states to deny to undocumented children the free public education they provide to legal immigrants’ children, who are themselves citizens. As Justice William Brennan wrote in his opinion for the court, “The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens.”
Miller, whose crusade against immigration knows no bounds, wants Republican-led states to test the court’s commitment to its precedent. My newsroom colleague Lauren McGaughy has the report:
Stephen Miller raised the idea of ending public education funding for undocumented children in a closed-door meeting with Texas lawmakers in Washington last week, a move that would challenge a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent, according to two people who were in the meeting.
Mr. Miller, President Trump’s hard-line immigration adviser, cited gridlock in Congress as he encouraged the state lawmakers to pass conservative legislation on immigration and other issues that are crucial to Republicans, hoping such action would spur on other red states and federal lawmakers.
The effect of this change, if it were to become law, would be to mark about a million children as members of a subordinate class — a lower caste excluded from mainstream society. Here, again, is Brennan: “By denying these children a basic education, we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”
Miller’s push to weaken the equal protection clause raises an important question: Why is he, and the MAGA right more generally, so intent on whittling down the 14th Amendment to essentially nothing?
To answer this, we can’t just look at the origins of the amendment — we have to see it in its larger political context. Before the 14th Amendment was a question of law and legal interpretation, it was a political text meant to bring about a particular vision of American society.
It seems obvious to say, but it’s worth emphasizing anyway: The 14th Amendment is tied directly to the 13th. The 13th Amendment states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It then adds, in section 2, that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Today, as a matter of legal interpretation, we read the 13th quite narrowly; it simply ends slavery. But the authors and ratifiers of the 13th Amendment saw it more expansively. To them, it was the foundation for the society they hoped to build. As Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts said in a March 1864 floor speech in support of the amendment:
Every word spoken, every line written, every act performed, that keeps the breath of life in slavery for a moment, is against the existence of democratic institutions, against the dignity of the toiling millions, against the liberty, the peace, the honor, the renown and the life of the nation. In the lights of to-day that flash upon us from camp and battlefield, the loyal eye, heart, and brain of America sees and feels and realizes that the death of slavery is the life of the nation! The loyal voice of patriotism pronounces, in clear accents, that American slavery must die that the American Republic may live!
To that end, the 13th Amendment was meant to outlaw hereditary caste as much as it was meant to end chattel slavery.
The anti-subordination aims of the 13th Amendment are why, almost immediately after ratifying it, Republicans in Congress leveraged their newfound authority under Section 2 to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established birthright citizenship, guaranteed equal rights, nullified the “Black Codes” — laws passed by the former rebel states to reimpose the conditions of slavery — and empowered the federal government to prosecute violations of civil rights.
President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee unionist whose contempt for slaveholders was outweighed only by his hostility to Black Americans, vetoed the bill as both undesirable and beyond the scope of federal power. “In all our history, in all our experience as a people living under Federal and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted,” Johnson wrote. “They establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race.”
The Republican-led Congress overrode Johnson’s veto. It then began work on a new amendment, meant to embed in the Constitution the provisions and protections of the 1866 law, as well as write its vision of a free and equal society into the Constitution itself.
The resulting 14th Amendment, properly understood, is additive to the 13th. It flows from the vision of Gettysburg and Appomattox, of the Republican Party before, during and after the war: a society of equals, entitled to a broad set of rights and able to pursue their own visions of the good as far as their capabilities would take them.
A straightforward reading of the most important part of the amendment, Section 1, makes this clear. It says, in short: There will be a national American citizenship. That this citizenship will, except in very select cases, be established by birth. That all such citizens will be entitled to the “privileges and immunities” of American citizenship, and that — citizen or no — everybody on American soil is to receive the due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.
As Representative John Bingham of Ohio, one of the chief architects of the amendment, would write soon after ratification, Let it be “borne in mind that this is the government of men representing every people and kindred and tongue under the whole heavens, and that in the inception of our national struggle for representative government, in 1776, the declaration of the people was not that all white men are created equal, but that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the rights of life and liberty.”
The Supreme Court would eventually trim and limit this vision, eventually going, in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, as far as to permit the kind of subordination that the 14th Amendment was explicitly written to forbid. Indeed, this was part of the transformation of this amendment into a merely legal document — of removing its political content and treating it as a bare set of narrow requirements. The court would do the same to both the 13th and 15th Amendments, robbing them of their power to transform the American republic. And it did so as part of a larger political project: to reconcile the white citizens of the United States, to give the white South the power to manage its own “affairs,” and to support a national project of imperial domination. As a promise of equality for all who live under the flag, the 14th Amendment had to be written out of the constitutional order.
Both Miller and the MAGA right are engaged in the same kind of work as their political forebears. It is no wonder, then, that they want to gut the 14th Amendment, which was revitalized by the struggles of Black Americans and other groups throughout the 20th century. Theirs is a project of subordination at home and abroad; of the re-inscription of caste and the recreation of tiered citizenship based on race and nationality. And now, as then, the 14th Amendment stands in the way.
In other words, their project of constitutional change is in the service of a distinct political vision. Opponents should take note. It is not enough, as important as it is, to attack the legal basis of Miller’s efforts or debunk MAGA’s historical arguments. One must also bring a positive political vision to bear against their fantasy of reimposing rigid lines of caste, class and hierarchy.
The good news is that the 14th Amendment, and the larger Reconstruction story, is an important resource of an alternative vision — of an egalitarian society for all who claim this nation as their own.“
Deaths in ICE Custody Are Growing. ‘They Let Him Rot in There.’
Deaths in ICE Custody Are Growing. ‘They Let Him Rot in There.’
“Deaths in ICE custody are increasing, drawing scrutiny to the conditions in detention facilities nationwide. The death of Emmanuel Damas, who died from an infection after being denied adequate medical care, has galvanized opposition to ICE’s practices. Critics argue that the surge in detainee numbers and the use of private companies to operate facilities contribute to inadequate care and poor conditions.
As immigrant detainee deaths have increased, conditions in detention facilities nationwide are coming under more scrutiny.
It started with sharp pain in a tooth. For about a week, Emmanuel Damas sought treatment while he was being held at an Arizona immigration detention center, several detainees later told his family. But Mr. Damas, who had migrated from Haiti in 2024 under what was then a lawful U.S. program, was given only Ibuprofen, the detainees said.
Soon, one of his brothers received a call that Mr. Damas was in a hospital intensive care unit. By the time his relatives were allowed to visit him nine days later, Mr. Damas, 56, was on life support, unable to move or speak but still shackled to a hospital bed. An infection had spread throughout his body, and Mr. Damas had most likely gone into septic shock, according to federal officials and interviews with his relatives.
“He could not even blink his eyes,” one of his brothers, Presly Nelson, said in an interview. “There was nothing there.”
He died on March 2 — one of 13 people who have died in federal immigration custody in the first three months of this year, and one of 46 who have died since President Trump took office last year and began his mass deportation campaign, according to death reports and news releases made public by ICE.
The Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which have been leading the deportation effort, have faced growing scrutiny over agents’ aggressive, militarized tactics on American streets. And the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota this year helped lead to the ouster of Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary.
But as her successor, Markwayne Mullin, takes over, the number of people who have died in immigration detention has been drawing more attention. The number of immigrants in ICE custody has nearly doubled in the last 14 months, and the detention centers have been strained by the surge.
Deaths in ICE custody
Death rate per 10,000 ICE detainees
13 deaths in the first three months of this year
Start of Covid-19 pandemic
A spokesman for CoreCivic, which operates the Arizona detention center where Mr. Damas fell ill, said only that the company takes “very seriously” the death of anyone in its care. “The safety, health and well-being of the people in our facilities is our top priority,” the spokesman, Brian Todd, said.
The Department of Homeland Security maintains that detainees are receiving adequate care. In a statement, Lauren Bis, an agency spokeswoman, said Mr. Damas was sent to the hospital on Feb. 19 immediately after he reported shortness of breath and that ICE had “higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons.” American prisons have long had deficiencies of their own in the medical care provided to inmates.
Many ICE detention facilities are run by large private companies, such as CoreCivic and the GEO Group, that also operate many prisons. The companies say that they provide round-the-clock medical care and proper diets and that they are subject to government oversight.
But a federal lawsuit and more than two dozen interviews with lawyers, detainees and their family members and elected officials depict acute deficiencies that they believe contributed to the deaths. They describe some of the country’s largest immigrant detention facilities as places where disease and illness are rampant and detainees are often denied sufficient food, clean drinking water, medications and medical care.
Mr. Damas’s death has galvanized opposition to collaboration between ICE and local and state authorities in Boston, home to the nation’s third largest Haitian population. “It is reprehensible,” said Ruthzee Louijeune, a Boston city councilor who has helped the Damas family obtain records, plan Mr. Damas’s funeral and cope with the fallout from his death. “It is unforgivable that in the United States a man in detention should die from a toothache.”
The 33 deaths in 2025 were the most in a single year on record since the Department of Homeland Security started operating in March 2003 and took charge of the nation’s immigration and border security agencies. During the four years of the Biden administration, deaths in custody ranged from a high of 11 to a low of three, averaging about seven a year. During the eight years of the Obama administration, an average of eight deaths a year occurred.
Even at 33 deaths last year, the death rate since Mr. Trump took office is still below historic peaks given the record number of people in ICE detention overall. At the start of this year, around 70,000 people were detained, though that figure had fallen slightly as of early February. (ICE has not released updated figures during the ongoing partial government shutdown.)
The annual death rate has fluctuated over the years and was at its highest recorded level in 2004, as ICE’s first leaders were developing detention standards and oversight, , said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who worked on the standards. The annual rate of deaths had been steadily declining over the past two decades, but spiked in 2020 when many detainees died of Covid-19.
The vast majority of deaths occurred in ICE’s network of nearly 200 detention facilities, though five deaths occurred outside a detention center. An ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in Chicago as he tried to evade arrest in his car. Two detainees were shot and killed by a gunman who opened fire at an ICE field office in Dallas. One person was fatally struck by a truck while fleeing; and another died at a hospital after being arrested. (All were recorded as deaths in ICE custody.)
In Congress, the debate has been over reining in ICE’s tactics on the streets. Democrats have held up funding for D.H.S. in an effort to secure reforms, like barring agents from wearing masks and requiring them to obtain judicial warrants.
The deaths in detention have prompted calls for congressional investigations, condemnation from leaders of some immigrants’ home countries and at least six lawsuits. And a federal judge has allowed members of Congress to continue to make unannounced inspections of detention sites, over the objections of the Trump administration.
Officials critical of the detention practices say ensuring oversight over quality of care will become more urgent as nation’s detention system expands. Congress has allocated $45 billion for immigrant detention facilities, more than 10 times the previous budget.
In Southern California, a coalition of legal groups has filed a class-action lawsuitagainst homeland security officials over conditions at the Adelanto detention center. The facility, in the Mojave Desert, went from holding three detainees to nearly 2,000 in the past year, according to the lawsuit.
In more than two dozen declarations filed with the lawsuit, former and current detainees describe constantly feeling hungry, delirious and ill from rotten food, and lacking access to medication and medical care. The documents also include letters from doctors and lawyers detailing unsanitary conditions and the deteriorating mental and physical health of their clients.
Among the families represented are those of Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, and Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, who died within weeks of each other in the fall. In interviews, their relatives said they were frustrated that their loved ones were already in grave condition by the time the authorities had contacted them.
Mr. Garcia-Aviles, a Mexican day laborer who had lived in the country for about 30 years, was picked up in Orange County, Calif., in October. When family members next saw him, he had been hospitalized for more than week. In an interview, Mariel Garcia and Gabriel Garcia Jr. said their father had bruises, broken teeth and dried blood on his mouth and forehead.
In a statement, the Homeland Security Department said Mr. Ayala-Uribe had not been denied medical care, and that, according to an autopsy, he had died after complaining of rectal pain for three weeks. A coroner’s report listed the cause of death as complications from a pelvic abscess, according to his lawyer.
The agency said that Mr. Garcia-Aviles suffered cardiac arrest tied to alcohol withdrawal syndrome, and his lawyer said a government autopsy is pending. The families said they have also sought independent autopsies and are waiting for results.
“I can tell you that the same questions you have, we have,” Ms. Garcia said, describing her father as a hard-working man who had sacrificed for his family and had no serious criminal history. D.H.S. said he had unlawfully entered the country in 2007 and 2008, and court records show he had six minor offenses related to drinking in public or “performing excretory function in public.” His lawyer said he had been in the process of applying for an immigrant visa at the time of his arrest and had obtained a work permit.
At the western tip of Texas, three men have died in a sprawling El Paso tent camp holding an average of almost 3,000 detainees. In interviews, undocumented immigrants at the camp reported poor drinking water, medical neglect and restrooms so soiled that detainees asked for disinfectant so they could clean them on their own. The facility has also been wracked by measles outbreaks.
Homeland Security Department officials this month said they were replacing the private contractor running the camp.
The family of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, of Cuba, is considering legal action, their lawyer, Chris Benoit, said. Homeland security officials have classified his death as a suicide, but the El Paso County medical examiner ruled it a homicide, and the autopsy and detainee witnesses suggest that guards choked him.
In Massachusetts, Mr. Damas had reunited with relatives in Boston. He had legally entered the United States in 2024 under a Biden-era humanitarian program, and worked for his brothers’ transportation company, they said. But his status had been revoked when the Trump administration canceled the program last year, a development his family said he wasn’t aware of until his detention in Arizona.
Mr. Damas, a father of two, was a fan of Haitian kompa music and enjoyed a good party. That was also what landed him in trouble with the authorities, his brothers said. After a family gathering, Mr. Damas was intoxicated and asleep when a neighbor called the police to check on his then 12-year-old son, who had been playing outside alone. Though that issue was quickly resolved, Mr. Damas became agitated with his son and tried to hit him, Mr. Nelson said. Officers arrested Mr. Damas, who had no prior criminal record, according to court records, and charged him with domestic violence.
After one of his brothers posted bail, Mr. Damas was taken into immigration custody and shuffled through facilities from New York to Arizona, his relatives said. His brothers said they knew something was wrong when he stopped calling home from the detention center to check in.
When his mother last spoke to Mr. Damas, in mid-February, he was in so much pain that he could barely talk, Mr. Nelson said. After Mr. Damas was hospitalized, his brothers spent days trying to obtain permission from ICE to visit him. Like the Garcias and Ayalas, the family has paid for an independent autopsy in hopes of piecing together what happened.
“They let him rot in there and die like he had no family,” Mr. Nelson said.
Are you a medical provider who has worked in an ICE detention center? Have you treated ICE detainees? Tell us about your experience.
We won’t include your name or identifying details in a story until we confirm that we have your permission. We won’t share your contact information outside our newsroom. If you’d prefer to get in touch using an encrypted platform like Signal, please read more on how to do that at nytimes.com/tips.
Pooja Salhotra, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Katie Thomas contributed reporting, and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
Allison McCann is a reporter and graphics editor at The Times who covers immigration.
Emiliano RodrÃguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.“
Judge says Trump’s acting US Attorney investigating Letitia James is serving unlawfully | CNN Politics
Judge says Trump’s acting US Attorney investigating Letitia James is serving unlawfully
"A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the Trump administration’s pick to be the US Attorney for the Northern District of New York must stop his work on two ongoing criminal investigations into President Donald Trump’s political foe Letitia James, the New York state attorney general.
The ruling, which says prosecutor John Sarcone is not the valid acting US Attorney out of Albany, quashes grand jury subpoenas Sarcone signed in August that were sent to the New York state government and sought information on investigations James spearheaded and that Trump opposed.
It is the latest blowback from the courts to nullify prosecutors the president has wanted to empower but who haven’t been Senate confirmed.
“Mr. Sarcone is not lawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney.” Judge Lorna Schofield wrote on Thursday. “Any of his past or future acts taken in that capacity are void or voidable as they would rest on authority Mr. Sarcone does not lawfully have.”
Schofield added: “When the Executive branch of government skirts restraints put in place by Congress and then uses that power to subject political adversaries to criminal investigations, it acts without lawful authority.”
The judge’s opinion follows similar decisions from the courts against Trump’s unconfirmed US attorney choices in New Jersey, Nevada, California and Virginia.
Generally, the judges have decided the Trump administration is blowing past federal appointment laws that require eventual Senate confirmation of a US Attorney or, to put the appointment in the hands of the court. In each of the districts where courts have ruled against the maneuvers, the Trump administration had put in place top prosecutors, calling them acting US Attorneys, and insisted in some places they still have power even after the rulings.
“This decision is an important win for the rule of law and we will continue to defend our office’s successful litigation from this administration’s political attacks,” a spokesperson from James’ office said in a statement following the decision Thursday.
'Almost mathematically impossible': Elie Honig on DOJ failing to indict Letitia James again
3:19
Schofield, a nominee of former President Barack Obama who sits in Manhattan in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, was brought in to handle the decision on the subpoenas and Sarcone as a way to avoid conflicts of interest from judges in the Northern District.
In December, James’ lawyers had gone to the court in Albany to try to disqualify Sarcone from criminally investigating James’ past civil case against Trump’s business practices. Sarcone, using a grand jury in the Northern District of New York, had sought records relating to the state’s civil investigations into the Trump Organization’s finances and the National Rifle Association.
In August, Sarcone signed two subpoenas sent to the New York attorney general’s office as part of a criminal investigation into whether anyone’s constitutional rights were violated during the state investigations into Trump and the NRA.
Schofield’s order specifies that those are the two investigations Sarcone can no longer work on in any capacity as a federal prosecutor.
Sarcone was appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi as an interim US attorney in March. When his 120-day term expired, the district court judges did not appoint anyone to the position. In July, Bondi named Sarcone special attorney and designated him as first assistant US attorney. He has assumed the position of acting US attorney.
James sued Donald Trump and the Trump Organization in 2022 alleging they inflated the value of properties to get better rates on loans and insurance. A judge found Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud and ordered him to pay more than $350 million plus interest. A state appeals court upheld the fraud finding but threw out the judgment as excessive. Both parties have appealed.
The state also sued the NRA and its leadership alleging it violated nonprofit laws. A jury found the NRA mismanaged charitable funds.
James has been in the crosshairs of the Trump Justice Department over the past year, which culminated in her indictment by a federal grand jury last fall in Virginia. Prosecutors alleged she made fraudulent statements in a mortgage application to obtain a slightly better loan interest rate on a house she bought in Norfolk years ago. James pleaded not guilty, and the case was dismissed because a judge found the Trump-picked interim US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who secured that indictment, Lindsey Halligan, also wasn’t validly appointed as a prosecutor.
The Virginia-based federal prosecutors then failed to re-indict James. That criminal probe is separate from the ones Schofield ruled on in New York on Thursday from Sarcone."
No Kings Protests Held Across the U.S.: Photos and Videos - The New York Times
A Show of Defiance Across the Nation
"It’s the third time that the coalition behind the “No Kings” movement has organized events to protest President Trump and his policies. In the United States, more than 3,000 demonstrations were planned.
In big cities and small towns across the world, protesters gathered for thousands of rallies against President Trump and his policies and actions, with the self-stated goal of fighting dictatorship.
Demonstrators, including elected officials and community leaders, chanted defiant messages and carried homemade signs that condemned the war in Iran, threats against voting rights and the White House’s mass deportation push, among other topics. Organized by a coalition of activist groups under the banner “No Kings,” it was the third such countrywide protest in the past 10 months.
No Kings organizers said eight million people took part, one of the largest protests in recent history. Their estimates in some cities were higher than those of local public safety officials. The New York Times is doing its own reporting on some of the turnout, but has not independently confirmed the numbers from the thousands of protest sites.
One of the largest rallies took place outside the Minnesota Capitol, where the singer Bruce Springsteen performed “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote to protest the immigration crackdown that led to the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal agents in January.
“They picked the wrong city,” Mr. Springsteen told the large crowd, adding that “these invasions of American cities will not stand.”
In Washington, D.C., some protesters marched to the military base where Stephen Miller, the White House official overseeing the mass deportation push, has been residing. Some chanted, “Stephen Miller’s got to go,” and “We’ve got the people outside your door.”
Protesters marched down small town main streets and thoroughfares, many bundled up to withstand chilly temperatures. Attendees at small gatherings, including one in Richmond, Ky., waved American flags as drivers signaled support by honking. In Atlanta, protesters chanted for an end to immigration raids.
Demonstrators seized upon topics where they said there was overreach by the Trump administration, including health care and the environment.
A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, called the protests “Trump derangement therapy sessions” in a statement on Thursday.
The protests, organizers have said, intentionally lack a single, specific demand but rather seek to harness energy on a wide variety of grievances regarding Mr. Trump and his policies.
Here are a selection of scenes.
Like many silver-haired protesters gathered at Auditorium Shores, a riverside park in Austin, Texas, Gilbert Martinez, a 93-year-old Korean War veteran, sees Mr. Trump as reckless and rebellious. And that’s not aligned with the values Mr. Martinez has spent his life preaching.
He called the attack on Iran a “diversion.”
“That idiot is going to cause a lot of good military people to lose their lives,” he said.
A longtime local business leader, Mr. Martinez is from the Texas Panhandle and says he can trace his family lineage to El Paso. He started Austin’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in 1973, he said, because in those days, downtown was a “backwater” devoid of Hispanic-owned businesses.
“I’m an American,” Mr. Martinez said. “We didn’t just get here.”
Chicagoans gathered at Grant Park, where Saira Bensett, 60, a retired zoological worker, described the turnout as cathartic.
“When I watch the news it’s often too much — the emotions I feel make me feel like I’m alone,” she said. “So I wanted to be here to feel like I’m not by myself.”
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton of Illinois, who is also the Democratic nominee for a Senate seat, told a crowd, “We all know the power of turning our anger into action.”
Many who gathered outside the Minnesota State Capitol said they had been driven to protest by the tumultuous monthslong presence of federal immigration officers in the Twin Cities region.
“We don’t want to walk out our door in fear,” said Chas Jensen, 68, who has lived in St. Paul his entire life and marched with his wife, Kitty Warner. “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but nothing like this.”
“It’s been hell, the last few months,” added Sadikshya Aryal, who came from South Minneapolis with her husband and two friends. Ms. Aryal, 32, still carries her passport whenever she leaves her house, she said.
Attendees said they felt the area had not returned to normal since the immigration operation but were comforted by how many people showed up Saturday.
“As much as it can feel helpless, this shows it’s not,” said Ms. Warner, 80.
The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, gave a fiery address from behind a row of bulletproof glass panels, which underscored fears of political violence. Referring to the president’s oft-stated disdain for Somali immigrants, Mr. Walz said that their grandchildren would remain in the United States long after “the orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”
In New York City, Valerie Tirado said she decided to attend an anti-Trump demonstration for the first time because her son, a Marine, was set to be deployed to the Middle East.
“Trump is using these military men as pawns, just to flex,” said Ms. Tirado, 60, a registered Democrat.
Spouses Michael Bianco and Susan Draper said they had demonstrated in the streets for causes they support since 1968. What struck them most about Saturday’s was how many people their age were on the streets.
“I want to express my disdain,” said Ms. Draper, 77, a retired N.Y.U. urban anthropology professor.
Eileen McHugh, 59, traveled an hour from her Republican-leaning town in Westchester County to protest at Columbus Circle.
“The whole Republican Party has blood on their hands,” Ms. McHugh said. “Bombing boats in Venezuela and schools in Iran is murder.”
While immigration policy was the focus of past No Kings protests in Atlanta, demonstrators on Saturday drew attention to the war in Iran, the toll the partial government shutdown is taking on air travel and a bill Republicans are championing to tighten voting rules.
“They just keep pushing the limits every day to see how far they can take their regime,” said Alan Reed, 72, who attended the protest using a walker and had a rainbow flag draped over his back. “To see how much authority they can grab, until they can cancel our elections.”
Nicholas Phillips, 34, of Long Beach, Calif., cooled himself outside Los Angeles City Hall with a rainbow fan, joined by friends.
Mr. Phillips, who is gay, said he came to protest the Trump administration’s anti-transgender policies and the potential for the Supreme Court to reverse the country’s marriage equality laws.
“It’s important to show up,” he said.
Later in the day, tensions escalated toward a separate group of protesters who had gathered outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center. Tear gas was deployed, and rubber bullets were shot into the crowd. The police declared an unlawful assembly, formed a line, and made several arrests.
In statements on social media, the Los Angeles Police Department said that federal authorities had used nonlethal measures to move the crowd back after protesters were warned not to throw items or try to tear down the gate.
A city councilor, Sameer Kanal, described “a sea of Portlanders” in a park near downtown. Many were wearing the inflatable animal costumes that have made the city’s anti-immigration rallies a viral sensation.
Deana Fredericks, 65, was among a group of women wearing outfits inspired by “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a show drawn from the Margaret Atwood novel that depicts a totalitarian society in which women are treated as property. “We’re concerned about women’s rights, but it’s also gone beyond that,” she said, citing the Iran war and voting rights.
Later, outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, hundreds of protesters gathered, with some breaking open a gate at the entrance of the building. The authorities pushed them back. State and city police officers arrived to further break up the crowd.
Friction rose through the night. After protesters broke open the gate a second time, federal agents responded. Multiple roughly brought several of the protesters into the building.
No Kings protesters gathered at the park at Pier A in Hoboken on the banks of the Hudson River on a chilly morning. A local folk singer, Ed Fogarty, played the classic Bob Dylan protest song “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Noah Schwartz, 54, one of the organizers of a march from Jersey City to Hoboken, used a bullhorn to lead the crowd in a chant.
“We will not stop our fun, our joy, our democracy,” he said. “Say it once, say it twice! We will not put up with ICE!”
Protesters with signs slung over their shoulders streamed into Anchorage’s Town Square Park, as temperatures hovered around 20.
Lynette Moreno-Hinz, a 67-year-old cabdriver from Anchorage, played a skin drum for the crowd. Ms. Moreno-Hinz, who is Tlingit, said she was protesting because Alaska Natives are concerned about federal support for myriad tribal programs. “He’s taking away the money for our Native people,” she said, referring to Mr. Trump.
The No Kings movement debuted in February 2025 on Presidents’ Day. The decentralized coalition had a stronger showing last June, on the day Mr. Trump marked his birthday by ordering the military to stage a large parade in Washington, D.C. The groups reported an even larger turnout in October.
In London, demonstrators carried scowling bobbleheads of Mr. Trump; the first lady, Melania Trump; and Vice President JD Vance. Caricatures of Elon Musk, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem also hovered over the crowd.
Carmen Kingston, a New Yorker who has lived in Britain for a decade, carried a poster with the words “Minab Massacre,” referring to the strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
The war, she said, is “part of a domestics political climate that includes the erosion of democratic institutions, democratic guardrails and unaccountable violence.”
Lynsey Chutel, Sean Keenan, Wesley Parnell, Mark Bonamo, Nate Schweber, Neelam Bohra, Robert Chiarito, Miles G. Cohen, Aaron West, Ramón Ramirez, Tricia Fulks Kelley, Robb Murray, Sheila M. Eldred, Julia O’Malley, Rachel Parsons, Heather Casey, Vi Nguyen, Allison McCann, James Thomas, Gray Beltran and Matthew Blochcontributed reporting, editing and production."
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