No Kings is taking back Americana

“I was hoping we were going to have a bigger crowd than this, especially with the nice weather and everything,” Michael Maria told me. “I’m a little disappointed because the last march, I think there were about 10 times as many people at this time of day.”

At 11AM, the crowd at Portland’s downtown waterfront appeared thinner than it had during the last No Kings protest in October. Some of this was to be expected. In the autumn of 2025, Portland had been at the center of the storm. President Donald Trump had called the city “war-ravaged.” He had signed an executive order targeting “antifa,” and had attempted to send the National Guard into Portland to protect ICE from antifa terror cells. A video of a Portland protester in an inflatable frog costume being attacked by DHS law enforcement had gone viral; the Portland frog subsequently became a national symbol of resistance.

But the spotlight has long since moved on from Portland, a midsize metro that was always a strange and unlikely target. And as the feds invaded Minneapolis, the national mood shifted dramatically. The deranged spectacle of Homeland Security fighting prancing unicorns in Portland had been replaced by videos of Minnesotans being shot and killed.

In Portland, last year’s No Kings protests had struck somewhat of a celebratory note. But the following winter had been long and dark and full of terrors — the occupation of Minneapolis, the military action in Venezuela, an illegal war in Iran. There was every reason to think there would be, cumulatively, a big national turnout. But there were also reasons to think protesters would not show up in force in downtown Portland.

In late January, a daytime labor march passing by the ICE facility in Portland resulted in the mass tear-gassing of peaceful, unsuspecting civilians, including children. In early March, a federal judge issued an injunction limiting the use of force — including tear gas and mortar launchers — on protesters outside the building. In a separate case brought by the beleaguered residents of a nearby apartment building, a second judge also enjoined the use of tear gas and other crowd control munitions.

But just a few days before the No Kings protests, an appeals court stayed both rulings, effectively giving the green light to once again gas protesters. The three-judge panel included two Trump appointees; the decision was 2-1, with the Trump judges ruling in favor of Trump.

Perversely, the growing dissatisfaction with the administration also meant that suburbanites were less likely to drive into the city to join the downtown march, since their own local protest was already drawing thousands of people. Estimated thousands showed up in the ritzy suburb of Lake Oswego. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) chose to attend protests in Gresham and The Dalles, outlying satellites of Portland that lean more conservative.

Maria said that friends who had come with him to previous No Kings protests in Portland had instead opted to join protests in suburbs like Beaverton, having heard rumors of an imminent crackdown in Portland proper. “They were a bit nervous about this,” he said.

But Maria’s worries about the turnout were ultimately for nothing. By noon, as people marched from other neighborhoods to the downtown waterfront, crowds thronged the riverbanks where the cherry trees were in full bloom. The Burnside Bridge was packed with people; just north, over the sparkling water of the Willamette River, the Steel Bridge was also thick with Portlanders chanting and carrying signs. Crowds waited patiently on the banks to march the two-mile route that crossed from the west side of the city to the east and back again. An estimated 30,000 people turned out on the streets of downtown Portland. Organizers estimated that 8 million people protested nationwide.

No Kings in March 2026 broke records, records that were set by No Kings in October 2025. Eight million people is an unignorable portent for the administration. But what exactly does it augur?

In the lead-up to the protests, The New York Times questioned the efficacy of No Kings, asking whether turnout could actually convert to political change. “[B]eyond urging the faithful to turn out in big numbers and remain nonviolent, organizers were hands-off about what they expected from attendees,” said the Times.

No Kings is intentionally a big tent, an ambiguous movement with multiple meanings and fluid demands. The protesters I talked to spoke about a wide range of issues. But I was keenly aware that the question I posed to them was unfair. I asked them to tell me the issue that was most important to them; again and again, they’d sigh and throw up their hands. “How does one choose?” Laurel Barnes, a social worker in Portland, asked me wearily. (She narrowed her top three down to: attacks on trans people, attacks on immigrants, attacks on countries like Iran.)

“It’s the fact that he has lied about everything he’s done since he got into office,” said Derek, a resident of Hillsboro who asked to be identified by their first name.

“For me, it’s the policing of other people’s bodies. It’s the efforts to deport people, whether they are legally here or not,” said Ezra, who also asked to be identified by their first name. “I feel like as a trans person, I need to be here.”

“I’m tired of people not being treated as human beings,” said Albert Gonzalez. Gonzalez was born in Portland, but his family is from Mexico; he cited the mistreatment of immigrants, as well as gay Americans — like his brother — as his motivation to protest.

“Today, it’s the war in Iran,” said Ian Keim, a Portland Mennonite who showed up wearing a shirt identifying himself as an Anabaptist. He believed his religious affiliation required him to be there. “I’m a pacifist, so I have to stand against war, and I can’t sit by the sidelines. If that means getting arrested, look, I won’t raise a fist in violence, but I’ll take them. I have to. That’s part of the deal.”

What did they hope to gain from the protests?

Kaleigh Roehl and Lisa Incognito, two registered nurses, were both tear-gassed at the labor march in January. They were now running one of the tables at the No Kings rally, providing informational flyers about the Oregon Nurses Association. They told me that they hoped that the end result of their organizing would be healthcare for all.

Showing solidarity was enough, Gonzalez told me, showing off the “FUCK ICE” pin on his bag.

“I think right now there isn’t enough pressure on politicians,” said Ezra. “I would love to see our elected officials actually get some things done.”

Michael Maria, a lifelong Democrat who’s helped fundraise in the past, also said he was frustrated with his party. “We really don’t have a plan. As horrible as Project 2025 is, it’s a plan. We have nothing in place that can help us as a guidepost.”

“It’s not gonna be a singular event that’s gonna turn this tide,” said Barnes. For her, the point of No Kings was to fight fascism, and that was something that couldn’t be boiled down into a single issue or a single policy. “We have to keep chipping away.”

The national commentariat might be hyperfocused on the November elections, but in the real world, time and change do not come in two-year electoral increments. And each time, the turnout at No Kings has had real-life implications — unintended consequences rippling out from the mere fact that more bodies filled the streets that overeager DHS agents were looking down on. No Kings has had both subtle and unsubtle effects on court rulings, as well as state and local legislation. It continues to loom over the ever-shifting relationship between the police and the feds. Portland’s politics and the future of the state of Oregon have been inextricably entwined with each No Kings protest.

In Portland, previous No Kings demonstrations had seen a small percentage of the protesters trickle down to the ICE building in the south, and when the perennial crowd in front of the building swelled with people, the evening would erupt in tear gas. Clashes in front of the building became a pretext for the attempted deployment of the National Guard; executive orders and court injunctions hinge on the facts and circumstances of what happens in the driveway of that one building on South Macadam Avenue. Much of the right wing’s apocalyptic fantasy of antifa is derived from snippets of video from the site. The scuffles on a weird little street by the Portland Tesla dealership echo throughout the nation.

But despite the biggest crowds the city had ever seen, reinforcement of the ICE protest was unexpectedly weak this time. As evening fell, about 250 protesters were outside the building. You could mark the ones who had come straight from the No Kings march by wordy signage they brought with them, often referencing “democracy” and “due process.” These protesters tended to wear less gear. But even among the new additions, the majority carried or wore gas masks.

The protest at the ICE building has long been well organized, with designated medic stations and more, but by March 2026 the operationalization had reached new heights. The inflatable costume library was neat and tidy, with frogs hanging on a freestanding closet rack; the pumping station to add air to the costumes was set up across the way. An organizer in head-to-toe black walked around, instructing protesters on how to use traffic cones that were scattered around the premises — if a tear gas canister came rolling toward them, she said, drop the cone on top of the canister.

“We got riot cops here. Do not run, we do not want to trample our friends,” someone barked over a loudspeaker. “Do not scream. Yell ‘medic’ if you are hurt.”

Around 5:45PM, DHS officers rushed out of the building and swerved to the side, tussling with someone on the grass. In the frenzy, they knocked over a stack of board games on a picnic blanket. There was a swarm of helmets, and it wasn’t immediately clear who was a fed and who was a protester. After being barraged so many times with munitions, the most seasoned protesters were now wearing fairly similar gear as riot cops would.

DHS, too, had had a change in costume. Even though they were, apparently, afraid of Hasbro’s lesser-known inventory, the feds guarding the building looked and behaved like professionals. Gone were the gaitered wannabe soldiers looming from the rooftop and overhang. The ICE building was previously guarded by men who were visibly indistinguishable from right-wing militia members; the newcomers were unmasked and in uniform, with patches identifying them as Department of Homeland Security. Oregon restricted the use of masks by law enforcement earlier this month (although the constitutionality of state anti-masking legislation remains ambiguous). But the most salient change motivating the new look at the ICE building is that Kristi Noem, who once paraded on the roof of the Portland ICE building, is no longer Secretary of Homeland Security.

“Fuck you, fascists!” a protester shouted.

“My grandparents used to kill scum like you!” another screamed.

The feds eventually retreated back behind the gate. In the lull after the scuffle, three teenage boys ran up behind me, peering excitedly at the building. Then they looked at each other and seemed to agree. “OK, let’s get the fuck out of here,” one said. They posed for a photo together and then disappeared.

The crowd at ICE, I realized, looked older than the crowd I had seen there after the October No Kings protest. The youngest protesters I spotted lacked protective gear. Protesting has become so dangerous that disposable income is now a prerequisite.

“Yellowjackets! Yellowjackets are coming!” someone shouted. Up the street, a mass of Portland city police on bicycles was forming, wearing neon-yellow long-sleeved shirts under black police vests.

“I mean, what are they going to do?” a young woman without a gas mask asked her friend. “If they arrest us, are they going to put us on their handlebars?”

But the other protesters’ animosity toward the “yellowjackets” became clear shortly after, as a ball of city bike cops and Oregon State Police in riot gear pushed down the street, damming the crowd. As the tumult settled into a kind of equilibrium, at least four officers had now stationed themselves inside the driveway of the ICE building — a driveway that is federal property, the policing of which has been central to the lawsuits around the use of force at the building, as well as the National Guard case, in which the federal government argued that the military force was necessary to protect the driveway. Two of the police guarding the driveway were Oregon State Police, two were yellowjackets. An officer strode up to the gate to check on it, then walked back to once again face off against the crowd.

Oregon has been a sanctuary state since 1987, and local and state officials are legally barred from aiding federal immigration law enforcement. Throughout the long, sustained crisis of Trump’s obsession with Portland, the local police’s relationship with federal law enforcement has been a matter of controversy. But the sight of city and state officials unambiguously guarding the ICE building should raise eyebrows.

“Shame! Shame!” the crowd howled in unison.

Five years ago, I would have been left reeling at the cultural signifiers scattered across this protest. It wasn’t even the frogs and the dinosaurs, it was the easy mingling of the American flag — both upside-down and right side up — alongside black bloc and graffiti about Molotov cocktails. “All cops are bastards” mixed freely with appeals to the sanctity of the US Constitution and due process; the edgiest calls for violence were implied in proud references to military service during World War II. Earlier in the day, I had witnessed a small but loud parade of motorcycles and a fluttering banner reading “FUCK TRUMP” in the style of “TRUMP / VANCE” campaign signage. It was reminiscent of the right-wing caravans of pickup trucks and SUVs that used to buzz through Portland in 2020 and 2021, suburbanites taking sneering thrill rides through leftist territory.

There was once a form of aggressive Americana that was entirely Republican-coded. As No Kings maintains its strength and vigor, those signs and portents are joyfully co-opted by the left. The flag, the Constitution, the heartland, and the suburbs are being implicitly claimed by anti-Trumpism.

Youth tend to reject the things their parents like, but like Gen Alpha’s weird fascination with Starbucks, the mass appeal and cultural dominance of No Kings is nevertheless infecting the most disaffected among Americans.

To that point, I watched a teenager in baggy cargo pants extract himself from a half-inflated frog costume with little hops and jumps. Free from its collapsed remains, he popped his sneakers back on, grabbed a pair of miniature American flags, and scampered to the front.

The kid leaned forward and began to twiddle the flags an inch from a cop’s face. The yellowjacket’s lips pressed in a straight line, his eyes focusing past the stars and stripes taunting him.