As the Trump administration spends $1 billion each day on a war in Middle East that a majority of Americans don’t support and fails to address the affordability crisis back home, Orlando is set to see at least three peaceful “No Kings” rallies this Saturday, held in protest of what organizers call “abuses of power” by the Trump administration.
It’s the third day of No Kings protests since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, following earlier rallies in June and October. According to national organizers with the No Kings coalition, more than 3,100 protests across all 50 U.S. states are currently planned for this upcoming Saturday, including dozens in rural areas and Republican-controlled states.
“When I stood at the first No Kings rally, we were fighting to protect democracy at home, against federal agents and troops that were deployed on American streets, against a government that was manufacturing a crisis to justify using its power against its own people,” said Naveen Shah of Common Defense, a veteran-led organization dedicated to protecting democracy and combating authoritarianism.
“Today we’re still fighting that same fight,” Shah acknowledged on a press call Thursday, “but now that manufactured crisis has gone global.”
Older Orlandoans are organizing a No Kings protest at Baldwin Park, just in front of the Westminster complex, specifically for seniors, and encourage attendees to bring “your walker, your signs, and a friend to let northeast Orlando (almost Winter Park) know your point of view.”
Meanwhile, another No Kings protest will be held at noon at City Hall in downtown Orlando, and a third protest will be held at Baldwin Park, near New Broad Street, at 5:30 p.m. Additional protests — all advocating a commitment to “nonviolence” — are taking place this Saturday in Kissimmee, Clermont, Heathrow, Sanford, Davenport and Orange City.
- No Kings Baldwin Park Seniors: 10 a.m., Baldwin Park at 2661 Lake Baldwin Lane. More info here.
- No Kings downtown Orlando: Noon, Orlando City Hall at 400 S. Orange Ave. More info here.
- No Kings Baldwin Park: 5:30 p.m., Baldwin Park at 4202 Pelican Lane. More info here.
The last two No Kings protests in Orlando drew hundreds of attendees ranging in age and ethnicity, wielding handmade signs denouncing President Donald Trump, tech billionaire (and “Department of Government Efficiency” adviser) Elon Musk, and efforts to instill fear in immigrant families and undermine LGBTQ+ rights.
“The Trump administration made a terrible miscalculation that we would cower and capitulate in response to their chaos and cruelty, that we would put up with our healthcare getting slashed, with gas prices and utility bills going through the roof, while they shower billionaires in tax cuts,” said Katie Bethell of MoveOn, a progressive advocacy group and member of the national No Kings coalition.
As the Trump administration ignores court decisions and seeks to “silence dissent” through proposed changes to the voting system and “rigging electoral maps,” according to No Kings organizers, Deirdre Schifeling of the American Civil Liberties Union said it is critical for the public to stand up to Trump’s “abuses of power.”
“We do not recognize a country where masked, unidentified men violently kidnap people off the street, where ICE agents shoot and kill peaceful protesters with impunity, where the President bombs other countries with no authorization and acts as if Congress is a nice-to-have, not a must-have branch of government,” said Schifeling. “It is our right and our duty to challenge these unprecedented threats to our rights and liberties and defend the future of our country.”
“It is our right and our duty to challenge these unprecedented threats to our rights and liberties and defend the future of our country.”
Deirdre Schifeling, ACLU
Even in Florida — a Republican-controlled state that has fallen in line with Trump’s mass deportation agenda, war on public education and anti-DEI directives — the cracks of the Trump administration’s power are beginning to show.
In a special election this week, Democrat Emily Gregory narrowly flipped a state House seat in a formerly Republican-represented district in West Palm Beach that includes Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort. Former electricians union official and Democrat Brian Nathan, a U.S. Navy Veteran, also narrowly won a state Senate seat this past Tuesday in a Republican-leaning Tampa district, surprising even leadership within the Florida Democratic Party.
“I am thrilled to congratulate Senator-elect Brian Nathan on this shocking victory,” FDP chair and former state agricultural commissioner Nikki Fried said in a statement Tuesday night.
Although the state Democratic Party opted not to prioritize or pay much attention to Nathan’s race ahead of election day, according to Politico, Nathan was backed by organized labor — as a former organizer for the IBEW Local 915 — and focused on the most important issue on the minds of Floridians today: affordability.
He chastised the failure of lawmakers in Tallahassee to address affordability challenges themselves. “Wages remain stagnant while rents and insurance rates skyrocket. Homeownership is slipping out of reach. And rather than tackling these urgent challenges, too many legislators are distracted by divisive culture wars,” his campaign website reads.
The national No Kings coalition expects turnout this Saturday to surpass the massive waves of people that have shown up to the last two national anti-Trump protests.
“With over 3,100 events and counting on the map, the third No Kings is on track to be one of the largest single-day nonviolent nationwide protests in U.S. history,” the coalition said in a statement. “Millions will be standing together at community, nonviolent demonstrations to say: No Illegal Wars, No ICE, and No Kings.”
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