Washington DC—Thousands of citizens from across the DC-Maryland-Virginia region rallied at Memorial Circle near Arlington National Cemetery, for the third No Kings protest (NK3), the site where Trump plans to build the world’s largest arch, in honor of himself. They performed a skit with paper-mâché caricatures lampooning Trump and six of his most notorious staff and cabinet members. They spent weeks building the caricatures which included Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pat Bondi, White House Chief Advisor Steve Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel,White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Vice President JD Vance.
The skit called out each cabinet member for their most egregious actions over the past year. Several of the organizers spoke about how the power of people was the strongest column and still standing up to authoritarianism.
Then they walked across Memorial Bridge into DC in a challenge to the rising autocratic rule of President Trump, his cabinet, and corrupt influencer billionaires. The NK3 march carried giant banners heralding their approach, “No Kings,” “Join Us,” and “Arrest Them,” referring to those protected by a cover up of the Epstein files.
Just behind the banners came the seven cartoonish paper-mâché heads, posted high on wooden stakes: one of Trump, and six of his most discredited appointees and cabinet members. The life-like heads bobbed like drifters among the sea of protesters carrying them across Memorial Bridge.
A team of drummers set the pace as they walked across the Memorial Bridge into Washington DC. They walked past the Lincoln Memorial, in the spirit of many social justice rallies of the past, including Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights rally where he delivered his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. They sang and chanted until they reached their goal at the Washington Monument where several spoke.
Susan Douglas, Press Liaison of Third Act, Northern Virginia, said, “We unite to say, we the people have the power. After months of increasing lies, corruption, alarming cruelty, and willful disregard for the rule of law, we march to reject the current regime. No ICE. No war. No Kings.”
The Third Act DMV organizers partnered with a network of 20 groups to organize the protest. Their action was one of over 3200 events held across the nation with numbers of attendees thought to be have exceeded the No Kings 2 March held on October 18 of last year. The first No Kings March was in June 2025.
No Kings III was mirrored in cities internationally as well as the citizens of other Western nations have felt the tremors of the democratic collapse in the US. Trump’s policies have caused economic and social insecurity abroad. The US-Iran War has caused global energy prices to spike by an average of 25% globally in the month since Trump started the reckless war on February 28. Trump’s shutdown of USAID in February of 2025, an agency which provided assistance to many developing nations, had devastated African and Asian nations.
The NK3 goal was to reach or surpass at least 12 million participants nationwide, or reach a 3.5% population participation rate. This number is thought to be a key indicator in whether or not an authoritarian regime can sustain its power grip and influence over a population.
This regime has by design upended so many of the institutions and the guardrails of liberal democracy of the US republic, that it may require a generation to fix it, even if the Trump MAGA party loses the midterms. Opposition to the regime grew slowly at first but gradually it accelerated because with each outrage, it created a vortex of anger and rage resistance to its policy injustices. The anger and rage has been building slowly and flowing silently like blood through the veins of the citizens. But across the nation on NK3, is was on view for all to see in major metropolitan areas as well as many suburbs and towns.
According to the Center for Progress, if 3.5% of a population engages in sustained peaceful political opposition towards a government, they can effectively challenge and make the government change course. “No government around the world has withstood a challenge when 3.5 percent of its population peacefully mobilized against it,” according to a study conducted by professor Erica Chenoweth of Harvard University.
In January, 2025, Trump and his cabinet began to take down democratic institutions and began breaching long established norms. They had expected to overwhelm the citizenry with their government agency takeovers and takedowns. They tried to exhaust citizens and courts with their power-playing against the rule of law by disregarding individual rights and courts’ legal orders. They flooded the streets with masked lawless Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to subdue resistance. All of their actions are the mark of authoritarian regimes that came before him.
Trump believed his cabinet could dissuade and silence opposition voices. But, as it has done many times before, Trump and his cabinet and his billionaire supporters have underestimated what they could accomplish.
In the US-Iran War, a lawless war, they grossly underestimated the will of Iran’s resistance to their attempt to defeat it. Now the war has stumped Trump and his War machine as he clamors to see it through. As a result of ICE terror roundups, kidnappings, and disappearances across blue-States’ cities, Trump has seen his popularity plummet, as more and more mobilize against his immigration policies.
His on-again off-again tariffs and trade wars, his threats to take over foreign countries such as Greenland and Canada, and his attacks on the press and US political opposition, have served to make him appear weak and impotent. His near complete takedown of environmental regulations and deregulation of oil and gas companies has mobilized ecological groups as well.
Trump’s tariffs caused inflation on consumer goods and that was one thing. His pop-up war on Iran further devastated the world economy frayed alliances abroad, and further set back the home economics of every working American dependent on affordable fuel prices with more inflationary consumer costs.
No Kings 3 was a coming out of millions to say, in effect, they are not allowing Trump’s policies to take down the country, they are not afraid of standing up to he and his enabler billionaires, and they aren’t going to stop fighting against his policies no matter how desperate he becomes in enforcing them.
March 29, 2026 update: NK3 organizers estimated over 8 million took part in the NK3 rallies and marches across the United States. Actions were mirrored internationally on five continents.
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