Thousands gather at Utah Capitol and other Utah cities for ‘No Kings’ protests

In her 80 years, Madeleine Sigman-Grant said she has seen the country suffer difficult times, but she has never witnessed anything that concerned her as much as President Donald Trump and his administration.

Sigman-Grant was among thousands of Utahns who gathered in front of the Utah Capitol on a sunny Saturday — one of the many protests held in all 50 states against the Trump administration’s actions over the last nine months.

The tipping point that convinced Sigman-Grant to attend the “No Kings” rally, she said, was noticing parallels between what’s happening now in the United States and what took place in Germany from 1933 to 1935, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party rose to power.

She said she was “not at all” concerned with attending, even after a man was shot and killed in June during a “No Kings” march in downtown Salt Lake City. Saturday’s rally was much better organized, she said.

One organizer estimated the Capitol crowd at more than 11,000 people. Some of those protesters chanted “no kings” and “hey, hey, ho, ho” in unison, and sang along to the “occult rock” band Graveyard Violet. Many hoisted signs and flags — some LGBTQ+ pride flags and others in red, white and blue. Some flew the American flag upside down, a symbol of distress.

After the Capitol protest dispersed, a handful of protesters briefly blocked traffic at State Street and 400 South, near City Hall. They then began to march back up State Street toward the Capitol, flanked by Salt Lake City police vehicles stopping traffic to let the marchers pass. A police spokesperson said the protesters did not have a permit, but police anticipated a march might start and escorted the group.

Organizers had canceled earlier plans to march after the Capitol protest, said Jamie Carter of Salt Lake Indivisible. She said organizers weren’t sure they had enough staff to manage the crowd — and that it might be too soon after the June shooting.

“Nobody’s probably quite ready for a march yet,” Carter said Friday. “We really want to make this a fun community event — a healing event — and just kind of bring people together.”

Protests across Utah

Eunic Epstein-Ortiz, a national spokesperson for the “No Kings” organizers, said Friday that protests had been planned for 2,700 locations in all 50 states. That included 14 in Utah.

At Ogden’s municipal building, seen in a YouTube video and a Bluesky post, protesters gathered — holding signs with such messages as “When cruelty becomes normal, empathy looks radical” and “We’re here because we love America.”

A YouTube video showed protesters in Cedar City waving signs at passersby at the intersection of Main Street and 200 East. Another video on Bluesky captured protesters waving to vehicles in Provo.

Inflatable costumes were a popular choice for protesters. A chicken and a penguin teamed up at the Utah Capitol, while a zebra showed up in Ogden. KOAL News reported people in cow and pig costumes were among those protesting in Price. A rainbow-colored unicorn and a dinosaur joined a protest in Heber City.

Tammy Woodward, who wore the unicorn costume, told The Park Record that it’s important to find joy while protesting. “It’s really hard to fight with joy,” she said. “They don’t know how to respond to ridiculous. They don’t have room for it.”

In Moab, several hundred people — mostly Moabites with a few visitors — gathered at Swanny Park for a “No Kings” protest, followed by a march down Main Street that extended about three blocks, The Times-Independent reported.

Chanting slogans and energized by drumming, protesters were greeted with a cacophony of car horns sounding on a crowded Main Street. Drivers and their passengers offered encouragement for the most part, although one passenger opted to salute demonstrators with a single finger.

Moab organizer Everett Hildenbrandt, in a brief speech at Swanny Park, said he is often asked, “Why is it called ‘No Kings’?”

People, Hildenbrandt said, “must understand what makes a king. … America tolerates many kings. Some kings are presidents, some billionaires, legislators, corporations.” He said kings “disrupt the economy to make a profit while the people suffer, engage in illegal activity without regard to the rule of law.”

Hildenbrandt suggested that modern kings keep Americans on edge, divided and exhausted to the point we have “no time or energy to question the system we live in.”

The Utah protests started early in Summit County, with residents of Park City and Heber City gathering at the Jeremy Ranch Park and Ride, The Park Record reported.

Suzanne Odell, one of the Summit County protest coordinators, said the mood Saturday was more subdued than in June.

She credited that to incidents of political violence in Utah. At the June “No Kings” march in Salt Lake City, a shooting took the life of fashion designer Afa Ah Loo. On Sept. 10, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at an event on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem.

However, Odell said, “more than ever, we can’t be afraid to come out and show what we believe — which is that we support democracy and we support America.

Another protester, Erin Hirtle, told The Park Record, “this rally is 100% American. … We love living in this country and this is to help us keep our freedom.”

Nearby in Heber City, The Park Record reported, more than 1,000 people gathered outside City Hall. Among them were Nina Frei, 18, and Solea Wood, 15, both from Park City, who harmonized with another protester on Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”

“It’s important to remember our community members who are fearing ICE and losing health care,” Frei said.

“It’s important to show that it affects everyone,” Wood added. She held up a sign that said, “Immigrants pay taxes, billionaires don’t.”

A celebratory mood in St. George

In St. George, an estimated 1,200 boisterous protesters — including some garbed in unicorn and frog costumes — thronged Vernon Worthen Park to mingle and voice their opposition to the Trump administration.

Many at the “No Kings” event were in a celebratory mood. Some beat drums, others sang and many sported signs emblazoned with slogans both colorful and off-color. One sign that drew applause featured a picture of Trump, with the question “Does this ass make my country look small?”

Hurricane resident Daniel Payne garnered laughs for his T-shirt, which referenced Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unproven claim of a link between Tylenol and autism. Payne’s shirt read, “Please be patient. My mom took Tylenol.”

For Payne and his wife, Christina, the best part of the event was rubbing shoulders with people who shared their same political views.

“It’s hard being a liberal and living in a red area like this,” he said. “So it is nice to be around so many like-minded people and to show our support for democracy and the Constitution. We don’t feel so alone.”

The protesters’ laughter and light-hearted banter belied serious concerns expressed about what protesters view as Trump’s authoritarian attitude, widespread corruption and a nation slipping into fascism. Seated in lawn chairs and sheltered from the sun by the trees, New Harmony residents Tim and Pat Pfeiffer threw shade at the president and his allies.

“I’m tired of them ignoring and running roughshod over the Constitution,” Tim Pfeiffer said. “I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of this administration making up nonexistent emergencies and then taking illegal actions based on those lies. It has to stop. This is not the America I grew up in. … This administration is taking our country and treating it as their own personal slot machine. I’m sick of it.”

Nearby, Ivins resident Susan Potter agreed. “They don’t follow the rule of law,” she said. “They make up their own laws to fit their narrative. But what worries me the most is that they are destroying our Constitution. We can always disagree about policies, but not when those policies are unconstitutional.”

Most protestors stayed rooted in the eight-acre park during the event, but a few hundred spilled onto surrounding sidewalks and began marching and chanting in unison: “Hey hey! Ho ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” About a dozen uniformed officers patrolled the park.

‘We need to take action’

At the Capitol rally, Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch, stressed that people came out to protest not because they hate America — as some Trump-supporting politicians have said — but because they love it.

“There’s too much at stake to be silent,” Williams said.

Franque Bains, the Sierra Club’s Utah chapter director, urged protesters to look at the mountains around them — because, she said, Trump administration policies would damage the environment.

“The Great Salt Lake is vulnerable,” she said. “We need to take action.”

Another speaker, former Utah Teacher of the Year John Arthur, said that when speaking to his daughters or his students, he often finds it hard to explain to children what’s happening in the country — as people are taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others fear for their rights and livelihoods.

“We, as adults, have some context,” Arthur said, because of the country’s long history of people fighting for the rights of oppressed and endangered people.

So Arthur read from a children’s story, which he said he wrote Saturday morning, about a “bad orange man” — a phrase his children used for Trump in his first term. The orange man, Arthur said, was infuriated that loud people would not let him be king.

Adrian Rollins, an organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, told Capitol protesters of his time serving as a U.S. Air Force airman in Iraq — and how he realized he had more in common with the people he was fighting than the politicians and corporations he said sent him there.

“Despite that, I took an oath,” he said. That oath, he said, was to defend the country — not a vow to a president or any individual.

Rollins argued that, with Trump deploying military units to U.S. cities, current members of the armed forces must choose a side. He urged troops to “stand with the poor, the oppressed and the working class.”

Carter emphasized Friday that her group, Salt Lake Indivisible, which organized the Capitol protest, also was responsible for a peaceful “No Kings” protest at the University of Utah on June 14.

Her group wasn’t the one that organized the march from Pioneer Park later that day — which ended with Ah Loo’s death on State Street. Carter stressed that no one involved in organizing the Pioneer Park protest is connected with Saturday’s plans.

The nokings.org website also listed events scheduled in Logan, Ephraim, Fillmore, Boulder and Kanab.

Note to readers • Doug McMurdo of The Times-Independent in Moab, Brandi Christoffersen and Clara Hatcher of The Park Record in Park City, and Aidan Mortensen at KOAL News in Price contributed to this report. All three outlets are members of the Utah News Collaborative.