Thousands take ‘No Kings’ protests to Sacramento streets. ‘I hate feeling powerless’
As she prepared to march from West Sacramento the California Capitol in downtown Sacramento, Lynda Jolley wore a shirt she’d had since Donald Trump’s first presidential administration that called for his impeachment.
During his first term, Trump was impeached twice and convicted neither time in subsequent Senate trials. He has been more empowered in his second term. “I just can’t stand it,” Jolley said of the second Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric. “I hate feeling powerless.”
Though she is naturally averse to large crowds, Jolley joins protests because they provide her relief from that feeling of powerlessness. On Saturday, Jolley joined thousands around the Sacramento region who took to the streets to participate in the third “No Kings” protest, following demonstrations June 14 and Oct. 18.
As with the first two occasions, thousands peacefully took to the streets around the Sacramento region on Saturday, a day on which event organizers said more than 3,300 such protests were expected nationwide. NPR noted a claim from event organizers on the “No Kings” website that Saturday’s protest would “be the biggest protest in US history.”
Well over 1,000 turned up outside California’s Capitol on Saturday afternoon, many of them waving signs that denounced the Trump administration, the war in Iran and actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s second term as president.
California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, a billionaire businessman, joined the afternoon’s protest.
“We have a lawless, criminal president,” Steyer said in an interview. “Donald Trump has declared war on blue America and on the people of the state of California. It’s important for us to stand up for our rights.”
Steyer, donning a plaid button-up shirt, khaki pants and a baseball cap reading “California,” said he’s attended all three “No Kings” rallies — one in San Francisco and one in Palo Alto before Saturday’s event in Sacramento.
“We kicked out kings in 1776 for gosh sake. This is 250 years later,” Steyer said. “We don’t want kings. We don’t want this king. We don’t want wars. We don’t want ICE. It’s time for us to reassert our rights and get back to being the democracy that we’ve been.”
Where protests happened around the region
A permit for a “No Kings” protest at the state Capitol allowed for up to 5,000 attendees. But that central gathering represented just one of the day’s events demonstrations with the Sacramento region, with hundreds showing up that morning and afternoon to march, chant and wave signs along busy thoroughfares in surrounding suburban cities.
An estimated crowd of more than 300 people had gathered by 10:30 a.m. at the Lake Natoma Crossing bridge on Folsom-Auburn Road.
“We don’t support a war that we didn’t ask for,” said Susan Cunningham, a vice president of the Folsom Area Democratic Club, which organized the bridge demonstration. “We might be in a blue state, but it’s very red here.”
Julia Garland waved a sign at the protest reading: “My grandkids will know that I did not stay silent!”
Homemade signs included slogans like, “Untrump the world” and messages denouncing war and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“I see almost every day that we have our rights being taken away and trampled,” said Garland, who has four grandchildren, all under 13 years old. “If we don’t resist now, I’m afraid it will be too late.”
Around the same time, just outside the Westfield Galleria mall in Roseville, the sound of honking horns blared almost constantly while hundreds of people took to sidewalks.
Stan Guido, who is 73 and lives in Newcastle in unincorporated Placer County, danced near an intersection by the mall to “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. He described dancing and protesting at the same time as being spiritually and emotionally uplifting.
Kennedy Crosby, 11, made more than a dozen stickers for the Roseville protest, which she attended with her mom and 7-year-old brother, Cash.
Kennedy said she made the stickers for a previous protest and planned to do so again. “People really love stickers,” she said.
One had a picture of a Monarch butterfly, with a message that this was the sole “Orange Monarch we want!”
The Roseville protest had largely dispersed by about 12:30 p.m., at which point another “No Kings” event started in nearby Lincoln.
The turnout in Lincoln was smaller, but hundreds of people still stood out on a busy street corner outside the Lincoln Crossing Marketplace shopping area, holding signs, flags and cheering as people drove by honking.
“I’m angry about this all the time and coming out here and showing a physical presence is just as important as speaking out online,” said Annmarie Azevedo, 49, who lives in Lincoln and went to the protests in both Lincoln and Roseville. “This is amazing. I never thought that this many people would show up in Lincoln.”
Azevedo clanked a cowbell and stood in the crosswalk as people moved from each side of the intersection.
In Sacramento, an estimated crowd of at least 1,000 people congregated in front of the Capitol by noon, an hour before speeches startd.
Nora Bruce, 50, born and raised in Sacramento, said she joined the protest to feel hope as the federal leadership centered on racism and greed. “I’m here because of the collective grief and the pain that our country is going through,” Bruce said.
Bailey McCraw, 17, a Sacramento-born C.K. McClatchy High School student, said she joined the protest because she does not want to be an “accomplice” to the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“They’re not giving them due process,” McCraw said. “It’s scary because they could just do the same thing to any of us.”
Protesters march over Tower Bridge to West Sacramento
Hundreds of people were gathered on the banks of the Sacramento River by 11 a.m., ahead of a march an hour later over Tower Bridge down the Capitol Mall to the state Capitol.
Craig Lundgren from Davis handed out six different types of signs to those who wanted them. “Another stupid war?” one side said, in a reference to the United States’ military strikes on Iran. “Have you had enough yet?” read another while a third called on people to “Support Science.”
But the sign going fastest, by far, Lundgren said, was a white sign with red letters proclaiming the message: “Love your neighbor.” The sign defined people of all different types of race, religious creed, sexuality and ability as a “fully human neighbor.” About 85% of sign takers were picking this sign.
“I thought the war signs would be a lot more popular,” Lundgren said.
Shortly after noon, the march began, led by people carrying three yellow signs which read “No Kings!”, “We are the power” and “Somos el poder,” the last being Spanish for ”We are the power.”
It took 15 around minutes for the crowd to finish crossing Tower Bridge, the flow of those who marched growing thick and steady.
Mark Lizcano, a Sacramento resident and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, marched carrying the flag of his armed forces division. Lizcano disagreed with the Iran war, which he said was not lawful and seemed designed to create profit for military contractors with ties to the Trump administration.
“All the people in the military following his orders right now, they’re in a tough spot,” Lizcano said. “But some of them should stand up and say no.”
Speakers address crowd at state Capitol
Speakers started addressing the crowd near 1 p.m. in front of the Capitol, including Sandra Olewine, a bishop of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church.
“Every day we wake up unsure of what new disaster or atrocity this administration might have carried out overnight,” Olewine said.
“The rule of law, freedom of the press, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution itself seems little more than pieces of paper that are torn up and thrown aside by this administration,” she continued, condemning the Trump administration’s “greed, arrogance, ignorance, and cruelty.”
Another speaker, immigration attorney Karen Pedraza, described a year of the Trump administration violating the civil rights of her clients.
“ICE has detained my clients with no due process,” she told the crowd. “They have unlawfully transferred them to far away detention centers against a federal judges’ orders.”
Immigration agents, she said, “have detained entire families who are following the rightful process set forward by the United States for lawful asylum.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2026 at 2:44 PM.
