Updated March 28, 2026, 11:20 p.m. ET
More than 100 No Kings protests are planned across Michigan on Saturday, March 28, as part of a nationwide day of action opposing President Donald Trump and his administration.
The protests are part of a broader national effort organizers say includes thousands of events across the country.
The Free Press is covering the protests taking place in Detroit and surrounding areas and will provide updates as they take place. Refresh this page for the latest.
A crowd of 1,500 or more
The rally at Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit, started 3 p.m., with the aim of amplifying Black community voices, with speakers including various union and faith leaders. By one crowd estimate, at least 1,500 people showed up.
Crowd chants: ‘From Detroit to D.C.’
Speakers in Clark Park in southwest Detroit called for policy changes from the highest levels of federal government to local institutions, asking: Detroit police to release unedited video in use of force situations, the president to stop his actions in Iran and with immigration enforcement, and for college and city institutions to divest from businesses with ties to Israel.
More than 600 people listened in the park.
But by about 2:30 p.m., a slimmed-down crowd of about 200 took to the streets to march. Families and passersby stopped near their cars on Vernor to record video of them with their phones.
The crowd chanted: “From Detroit to D.C., we will fight until we’re free.”
— Darcie Moran
Remarks from the state GOP convention
U.S. Rep. John James, a Republican candidate for Michigan governor who attended the Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention in Novi, told reporters the No Kings demonstrations are “really rich,” given the facts, and “just another manifestation of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The phrase used by Trump supporters is a made-up term intended to describe a condition afflicting those critical of the president and to characterize it as irrational, extreme, or negative reactions to Trump and his policies
James, who is a resident of Shelby Township, said Trump is serving a second term as president that is not consecutive to his first term because he complied with the will of U.S. voters and left the White House.
Meanwhile, he added, politicians on the left, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Shumer of New York and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, “have been in office almost a century.”
— Paul Egan
Protesting in ‘a peaceful happy way’
In Lexington, a small group — 16 people — gathered at the corner of Huron Avenue and the Lake Huron Circle Tour for a No Kings protest. They carried signs and waved to passing traffic ahead. A bigger protest is expected in Port Huron.
Al Lewandowski, a member of Blue Water Indivisible, said he’s dissatisfied with the direction the country is headed, accusing the Trump administration of becoming “autocratic,” adding, “We’re for democracy and against an autocracy.”
But Sue Grywalski said the group was there to protest in “a peaceful happy way.”
— Andy Jeffrey, Times Herald
300 rally at the Custer statue
In Monroe, the Custer statue in downtown Monroe was once again the backdrop for a No Kings rally, with about 300 gathering to express their views.
Susan Dirks joined because, she said, she believes the county is in worse shape than it has been in a while. It was, she added, the first protest she attended and wanted others to stand up and speak out, too.
“People were misled,” she said, adding that they “voted for a person that had no respect for anybody or anything except for himself.”
Michael Donofrio was there, too, along with daughter Jordan. He said his concern was for the economy, as he held up a sign that read “Trump Is Bankrupting America.” He added: “My personal pension plan, the last few days, has tanked over $50,000.”
— Connor Veenstra, The Monroe News
In Lansing, 2,000 gather at Capitol
At the state Capitol in Lansing, about 2,000 protesters gathered.
Mike Schriner, a former Waverly High School teacher and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, said he joined because he wanted to stand up for “human rights for all, healthcare, livable wage, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“What does that really mean?” He asked, then answered his own question.
“I think that the two-party system just is not working,” he said. “There are new things happening that I believe in. They are here today talking about new ways of representation. People need a voice.”
Siri Craft held a sign that read, “Love your neighbor. No exception!”
— Sarah Moore, Matthew Dae Smith, Robert Killips, Lansing State Journal
Shirt: ‘Vote twice so we can get rid of ICE’
Wearing a red, white and blue shirt that read, “Vote twice so we can get rid of ICE,” Robert Bruce was among a couple hundred people listening to a DJ in Detroit’s Clark Park about 12:30 p.m. as they waited for speeches to start.
Bruce, 77, of Detroit, said this was his third No Kings protest. He said he’s concerned about voting rights, the SAVE Act, health care and the war in Iran. He’s worried there will be a longer war and more deaths there than when the country took on Afghanistan.
“He didn’t know what he was getting into in Iran,” Bruce said of the president. Bruce theorized that Trump thought he could repeat his actions from Venezuela in Iran, but couldn’t.
Bruce added he wants to see Trump impeached, and that’s the point of his shirt: a reminder for citizens to vote in both their primaries and midterm elections to oust Republicans and any Democrats not getting their jobs done either.
— Darcie Moran
Protester: ‘People are pushing back’
Sarah Kelly, 30, of Oak Park stood in chilly, but sunny, Clark Park as people mulled around and visited booths set up by various organizations. Kelly held a sign that read, “If standing up for human rights burns bridges, I have matches.”
She said she cut people off in her life because of just that.
Kelly added she feels she has had a lot of privilege in life and that others may be scared to protest because immigration enforcement agents are in the community. But she said, those who can still protest should do so.
Asked about comments coming from the White House that seek to diminish the protest events, she said the president is trying to spin the media to make it seem like the movement isn’t as big as it is, adding, “The movement is here. People are here. People are pushing back.”
— Darcie Moran
In chants and music: ‘People Have the Power’
The signs and costumes were out, and the mood and air were both chill as roughly a couple hundred No Kings protesters congregated near Coolidge and 10 Mile in Oak Park just before 11 a.m.
Trucks and cars and honked their support while heading east on 10 Mile, which in that area doubles as a service drive for I-696. Protesters chanted: “This is what democracy looks like!”
Organizers said they’ve held about a dozen protests in that location, and had about 200 people registered for this one, while noting the total turnout typically exceeds signups by a couple hundred.
Blasting on a portable speaker near the intersection was Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power,” a mainstay tune at political protests, co-written with Smith’s late husband, Fred (Sonic) Smith, best known as a guitarist for the Detroit band MC5.
— Steve Byrne
Protesters: Gas is higher and higher
In Sterling Heights, hundreds of protesters, with signs that included “No Kings,” “Iran away from the files” and “quiet war piggy” walked up and down sidewalks around the Hall Road and Schoenherr Road intersection
Susan Diliberti, 69, of Clinton Township, said she showed up because she’s worried about future generations and wants to fight for everyone to have the right to accessible, quality public education, universal healthcare and the environment.
She said she also hopes more people plant trees.
George-Michael Higgins, of Fraser, said he helped organize the protest “to take back their country from billionaires” and stop the defunding of public education and social safety nets.
“Every day, gas is higher and higher, and life is more and more unaffordable for everyday people,” he said. “And that’s why we’re out here today to take back our country from the billionaire class.”
Higgins said he wants people driving by the protest and reading about it to know the right to freedom of assembly has not been taken away.
He added: “Despite the rhetoric we’ve seen from this administration — that is determined, bound to determined, to clamp down anything that goes against their narrative — we have the freedom to peacefully assemble and demonstrate against lawlessness coming from the federal government.”
— Natalie Davies
Sign: ‘Hate Will Not Make Us Great’
Many spoke of the need for love and unity at a protest on Detroit’s east side, where cars beeped horns in support, and people stood near caution tape keeping them parted from the road.
Anne Marie DeRosier, 63, of Lexington, had been bringing family members from the Detroit and Grosse Pointe area to protests in Port Huron. This time, she figured she’d come to them. She was delighted with the turnout so far, she said shortly after the event began, with hundreds more people streaming in.
“It gives people hope, and we have to have hope,” she said.
She stood on the side of the road at one spot where the caution tape didn’t extend. In her hand was a sign that read, “Hate Will Not Make Us Great.” Down the front and back of her red coat were signs with similar ideas.
Among them: “WHEN INJUSTICE BECOMES LAW RESISTANCE BECOMES DUTY” and “the People means everyone.”
— Darcie Moran
Democracy, deemed ‘a group project’
Shortly before the scheduled protest start time of 11 a.m., more than 100 people were already in place listening to speakers along the border of Grosse Pointe and Detroit on Mack Avenue between Cadieux and Neff roads.
“Democracy is a group project,” one said.
Tears welled in the eyes of Beverly Safford, 82, of St. Clair Shores, as she explained her reason for coming out with a white painted cross with a keffiyeh tied around its center.
“I cry when I think of the people that are dying,” she said, laying the blame for the deaths in Palestine at the feet of the United States and its support of Israel.
She’s a real Christian, she said, not the warmongering type, and added, “Christ didn’t like bullies.”
If another country had a leader as “crazy” as Trump, she said, Americans would be “terrified every moment of our lives.”
— Darcie Moran
Protesters: ‘We are the real patriots’
In one of the first of dozens of No King rallies throughout the state, more than 100 people — including retirees, moms, dads, political candidates, young kids and even a dog — lined both sides of Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield.
“I’m so tired of the lies,” Robin Gillis, 73, of West Bloomfield said, expressing her discontent with President Donald Trump and his administration. In one hand, she held a sign, “We the People have had enough!” and, in another, the leash to her English Setter, Elly. “We love America, and we are the real patriots, here.”
Earlier this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, had described the protest as a “hate America” rally, calling it “a spectacle” that would include Marxists, Socialists, and anarchists.
Gillis and her husband, Michael Gillis, also 73, were among the first to gather for the hour-long protest, which started at 9 a.m.
They braved the cold, with temperatures in the 20s and a dusting of snow still on the ground, and they wanted, they said, to talk about the issues that were on their minds: the Iran war, the economy, and the president’s imperious tone.
“He likes to label people so he can denigrate them, humiliate them, and make them feel less important,” Michael Gillis said. He was also concerned about the upcoming elections. “We want our votes to count, and every citizen should be able to vote, and this voter ID stuff is a way to keep people from voting.”
Among some of the other protesters: At least two political candidates, Eli Savit, 43, the Washtenaw County prosecutor and a Democrat seeking to be the state attorney general, and Don Ufford, also a Democrat, who is running for Congress in Michigan’s 11th District.
“We have to speak out about what’s going on here in this administration, which continues to tell us one thing and do another,” Ufford, 61, of Bloomfield Township, said. “They have accumulated so much power, they feel like they can do it.”
Among his concerns: the war in Iran.
“U.S. service members are getting killed and injured, and the global economy is under attack,” he said. Ufford has a son who is an active duty officer in the Army, and is concerned about his safety. “We need to be able to stand up to that — and for our basic rights.”
— Frank Witsil
Map: No Kings protests in Michigan on March 28
In addition, other protests are listed as private and did not mention exact locations; these include:
- Lake Orion, 4–6 p.m.
- Pontiac, 2–4 p.m.
- Waterford, noon–2 p.m.
- Monroe, 1–3 p.m.
- Milan, noon–2 p.m.
- West Bloomfield, 9–10 a.m.
- Port Huron, 1–3 p.m.
- Grosse Pointe, 11 a.m.–1 p.m.
- Genesee County, 1–3 p.m.
- Dearborn, 1–3 p.m.
- Big Rapids, 11 a.m.–2 p.m.
- Alger County, 3–5 p.m.
- Newaygo County, noon–1:30 p.m.
- Muskegon, noon–1:30 p.m.
- Lowell, 10 a.m.–noon
Data for the map came from the Mobilize-No Kings website and was accurate as of Tuesday morning, March 24. Visit mobilize.us/nokings for updates.
What is the No Kings organization?
No Kings is a non-violent political organization that mobilizes protests against President Donald Trump and his administration across the U.S. The group provides online resources, has partnerships with businesses and advocacy groups, and recently launched a training program called “Eyes on Ice.”
In 2025, there were national No Kings protests on June 14, Flag Day, and on Oct. 18. The group also supported the “We Ain’t Buying It” campaign from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1.
“Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger. No Kings is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon,” the organization said. “Born in the streets, shouted by millions, carried on posters and chants, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.”
Nour Rahal of the Detroit Free Press and Sarah Moore of USA TODAY Network contributed.
