LOS ANGELES — A rolling wave of “No Kings” protests swelled through America’s small towns and big cities Saturday, with crowds gathering to blast President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns, the war in Iran and high gas and food prices.

Saturday’s demonstrations were expected to draw millions of people nationwide, including thousands for a downtown Los Angeles rally. More than 40 protests were planned for L.A., Orange and Ventura counties, part of the national “No Kings Day of Nonviolent Action.”

No Kings Coalition organizers were hoping that turnout for the rallies in all 50 states could combine to form the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. They pointed to growing anger over the country’s direction, including fatal ICE shootings and troops dispatched to the Middle East, since the first “No Kings” demonstration was held last June.

“I’m very disturbed by the degradation of human beings and the destruction of our democracy under this Trump tyranny,” said Rossana Foote, a 62-year-old Los Angeles Unified School District teacher, who traveled to the downtown protest from her Ventura County home.

“We need to come together to show a strong voice, a strong movement that there are no kings, no one’s above the law,” Foote said.

Earlier in the day, hundreds gathered around the reflecting pool at Pasadena City College. A band rolled through with a fascism-themed parody of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Sign-toting protesters lined Colorado Boulevard, drawing a constant stream of honking from the cars driving by. For many, the Iran war was top of mind.

“Every time we protest, there’s something completely new, which speaks to the chaos of the Trump administration,” Cindy Campbell told The Times. “ICE raids last year, Epstein files a few months ago. Now, war.”

Organizers sought to build political momentum in advance of November’s elections, when voters could tip control of the U.S. House and potentially the Senate to Democrats. Local political issues were also on display Saturday. Volunteers wound through the Pasadena crowd, collecting signatures for a variety of ballot initiatives, including a controversial proposed tax on the ultra-rich.

“This administration doesn’t serve us. It serves billionaires,” said Kent Miller, of Monrovia, who participated in the Pasadena protest. “War with Iran is only making life harder for working people.”

Miller pointed to a Chevron gas station advertising gas for $6.45 per gallon.

“See?” he said.

Los Angeles coordinators said they expected more than 100,000 people at the dozens of local events, which also were being planned for Beverly Hills, Burbank, Venice Beach, Newport Beach, West Covina, West Hollywood and Thousand Oaks. One group planned a “Road Outrage” car caravan to motor through Mid City with flapping flags calling for “No War” and “ICE Out of LA.”

At a large gathering in Torrance, cars honked and a person in an inflatable green cow costume hoisted a large American flag. Protesters in Huntington Beach lifted cutout images of Trump and Stephen Miller, a key policy adviser. Nearby, another sign read: “IKEA has better Cabinets.”

In Monterey Park, dozens gathered at the intersection of Atlantic Boulevard and Rigging Street about noon, sharing a diversity of causes. Young Wang, a local organizer, spoke against a proposed 250,000-square-foot data center in Monterey Park.

The sentiment is shared by others in California and Arizona who are wary of the massive electricity-intensive installations under construction to generate computing power needed to run artificial intelligence.

“I want to make sure that I stand up because my role as an American-born Chinese is to make sure the community, which is majority immigrants, has a voice to say what’s going on in our town,” Wang said.

Monterey Park resident Carol Ono, 77, said she and her 78-year-old husband, Thomas Ono, showed up “because there really needs to be a fundamental change in our country.”

Ono said they were troubled by the treatment of vulnerable populations by Trump and his administration.

“We have the Japanese American experience of people being put into camps, even though they were citizens,” she said, voicing concern about conditions at federal immigration detention facilities. “It’s really important for history not to repeat that same mistake.”

The White House, in a Saturday statement, dismissed the protests as a “Trump Derangement Therapy Session.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee also scoffed at the events.

“These Hate America Rallies are where the far left’s most violent, deranged fantasies get a microphone,” Maureen O’Toole, spokesperson for the Republican group, told the Associated Press.

In Hannibal, Missouri, protesters reported that some motorists flipped them off. In Huntington Beach, one driver waiting at the stoplight at Pacific Coast Highway and Main Street yelled: “There is no king, you [expletive] idiots!”

“This is a president that is ignoring the Constitution,” responded Gary Holtz, who helped organize the Huntington Beach rally.

“He’s ignoring the courts. He’s doing whatever he wants, and that’s indicative of a dictator or a king,” Holtz said. “We, the people, have to stand up, or we, the people, won’t have a democracy.”

National coordinators, however, said they have been encouraged by a surge of interest from groups in rural communities that wanted to join the loose-knit No Kings Coalition and hold protests. Events sprouted in Republican bastions, and some organizers reported that attendance was higher than expected.

“I’m out here because I’m disgusted with what I’m seeing,” said Kersty Kinsey, a mother who was protesting near the Beaufort, South Carolina, City Hall. “People are suffering, and he’s playing golf. People are suffering, and he’s going other places and blowing things up.”

In Beaufort, an antebellum city founded in 1711, an estimated 3,000 people turned out — a marked increase over earlier “No Kings” rallies, said Barb Nash, one of the local coordinators. Amid the moss-draped live oaks and blooming pink and white azaleas, a person in a purple Barney dinosaur costume held a sign reading: “Dino’s for Democracy.” A young girl handed out homemade “Resistance Cookies.”

It was Kinsey’s first time at a “No Kings” rally, but she felt it was important to express her discontent.

“There’s nothing good coming out of that administration, not from the president on down,” Kinsey said. “Our local senators are a disgrace here in South Carolina. ... I’m tired of waking up and having a feeling of dread to turn on the TV to see what happened overnight.”

Jaynie Parrish, founder of the Arizona Native Vote project, started planning a protest for her tiny town of Kayenta, on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, only earlier this week.

“My dad, who’s a [military] veteran and an elder, said, ‘We should go,’ and I said, ‘OK,’” Parrish told The Times.

“Our folks don’t always protest for things, but this was very important,” Parrish said. “A lot of our families are feeling the impacts right now of higher prices and things being cut. A lot of our health care benefits are being cut ... and our tribal sovereignty is being threatened.”

Her tiny collective, family and friends stood on a parched highway intersection in this corner of a high desert. They waved signs, including one that read: “Make America Native Again.” Her 82-year-old father held another that read: “No Kings on the Rez.”

Upbeat Midwestern activists withstood whipping winds to form a line of protesters stretching for nearly three blocks of Burlington Avenue in Hastings, Nebraska. Under the crisp blue skies, one of the protesters, Drew Fausett, told The Times in a phone interview that he is a registered Republican in the decidedly red state.

“My politics haven’t really changed — but the party around me has,” Fausett said. “It used to be the two parties were two sides of the same coin, and they would work together — but not anymore.”

He and his wife, Becky, have attended “No Kings” and other protests because “it’s the only way to show that people have different opinions,” he said. “People are out here speaking for their families and their neighbors. That’s what this is all about.”

Trump’s policies have been hurting many in Nebraska — including farmers, said Debby Thompson, one of the Hastings organizers.

“We want to urge our representatives in Congress to not just rubber-stamp whatever Trump wants because it’s really hurting rural folks and farmers,” Thompson said. “The tariffs and huge increase in prices on fertilizer are hitting farmers really hard.”

The “No Kings” campaign sprouted in June as an act of defiance on Trump’s 79th birthday. He wanted a military parade in Washington to mark his milestone, and anti-Trump protesters came out in force — an estimated 5 million people around the country — with their own display. At the time, Trump’s second-term policies were coming into focus, including ramping up immigration raids, deploying the National Guard to L.A. in response to protests, and mass firings within the federal government.

A subsequent event in mid-October drew even larger crowds, with an estimated 7 million people protesting around the country.

“The defining story of this Saturday’s mobilization is not just how many people are protesting — but where they are protesting,” Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, said during a Thursday media briefing. Two-thirds of the RSVPs to national organizers came from outside of major urban centers, she said.

Saturday’s event coincided with a dip in Trump’s approval ratings.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found that 36% approve of Trump’s job performance, marking the lowest level since his return to office last year. In a separate Fox News Poll released last week, 59% disapproved of his job performance.

“Since the last ‘No Kings,’ we’re seeing higher gas prices and groceries, all while there’s an illegal war in Iran,” national organizer Sarah Parker of the organization 50501 said during the briefing. “We’ve also seen our neighbors executed — American citizens executed.”

Widespread protests and candlelight vigils followed January’s fatal shootings by ICE agents in Minneapolis of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse.

Thousands of people gathered at Minnesota’s state Capitol building in St. Paul for a rally that included Gov. Tim Walz, who said the region was still feeling the pain of the ICE’s activities and the deaths of Good and Pretti.

The Los Angeles event was organized by the local chapter of 50501 (short for “50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement”) and other progressive groups, including the ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible and Public Citizen, as well as labor unions such as Unite Here Local 11 and the Service Workers International Union.

Gary Thornton, a retired federal worker and veteran who served in the U.S. Army from 1978 to 1985, participated in the Monterey Park event to protest the war in Iran. He said President Trump should have sought congressional approval before launching strikes.

“I’ve worked for Uncle Sam for almost 40 years, and this is a nightmare,” said Thornton, 68. “I swore an oath to the Constitution that I would protect and defend it. To have someone acting like a dictator now, it basically laughs at everything I did for 40 years.”

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(Times staff writer Andrew Turner contributed to this report.)

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