Thousands of Americans gathered in public spaces to protest the actions of the Trump administration in the third nationwide “No Kings” protest on March 28, 2026.
Many individuals across Montgomery County participated in various local demonstrations, with large demonstrations occurring at the Friendship Heights metro station and in front of the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda.
Like the previous two demonstrations, protesters emphasized messages of anti-authoritarianism, which they displayed on a wide variety of creatively designed signs and flags.
This time, however, protesters also focused on denouncing the United States’ war with Iran, a new development since the previous No Kings protest on Oct. 18, 2025.
The age range present at the protest was broad: septuagenarians and octogenarians marched alongside preschoolers and a handful of teenagers who seemed to have come with their parents.
Some protesters even wore costumes to the demonstration, which varied from Uncle Sam to a Handmaids from The Handmaid’s Tale.
In front of the Strathmore Music Center, protesters gathered on the grassy slope overlooking Tuckerman Lane, chanting and displaying their signs to people driving by.
Nearly 9 million people participated in the protest across the country, making it the largest single demonstration in United States history.
The flagship protest took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but Montgomery County showed particularly high levels of participation due to its proximity to DC.
Despite the protests’ size, however, the gatherings have made little impact on the actions of the Trump administration. Trump has dismissed them as irrelevant on multiple occasions and even suggested that their participants have been paid actors.
The overall feeling of the protest was a complicated mix of passion for civil disobedience and pessimism for the future. In that way, the protest seemed to have been a reflection of the current mood in the United States; one of desperate hope in the face of ever-increasing uncertainty.
Multimedia curation and photos by Jay Resnik and Mona Al-Rasheed