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On Monday, Cole Tomas Allen, an educator from California, was charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump. Allen was apprehended on Saturday night outside of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was attended by Trump and much of his cabinet.
According to law enforcement officials, a note written by Allen said he was targeting most of the Trump administration officials in attendance. The note appeared “to express deep anger at the administration and the president.” In an interview with law enforcement, Allen’s sister reportedly said that he had attended a “No Kings” protest in California.
Trump was asked about the suspect and his motivations during an interview with CBS News’ ‘60 Minutes’ on Sunday. In response, Trump said the “No Kings” protests were to blame. “The reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings,” Trump said. “I’m not a king… if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you.”
The truth is that the No Kings rallies have been some of the largest and most peaceful protests in history.
The No Kings movement was created to “oppose the Trump administration’s growing authoritarian actions.” Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, there have been three major No Kings events. According to estimates by organizers, the three events had a total of 20 million protesters, with 5 million people attending the first rally in June 2025, 7 million people attending in October 2025, and 8 million people attending the most recent rally in March.
The No Kings movement describes itself as “nonviolent opposition.” In an effort to avoid violence, the organizers have held de-escalation trainings and a session on “non-violent documentation techniques.”
Their efforts have been largely successful. Conflict monitoring group ACLED found that “over 99%” of the protests during the March event were peaceful. ACLED also found that the October 2025 No Kings protests were “essentially entirely peaceful, and police intervened in only a small handful of demonstrations for non-violent offenses.”
An analysis by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a project by the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut that collects data on political protests, found that during the June 2025 No Kings rallies, “over 99.5 percent of reported protests had no injuries or property damage.” In October 2025, multiple major cities that hosted No Kings protests, including New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., reported no protest-related arrests.
Violence at No Kings, in context
While the No Kings protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, there have been a handful of violent incidents.
Several of these incidents have involved counter-protesters. In Nashville, for example, a man was arrested for brandishing a weapon during a confrontation with protesters in June 2025. On the same day, a man in Virginia was arrested for intentionally driving his SUV through a group of protesters and hitting at least one person. An armed counter-protester was arrested last month during a Dallas No Kings rally for punching a 71-year-old man. Other assaults on No Kings protestors have occurred, but it is unclear whether the attacks came from counter-protesters.
There has been one death associated with a No Kings rally, which took place in Salt Lake City in June 2025 when a protester was killed by an armed volunteer working with local No Kings organizers. The volunteer saw a man assembling a rifle. Thinking that the man was about to commit a mass shooting, the volunteer fired three times in his direction. A nearby protestor, who was not armed, was struck and killed. The man with the rifle, who was carrying it legally and has not been charged with a crime, was also hit. The volunteer has been charged with manslaughter.
On the same day, there were reported clashes between protesters and police in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, when some lingering protestors refused to disperse. LA and Portland also saw further tension between protesters and police at the most recent No Kings rally.
On March 28, 74 demonstrators were arrested outside of an LA Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility for failing to disperse. These demonstrators had broken off from the larger No Kings rally that day, which finished hours earlier. Some outside the ICE facility also threw rocks, bottles, and chunks of concrete at federal officers. A similar incident occurred that day in Portland. Three people were arrested at an ICE facility after a group of protestors moved there after the main No Kings protest, which was peaceful, ended. According to the Portland Police Bureau, protesters threw rocks at officers, burned an American flag, and trespassed on the ICE property.
Trump’s “day of love”
In comparison to other protests, these violent incidents make up a very small part of how the No Kings rallies have played out. In recent years, other protests with far fewer attendees — in the hundreds or thousands, instead of millions — have resulted in more injuries and property damage.
Trump has described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as a “