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Anti-Trump Protests Get Underway Across the Country
They came out in defense of national parks and small businesses, public education and health care for veterans, abortion rights and fair elections. They marched against tariffs and oligarchs, dark money and fascism, the deportation of legal immigrants and the Department of Government Efficiency.
Demonstrators had no shortage of causes as they gathered in towns and cities across the country on Saturday to protest President Trump’s agenda. Rallies were planned in all 50 states, and images posted on social media showed dense crowds in places as diverse as St. Augustine, Fla.; Salt Lake City and rainy Frankfort, Ky.
“Pouring rain, 43 degrees, biting wind, and people are still here in Albany in the thousands,” said Ron Marz, a comic book writer who posted a photo of the crowd at the New York State Capitol on X.
While crowd sizes are difficult to estimate, organizers said that more than 600,000 people had signed up to participate and that events also took place in U.S. territories and a dozen locations across the globe.
On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the protest stretched for nearly 20 blocks. In Chicago, thousands flooded Daley Plaza and adjacent streets, while, in the nation’s capital, tens of thousands surrounded the Washington Monument. In Atlanta, the police estimated the crowd marching to the gold-domed statehouse at over 20,000.
Mr. Trump, who was playing golf in Florida on Saturday, appeared to be largely ignoring the protests. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some of the demonstrators waved American flags, occasionally turned upside down to signal distress. Many, especially federal workers and college students, did not want to speak on the record for fear of retaliation. Right-wing slogans like “Stop the Steal” were co-opted in defense of Social Security, medical care and cancer research.
“I’m tariffied. Are you?” one placard read. Global financial markets tumbled this week at Mr. Trump’s announcement of tariff increases, which many economists warned would raise prices for U.S. consumers. Republicans in Congress wrestled over budget proposals that included cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food benefits.
Rob Ahlrichs, a Baltimore resident who attended the protest in Washington with his two sons and his wife, Katherine Sterner, put out a sign with a graph depicting stock market indexes plummeting that read, “Did you vote for this?”
In Chicago, Marilyn Finner, 65, who works in customer service, said she had never attended a protest but that she felt compelled to take part on Saturday because she was concerned about threats to retirement benefits.
“Eventually I want to receive my Social Security that I paid for,” she said. “I’ve been working since I was 13 years old. I’m fighting for my Social Security and everybody else’s.”
The mass action, with the deliberately open-ended name “Hands Off!,” was planned at a time when many Democrats have bemoaned what they see as a lack of strong resistance to Mr. Trump. The president has moved aggressively to punish people and institutions that he views as out of step with his ideology.
Don Westhoff, a 59-year-old accountant, was another first-time protester. He voiced outrage at the administration but had words for Democrats as well, saying they needed an infusion of younger leaders to oppose the president.
“We want to let the elected Democratic officials know that good is no longer good enough,” he said. “They need to fight.”
Multiple concerns prompted Katrin Hinrichsen to drive six hours from her home in Tolland, Conn., to Washington to attend. She held a sign with names of legal residents with foreign passports whom the Trump administration has moved to deport for allegations of antisemitic speech and gang activities.
Her 18-year-old son is transgender, she said, and she feared his losing access to gender transition care. “Now suddenly he’s a hate object, just because that’s politically convenient,” she said. “I’m just furious.”
The rallies were organized by Indivisible, MoveOn and several other groups that led protests about abortion rights, gun violence and racial justice during the first Trump administration. Organizers said they hoped to shift the emphasis to pocketbook issues like health care and Social Security, with the message that Mr. Trump is making life harder for the average American while benefiting his richest allies.
They also moved away from focusing on massive demonstrations, like the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, to instead plan hundreds of local gatherings in communities large and small.
Concerns varied by location. In Ketchum, Idaho — population 3,555 — cuts to the Forest Service generated deep concern, said Fiona Smythe, 56, a resident who attended a protest that she said drew more than 500 people. One sign showed Smokey Bear and read, “Only you can prevent forest fires. Seriously. We’ve been defunded. It’s just you now.”
Some demonstrators had specific issues, while others opposed the Trump administration and MAGA movement in general. “Hands off my money, rights, democracy,” one sign proclaimed. “Make lying wrong again,” said another. Elon Musk, the billionaire heading Mr. Trump’s slash-and-burn attack on the federal bureaucracy, was a popular target.
“I feel like the MAGA people have corrupted and co-opted the American flag and the idea of patriotism,” said Barbara Santarelli, 77, a retired health care worker draped in a flag who participated in the New York City rally. She described herself as a Jewish centrist who was concerned about her retirement benefits, attacks on universities and freedom of speech, the war in Gaza, and due process rights.
Before the event, she recounted, her daughter expressed concern for her safety. But she said attending the protest was something she had to do. “The soldiers, they go to war to defend democracy,” she recalled saying. “At my age, this is how I go to war to defend democracy.’”
In Chicago, Glynn Tipton, a 45-year-old pharmaceutical professional, said he was attending to make friends feel safer.
“I’m a generic white guy, so they aren’t coming for me,” he said. “There’s a lot of my friends who are Jewish, trans, in the military or sick, and they’re not doing OK. It’s OK for me to stand out here, so I should for the ones who are afraid.”
Many protesters said they had been directly affected by cuts to federal jobs and grants. In Atlanta, Johnny Johnson, 34, said he had been hired by the Internal Revenue Service, moved, fired and rehired in a matter of months.
“I dipped into my 401(k) because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said.
In Denver, veteran Trump protesters said there was a noticeably smaller Latino presence on Saturday than there had been at demonstrations during the first Trump term. “You notice there’s not a lot of Chicano people out here? It’s because people are scared,” said Brian Loma, 49, an environmental organizer who set up a tent in the snow selling hot chocolate. The government seemed to be “ripping up green cards,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
Among the demonstrators in New York City was Melissa Jackson, 41, a former special education teacher and the mother of a 3-year-old on a specialized learning plan for students with disabilities.
“I think it’s ridiculous. New York, the United States, is the melting pot. Like, what do we want? Like, not diversity, not inclusion?” she said, adding that she was also concerned about cuts to public education. “We’ve come too far to take so many steps back.”
Robert Chiarito, Sean Keenan, Kristen Nichols, Wesley Parnell and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
The US is planning to board and seize Iran-linked oil tankers and commercial ships in the coming days, according to a Saturday report by The Wall Street Journal.
The report noted that these actions would take place in international waters, potentially outside of the Middle East.
The US “will actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran,” US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said. “This includes dark fleet vessels carrying Iranian oil.”
“As most of you know, dark fleet vessels are those illicit or illegal ships evading international regulations, sanctions, or insurance requirements,” Caine continued.
Caine was further quoted as saying that the new campaign, which would be operated in part by the US Indo-Pacific Command, would be part of a broader US President Donald Trump-led campaign against Iran, known as “Economic Fury.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the WSJ that Trump was “optimistic” that the new measures would lead to a peace deal.
The potential US military action comes as Iran tightens its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, including attacking several ships earlier on Saturday, the WSJ reported.
The report cited CENTCOM as saying that the US has already turned back 23 ships trying to leave Iranian ports since the start of its blockade on the Strait.
The expansion of naval action beyond the Middle East will provide the US with further leverage against Iran by allowing it to take control of a greater number of ships loaded with oil or weapons bound for Iran, the report noted.
“It’s a maximalist approach,” said associate professor of law at Emory University Law School Mark Nevitt. “If you want to put the screws down on Iran, you want to use every single legal authority you have to do that.”
Iran claimed earlier on Saturday that it had regained military control over the Strait, intending to hold it until the US guarantees full freedom of movement for ships traveling to and from Iran.
“As long as the United States does not ensure full freedom of navigation for vessels traveling to and from Iran, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will remain tightly controlled,” the Iranian military stated.
In addition, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared on Saturday in an apparent message on his Telegram channel that the Iranian navy is prepared to inflict “new bitter defeats” on its enemies.
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By Jodi Kantor, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, June Kim and Luke Piotrowski
April 18, 2026
A Pakistani Ranger walks past a billboard for the U.S.-Iran peace talks in Islamabad on April 12, 2026. The talks, led by Vice President JD Vance, produced no concrete movement toward a peace deal.
Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images
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Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images
Despite stalled talks with Iran and a fragile ceasefire nearing its end, President Trump expressed optimism this week that a permanent deal is within reach — one that may include Iran relinquishing its enriched uranium. However, experts who spent months negotiating a nuclear agreement during the Obama administration say mutual mistrust, starkly different negotiating styles make a quick truce unlikely.
Referring to Vice President Vance’s whirlwind negotiations in Islamabad last week that appear to have produced little beyond dashed expectations, Wendy Sherman, the lead U.S. negotiator on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal finalized in 2015, says the administration’s approach was all wrong.
“You cannot do a negotiation with Iran in one day,” she told NPR’s Here & Now earlier this week. “You can’t even do it in a week.” To get agreement on the JCPOA, she said, it took “a good 18 months.”
The talks leading to that deal highlighted Iran’s meticulous style of negotiation, says Rob Malley, who was also part of the JCPOA negotiating team and later served as a special envoy to Iran under President Joe Biden.
Summing up the two sides’ differing styles, Malley said: “Trump is impulsive and temperamental; Iran’s leadership [is] stubborn and tenacious.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a news conference on the Iran nuclear talks deal at the Austria International Centre in Vienna, Austria on July 14, 2015.
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In 2015, patience led to a deal
The talks in 2015, led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, culminated with a marathon 19-day session in Vienna to finish the deal, says Jon Finer, a former U.S. deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration. Finer was involved in the negotiations as Kerry’s chief of staff. He said his boss’s patience “was a huge asset” in getting the deal to the finish line, he said.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister during the negotiations for the Obama-era nuclear deal, speaks on April 22, 2016 in New York.
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“He would endure lectures … ‘let me tell you about 5,000 years of Iranian civilization’… and just keep plowing ahead,” Finer said, adding that a tactic of Iranian negotiators seemed to be “to say no to everything and see what actually matters” to the U.S.
“They’re just maddeningly difficult,” he said. “You need to go back at the same issue 10 or 12 times over weeks or months to make any progress.”
Even so, Finer called the Iranian negotiators “extremely capable” — noting that, unlike the U.S., they often lacked expert advisers “just outside the room,” yet still mastered the details of nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and U.S. sanctions.
“They were also negotiating not in their first language,” Finer added. “The documents were all negotiated in English, and they were hundreds of pages long with detailed annexes.”
Vance’s trip to Islamabad suggests that the U.S. doesn’t have the patience for a negotiation to end the conflict that could be at least as complex and time-consuming. “The Trump administration came in with maximalist demands and actually just wanted Iran to capitulate,” Sherman, who served as deputy secretary of state during the Biden administration, told Here & Now. “No nation – even one as odious as the Iran regime – is going to capitulate.”
Distrust but verify
Iran was attacked twice in the past year. First in June of last year, as nuclear negotiations were ongoing, Israel and the U.S. struck the country’s nuclear facilities. Months later, at the end of February, Iran was attacked again at the start of the latest conflict. This time around, “the level of trust is probably almost at an all-time low,” Malley said.
“It’s hard for them to take at their word what they’re hearing from U.S. officials,” Malley said. The Iranians, he said, have to be wondering how long any commitment will last and “will be very hesitant to give up something that’s tangible” – such as their enriched uranium – in exchange for anything that isn’t ironclad or subject to suddenly be discarded by Trump or some future president.
“Once they give up their stockpile … they can’t recapture it the next day,” Malley said.
Even during the 2013-2015 nuclear deal talks, the decades of mistrust between Tehran and Washington were impossible to ignore, Finer said. “Our theory was not trust but verify — it was distrust but verify,” he said, adding: “I think that was their theory too.”
Malley cautions about relying on the JCPOA as a guide to how peace talks to end the current war might go. The leadership in Tehran that agreed to the deal is now gone — killed in Israeli airstrikes, he says. The regime’s military capabilities are also greatly diminished and “whatever lessons were learned in the past … have to be viewed with a lot of caution, because so much has changed,” he said.
Negotiations have a leveling effect
Mark Freeman, executive director of the Institute for Integrated Transitions, a peace and security think tank based in Spain that advises on conflict negotiations, says several factors shape the U.S.-Iran relationship. Going into talks, one side always has the upper hand, he says, but negotiations have a leveling effect. “The weaker party gains just by virtue of entering into a negotiation process,” he said.
Each side is looking for leverage, he adds.
In Iran’s case, it has used its closure of the Strait of Hormuz to exert such leverage, while the White House has shown an eagerness to resolve the conflict quickly. “If one side perceives the other needs an agreement more … that shapes the entire negotiation,” he said.
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