Washington, D.C
What I Saw At The Insurrection
I looked everywhere for Mike Johnson at the No Kings rally in the heart of the nation’s Capitol last Saturday. I even wore my Civil Beat press pass so I could ask him questions, one professional to another.
But the House speaker was nowhere to be found. Maybe he took the day off. The government was shut down, of course, and House representatives were on an extended paid recess.
I covered the protest in my role as a journalist and, after a few hours, I wanted to ask Johnson why he’d said the gatherings opposing President Donald Trump were “hate America” rallies. Because all I saw that day were tens of thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds exercising the right to peaceably assemble along with the freedom of speech, press and even religion.
It was, to use the words of Trump about Jan. 6, 2021, a “day of love.”
All that was missing was the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
But then, that First Amendment clause was implicit. The D.C. rally, part of an estimated 7 million protesters at more than 2,700 locations in all 50 states and D.C. (according to No Kings), sent a simple message: America does not need a king.
Trump is not a king, but you can be forgiven if you believe he’s acting like one. He wants to mint a commemorative $1 coin with his mug on it. His first foreign visit as president was to a kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and his second was to the United Kingdom. He wants to build an arch, based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, across from the Lincoln Memorial — an “Arc de Trump.”
Ed O’Keefe of CBS News reportedly asked the president who the arch is for, and Trump pointed at himself: “Me.”
The purpose of No Kings is to accuse the president of behaving more like a monarch than an elected official, and it is succeeding in that regard.
One of the first speakers at the D.C. rally, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, reminded the huge throng that his state was the first to adopt a written constitution, thus rejecting the English monarchy. The nation, he said, was not “on the verge” of an authoritarian, totalitarian takeover but smack dab in the middle of one.
Murphy then asked rhetorically if that scared people.
“You can handle the truth,” he said, answering his own question and thrilling the crowd.
‘Jesus Was An Immigrant’
I was in D.C. to attend the Society of Professional Journalists MediaFest 2025. I cut out a bit early on Saturday to make my way toward the location of the No Kings rally at Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest and 3rd Street Northwest, an area astride The Mall and not far from the U.S. Capitol.
My CB colleague in D.C., Nick Grube, had shared with me beforehand advice from the National Press Club on reporting in potentially dangerous environments: “If protesters want to shout in your face, don’t get into arguments with them. If police ask you to step back, do not just take one step and look defiant. Ask them how far back to go.”
Nick also advised that I write his phone number on my arm in case I needed to post bail.
It wasn’t necessary.
My first encounter with security on No Kings day came well before I got to the rally site. Dozens of Metropolitan police, on foot and bicycles, were paralleling a large group of protesters as they marched and chanted toward Pennsylvania Avenues.
“Excuse me,” one officer politely said as he pedaled by me.
“Sorry,” said another.
Then, as the marchers were to turn on to 10th Street, someone fell. The procession halted and the police asked everyone not in the march to clear the street by moving to the sidewalks. Everyone complied as the police surrounded the injured man and someone called an ambulance.
I was momentarily worried that a fight might erupt. Surreally, the man fell on the same block as Ford’s Theatre. (“Sic semper tyrannis,” John Wilkes Booth shouted after assassinating the 16th president.)
But it was all good, the injured man walked it off and the rally soon resumed.
Trump allies may link No Kings participants to the far-left Antifa movement and the “pro-Hamas wing,” essentially deriding them as domestic terrorists. But it’s hard to imagine a masked, hardcore activist in black pausing to let the authorities do their job.
The peaceful display of civil disobedience was also to the credit of No Kings organizers and supporters, all linked over the internet and social media. Most rallies lasted only two hours, something easy to squeeze into a weekend. Most participants took public transportation or walked. People were advised to bring water and snacks and sunblock and hats.
It was also recommended folks wear something yellow to show unity, echoing previous large protests in Hong Kong and Ukraine. But the colors I saw most that day were red, white and blue. These patriots were proud to be American, concerned about the direction of their country and willing to show their faces in public even as federal troops and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials prowl the streets.
The best part of a No Kings rally are the homemade signs. Here are a few that for me captured the mood that day: “Free D.C.” “Detox from Fox.” “Fight truth decay.” “Jesus was an immigrant.” “It’s so bad even I am here.”
It is obvious that many No King attendees are not fans of the 45th and 47th president. The f-word was used liberally, even though there were kids all around, many of them costumed as animals to mock ICE agents.
Johnson told ABC News the next day that he was upset about the rhetoric of protesters, for example, calling Trump a fascist. The rallies, he said, were ironic.
“If President Trump was a king, the government would be open right now,” he said. “If President Trump was a king, they would not have been able to engage in that free speech exercise out on the (National) Mall.”
In fact, Trump has pushed successfully to silence and punish many of his critics — in the courts, in the Congress, in the governors’ mansions, in the universities, in the media. It sometimes seems as if he wants the U.S. to be more like Thailand, where a lèse-majesté law forbids insulting the monarchy.
One could practically predict Trump’s reaction to the No Kings events: He posted an AI-generated video showing him wearing a crown in a fighter jet showering the people with poop.
The Right To Assemble
Insurrection can be defined as an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government. Insurrections are often violent, but there was no violence at No Kings in D.C. Unless I missed it, for example, no one was holding a sign that read, “Hang JD Vance.”
And, while some protesters called for impeachment, Trump has already been impeached in the House twice and yet still occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He won the electoral college in 2024 and a plurality of the popular vote, and he will remain in the White House (albeit one now missing its East Wing) until his term ends or the 25th Amendment is invoked.
The No Kings rally was all the more remarkable for its disciplined dissent, coming as it did on a long week of stunning news for many worried about the direction of the country:
John Bolton was indicted. Charlie Kirk’s widow accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his behalf. The U.S. Supreme Court indicated it may further erode the Voting Rights Act. The head of U.S. Southern Command stepped down less than a year into his post amidst the administration’s military strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. Kristi Noem posted a TSA video in airports blaming the shutdown on the party that neither controls Congress nor the White House. Dozens of Pentagon reporters walked out of the building and surrendered their press badges, including representatives of Fox News and Newsmax. Admiration for Nazis was expressed by a group of Young Republicans and a congressional staffer. Marc Benioff said he was fine with troops coming to San Francisco (although he later changed his mind). The sentence of George Santos was commuted.
And Speaker Johnson? He’s refused to seat a newly elected Democrat from Arizona whose vote could open the Epstein files.
Something’s different now. And this protest felt more like an insurrection than a political rally.
Will more No Kings rallies succeed in driving Trump from office? Nope. But they are a shining example of what is best about America: the right to speak up.
The D.C. rally closed with Bernie Sanders railing against billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg for sucking up to Trump. The shutdown, the Vermont socialist argued, was all about paying for a trillion-dollar tax cut for the wealthiest among us.
The fate of democracy itself, Sanders warned, is at stake.
“Our experiment,” he said, “is in danger.”
One thing appears certain: The resistance will continue. It’s everywhere and growing:
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WASHINGTON (7News) — Tuesday was the last day the D.C. Council could vote to enact an expanded curfew in time for summer.
7News learned it never even made it on the agenda for a discussion and went to council members to find out why.
For the next two months, it’ll be up to the mayor to declare a curfew until the permanent version kicks in. There is already a city curfew. The curfew that has been up for debate for more than a year is the expanded version of the curfew. The expanded version allows the Metropolitan Police Department to create zones where teens 17 and under cannot gather in groups of nine or more.
RELATED | DC curfews pushed large groups into local neighborhoods, some residents say
Mayor Muriel Bowser currently has her own curfew order in place, which ends Saturday. The mayor can continue issuing an order. Councilmembers against the expanded curfew said that’s why it doesn’t need to come from the council.
In a video posted two weeks ago, D.C Council public safety chair Brooke Pinto said she wanted her councilmembers to vote to fill the gap today. 7News asked her why she never presented it to the council.
“Unfortunately, in working with my colleagues over the last several weeks, we did not have the votes,” said Pinto. “We have to have enough votes to pass the law and make sure that we didn’t have a gap.”
Bowser, in a letter to council Tuesday, said councilmembers Trayon White, Robert White, Zachary Parker, Brianne Nadeau and Janese Lewis-George are “blocking the will of the public and majority of council.”
7News spoke to three of the members she called out about the mayor’s pushback.
“I reject the rhetoric and the political games that are being played, and I’m wanting for us to get to the bottom of how do we stop the teen takeovers and the delinquent behavior we’ve been seeing,” Parker said.
“I stand by my belief that a curfew policy is a failed policy, kind of smoke and mirrors, and what we really needed is investments in our young people, so I’m pretty firm on that,” Nadeau said.
“We have to choose our tools and the time we use those tools. I’ve supported the curfew in the past, but I think with the current surge of more federal troops that have been impending, we’re putting our youth in even more danger by extending that work. I know the executive has put in an emergency executive order that will fill the gap. I hope that comes alongside extended hours, I’ve funded at DPR, extended weekends, and opening more safe spaces for youth here in the city. And that’s the solution that we do agree on,” Lewis-George said.
The mayor has not confirmed if she’ll issue another order, but it is on the table.
Whispers, mysteries still hang in air 50 years after Bolles’ murder
Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles died on June 13, 1976, 50 years ago. There are still mysteries surrounding his death from a car bombing.
A memorial designed to pay tribute to journalists who have died in pursuit of a story — including Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had a bomb explode under his car 50 years ago — will soon have a home on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The Fallen Journalists Memorial, set to open in June 2028, won’t include individual names of journalists. A rule says that unless Congress makes an exception, a memorial wall can only include a group whose last member died more more than a quarter century prior.
And the number of journalists who die in pursuit of truth continues to grow every year.
The foundation creating the memorial has featured journalists on its website. Included in the first round of those showcased is Bolles.
Bolles was a reporter with The Arizona Republic who investigated the mafia, land fraud and political corruption. He was killed in June 1976 by a bomb planted under his Datsun at a midtown Phoenix hotel, an incident that shocked the nation and shook the journalism community.
Barbara Cochran, president of the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation, said the aim was to remind people of the work done by journalists like Bolles.
“They go as eyewitnesses. They document,” she said. “They dig deep and come up with information that people don’t have time to do on their own.”
Bolles’ legacy was not just forged by his death, Cochran said, but the work his death inspired.
Scores of reporters from around the country descended on Phoenix to continue investigating political corruption as Bolles had.
That collective action sent a message.
“Even if you kill the journalist, you won’t kill the story,” Cochran said. “Don Bolles was really the symbol of that.”
The memorial will honor journalists who, like Bolles, were targeted for their reporting, Cochran said. It would also honor those who died in pursuit of a story.
That’s the story of at least five more Arizona journalists.
In 1985, Republic reporter Charles Thornton was killed in Afghanistan, which at the time was invaded by the Soviet Union. Thornton was a health reporter and took the trip to cover a clinic set up by Americans looking to save the lives of people injured in the war by bombs and chemical weapons.
Thornton knew the risks of traveling to a war zone. But said he thought it was worth it to bring the story of the injuries suffered by the Afghan rebels to Republic readers.
In 2007, two news helicopters collided while covering a police chase in midtown Phoenix. The helicopters, one from Channel 3, KTVK-TV, and one from Channel 15, KNXV-TV, each carried a cameraman and a pilot. All four men died when the helicopters crashed onto Steele Indian School Park.
Bolles will be the only Arizona reporter among the first to be honored as part of the new National Mall memorial project.
The physical memorial in Washington will be made up of glass rectangles.
On one end of the plaza, they will be laid in an abstract design. The glass rectangles could serve as benches on the plaza.
As visitors walk to the other end, the glass rectangles begin stacking. Visitors will then enter a circle formed by more glass rectangles.
On the ground in the center of the circle will be the words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Reporter writes ‘the book I wanted to read’ on slain journalist Don Bolles
Axios reporter Jeremy Duda discusses “Murder in the Fourth State,” a book on the murder of The Arizona Republic’s Don Bolles, who died after a car bombing in 1976.
Arizona effort to create a Don Bolles memorial stalls at state Capitol
The DC memorial was introduced in Congress in 2019. It passed both the House and Senate unanimously in 2020 and was signed into law in December 2020 by President Donald Trump.
In contrast, a push to create a memorial for Bolles on the grounds of the state Capitol was proposed at the Arizona Legislature each of the past few years. But every attempt has stalled.
The bill passed the Arizona House unanimously this year. It was bottled up in the state Senate, as has happened since it was first introduced in 2023.
The Bolles memorial bill was assigned to the Senate Government Committee, chaired by state Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek. He did not give the bill a hearing, just as he had declined to do in the previous two sessions.
Hoffman, who has done contract work for the conservative groups Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, has had an antagonistic relationship with the mainstream press and The Republic.
Rep. Selina Bliss, R-Prescott, the sponsor of the measure, said she is not sure exactly why Hoffman hasn’t given the bill a hearing. She expected it would easily pass if it made it to the state Senate floor.
“I can’t get into the minds of others,” she said, “why they choose to hear or don’t hear a bill.”
Bliss said she recognized the passion that Bolles had for journalism.
“It’s like a line of duty death, if you will,” she said. “People are killed in action doing what they do.”
Bliss said she was a teenager in Prescott at the time of the Bolles bombing. She remembers the experience as searing.
“It shook everyone so dramatically,” she said.
Bliss said she might expand the bill next session to include all fallen Arizona journalists, in hopes of getting it out of the logjam in the Senate.
Tim Eigo, president of the Arizona chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, has testified at the Arizona Legislature in support of the bill to allow a Bolles memorial.
Eigo said it was unfortunate that the bill was caught up in the swirl of current political feelings about journalism.
“I think people can get confused about whether dogged coverage is also advocacy. It’s not,” he said. “Some people get confused by that. So, they hesitate to honor a remarkable journalist like Don Bolles because there are other journalists they don’t like.”
Commemorating reporters who were targeted specifically because of their work like Bolles sends a signal, Eigo said.
“When we are honoring their accomplishments and commitment,” he said, “we are also defeating those who feel they can commit crimes against the press with impunity. … We are speaking truth to that cynical power.”
Shooting that killed journalists in Maryland inspired push for memorial
The idea for the DC memorial came after the June 2018 mass shooting at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. Five people were killed in the incident, four of them journalists.
The convicted gunman had filed a defamation suit against the newspaper after it reported on his legal troubles. He reportedly sent letters threatening to attack the newspaper’s journalists before he stormed the newsroom with a shotgun.
Retired U.S. Congressman David Dreier sat on the board of Tribune Publishing, the corporate owner of the sister newspapers, The Capital and the Maryland Gazette. Dreier, a Republican from California, worried that by 2019 the memory of the shooting was already fading.
He wanted a public memorial on the National Mall. The idea gained urgency, Cochran said, when the Newseum announced in 2019 that it was closing. That museum had an exhibition honoring slain journalists. Its centerpiece was the blown-out car from the 1976 Bolles bombing.
“There is nothing in Washington that talks about the sacrifices of journalists or that talks about the First Amendment, which is such a unique contribution to freedom and free expression for people everywhere,” Cochran said.
The location cited for it is a triangular plot of land about three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The site, about a quarter-acre, was formed by the intersection of Independence Avenue and Maryland Avenue, which runs on a diagonal to the U.S. Capitol.
“The site has a clear view of the Capitol Dome,” Cochran said. “It’s a connection to journalism and a symbol of democracy. It reinforces the idea that journalism is a pilar of democracy.”
The memorial will not carry the names of any of the fallen journalists.
Cochran said a federal regulation governing memorials on the National Mall has a rule about those being honored in a group needing to have been deceased for more than 25 years.
“This is a memorial for which there would never be an end time,” she said.
Threats to press freedom are on the rise across the globe
The anniversary of Bolles’ death and the memorial underway come as journalists around the world face increased threats.
Reporters Without Borders, a global nonprofit advocating for independent journalism, has tracked press freedom around the world since 2002. The organization scores countries based on how free journalists are to report, evaluating the legal, political, economic and cultural constraints. It also looks at journalists’ safety working in the countries.
The organization’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index returned the lowest average score among all countries in 25 years.
The United States ranked as the 64th freest country in the world, dropping seven places from its ranking in 2025. The organization cited Trump’s continued attacks on journalists who cover him, as well as his administration’s pressure on networks and news outlets as part of the ranking.
Trump has made attacking the press and sowing distrust in traditional news media a hallmark of his agenda since his first run for higher office in 2015. He has threatened to ease libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets.
Trump himself sued the CBS and ABC networks based on their journalists’ work. The networks settled despite legal experts saying the cases were weak.
U.S. presidents have long had an antogonistic relationship with the press.
George Washington, the first president of the United States, referred to journalists as “infamous scribblers.” Vice President Spiro Agnew called the press “nattering naybobs of negativism.” President Barack Obama used the Espionage Act to plug what he perceived were leaks from his administration to the press, according to the Cato Institute.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit news advocacy group, has tracked more than 2,500 anti-press incidents in the United States since 2017, with nearly 1,400 assaults making up the majority. The tracker records non-physically violent threats, too, such as subpoenas and legal interventions, or chilling statements.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded 17 journalists and reporters killed in the United States since 1992.
In Arizona, 28 anti-press incidents were recorded since 2017, including arresting reporters and denying them access to government events.
The Arizona incidents over the past decade include an interview subject who pushed and shoved an Arizona Republic reporter before stealing her cell phone during the interview, the detention by Phoenix police of a Wall Street Journal reporter who was talking to customers outside a bank, and the detention of an Arizona Republic photographer who was covering protests outside the state Capitol in 2024.
Taylor Seely is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com. Do you have a story about the government infringing on your First Amendment rights? Reach her at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or by phone at 480-476-6116.
Reach Richard Ruelas at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8473.
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