A woman holds up a sign criticizing President Donald Trump during a “No Kings Day” protest in Scottsdale on June 14, 2025. The nationwide day of protest seeks to repudiate what critics view as the federal government, under Trump’s leadership, moving towards authoritarianism. Photo by Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Arizona Mirror
Across the Grand Canyon State, tens of thousands of people braved the sweltering summer heat to gather in parks, on street corners and at the state Capitol for a national day of protest aimed at countering President Donald Trump, who was celebrating his birthday with a military parade in Washington D.C..
There were some 40 volunteer-organized “No Kings” rallies in Arizona on Saturday, including one at the state Capitol near downtown Phoenix that was attended by an estimated 5,000 people. (That estimate comes from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which regularly provides crowd estimates for gatherings at the Capitol. The event’s organizers claimed there were 15,000 in attendance.)
Nationwide, there were more than 2,000 protests, which were expected to draw millions of attendees. The rallies were organized by a who’s who of left-leaning and progressive organizations.
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While protesters in Los Angeles and in other cities have clashed with police and counter-protesters, the events in Arizona remained largely uneventful. The only known altercation at the state Capitol involved a man in a pickup truck.
Protesters and a man in a pickup truck got into a physical altercation after the man got out of his truck and took a Mexican flag away from the protester, later driving off and throwing water at them. The Arizona Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for information about the incident.
While Trump and the impacts of his administration’s policies on immigration were a large focus of the event, multiple speakers talked about the overnight assassination of a top Minnesota Democratic legislator.
Minnesota Democratic House leader Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot by a man impersonating a police officer Saturday morning; police have identified the suspect as 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Minnesota Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were also shot multiple times in their home, but survived. They remain in critical condition.
“Political violence and political assassinations are real and cannot be tolerated,” Phoenix City Councilwoman Ana Hernandez said to the crowd at the Capitol. A moment of silence was also held for the lawmakers.
But the main focus of the event was largely on Trump and firing up those in attendance to get involved with events like No Kings or with the litany of organizations who had set up booths along the capitol grounds.
“Just showing up isn’t the action,” Kazz Fernandez, co-founder of BlackNet Az said. “Yelling at the Capitol on a hot Saturday isn’t what makes change.”
Fernandez urged those in attendance to “pick an issue and pick an organization,” pointing to some of the ones that were in attendance, such as Voter Choice Arizona, which aims to bring ranked choice voting to the state.
In between speakers, No Kings organizers brought out local drag queens and kings who gave family-friendly performances. Some had political overtones, such as including quotes from Trump or parts of interviews with anti-LGBTQ lawmakers.
June is Pride month, and many in attendance sported Pride flags and signs in support of the LGBTQ community.
But if there was a dominant theme to the signs and speeches, it was Trump’s mass deportation efforts, which descended on Phoenix this past week.
The Phoenix area has been the subject of U.S. Department of Homeland Security raids with high-tech surveillance aircraft providing support to federal agents who have been spotted grabbing people from places such as gas stations, grocery store parking lots and their homes.
Roberto Reveles, a prominent Latino civil rights leader, spoke to the crowd about the state’s past with racism and immigration enforcement. His organization, Somos America, led one of the largest civil rights marches in the state’s history and won a lawsuit against then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for racial profiling.
Reveles said that people need to keep “pointing out that racism is a pretty damn expensive luxury,” as the Arpaio era lawsuits are still costing Maricopa County taxpayers millions of dollars.
Others, like former Maricopa county attorney candidate Julie Gunnigle, said that Arizona is “ground zero” for the groups looking to make a profit off the deportation agenda, citing private prison company Geo Group, which has a strong presence in the state and has seen its stock prices skyrocket since the election of Trump.
The vast majority of signs carried by protesters focused on immigration issues, and several attendees told the Arizona Mirror that immigration was the key issue that brought them out — some for the first time ever.
Mexican flags and flags from other countries targeted for deportation actions, such as El Salvador, were scattered among the crowd.
As ralliers marched around the Capitol, a convoy of vehicles began driving around, many waving flags and signs. Many attendees also carried American flags upside down, a signal of distress.
As attendees began to make their way out of the Capitol area, a man with a bullhorn advertised for a later event happening Saturday night in Tempe. However, protesters had already been gathering in Tempe for hours at that point for a No King rally, where more than 1,000 people gathered in a park and held signs on a freeway overpass.
“It’s stand aside or step up,” said 56-year-old Sean Kilburn, a Phoenix resident since 1987, told the Mirror at the Tempe protest. “It’s untenable and intolerable, and I didn’t vote for it.”
Kilburn explained that he served more than three years in the Florence State Prison in the 1990s for marijuana possession. With a felony conviction on his record, he cannot vote.
“They still don’t allow me to vote,” Kilburn said, looking out at the traffic and pausing. “Isn’t that something? It’s OK. Here’s my voice.”
Phoenix resident Cindy Mendoza, 31, came to the Tempe rally with the colors of the Mexican flag painted on her face. She said that her family’s legal status in the country is mixed, but her parents are from Mexico.
“We’re here to speak for those who can’t speak,” she said. “We love America. We love your people.”
Mendoza said that the recent immigration raids have created fear in her community.
“Some friends in construction…they went to the gas station and they got picked up,” Mendoza said. “They were up early heading to work, they stopped by the gas station to get gas and water, and they were taken.”
Organizers on Saturday told attendees that they’re planning more events and encouraged those who attended to stay involved.
The Hands Off! and 50501 protests earlier this year drew large crowds as well but Saturday’s No Kings event was larger and included organizers from both events.
Near 100 degree-temperature doesn’t stop Scottsdale residents, who look to 2028
In nearby heavily Republican Scottsdale, an estimated 1,000 people filled the sidewalks at the intersection of Scottsdale and Camelback Roads, waving handmade signs and American flags at people driving by.
Chants of, ”Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” resounded through the crowd. A chorus of honks from the passing cars sounded in response, eliciting cheers.
The concerns of attendees spanned multiple issues, evidenced by posters that, among other things, criticized federal efforts to gut social services like Medicaid, lambasted the recent surge in ICE operations and underscored the need to protect the U.S. Constitution. But the one throughline for all of them was disdain for Trump.
Kari Tannenbaum sported a sticker with Trump’s name crossed out on it. Her concern, as a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience, is what she said is a “complete and total disregard of law and the Constitution.” She was particularly critical of the administration’s policies that strip legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants and deport people to a megaprison in El Salvador.
“He acts like a king,” Tannenbaum said. “He deports innocent people and disregards all of the laws.”
The Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigrant agenda has sparked nationwide protests, particularly after more than 200 people were detained in Los Angeles and the White House sent National Guardsmen to quell the public backlash.
Susan Coltrara, whose family fled Germany in the 1930s, said she is worried about the similarities that can be drawn between the Nazi regime and the current government’s consistent attempts to violate constitutional protections like due process.
“It scares me to death for our future, and the future of our democracy,” she said.
Coltrara carried with her a sign that read “Never forget” under the dates for the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor, the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the January 6, 2021, attempt by Trump supporters to overthrow the government. Coltrara acknowledged that the third date was controversial because many Republicans, including Trump, have tried to downplay the event as nothing more than a peaceful protest, but she rejected that framing, calling it a clear insurrection. Underneath the list of dates, Coltrara added a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that read: “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
Despite the extreme heat warning and the fact that much of the streets where the protesters stood were exposed to the sun, attendees were undeterred. The temperature climbed into the high 90s by late morning, but people remained at the rally for well over three hours. Mike Yarnall said his wife questioned his decision to join the crowd before he left, but he said he wasn’t discouraged by the possibility of uncomfortable weather.
“Imagine if that had stopped President George Washington at Valley Forge,” he joked.
The 68-year-old said he attended the protest on behalf of his two daughters. He said he was shocked that the political climate has regressed so much that their reproductive rights are more at risk today than they were decades ago.
“They had more rights at 15 than they do now in their twenties,” he said. “That’s frightening.”
Arizonans enshrined the right to abortion in the state Constitution last year, but for millions of women across the country, access to the procedure is curtailed or outright banned. And, Yarnall said, the state-level protections his daughters enjoy can still be undermined if the Trump administration pursues restrictive policies at the federal level.
Reproductive rights organizations fear the federal government is aiming to do just that by pushing the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its safety review of mifepristone, the most widely used abortion pill. If the approval of the pill is rolled back — as anti-abortion groups previously tried to do through the courts — thousands of women seeking accessible and affordable reproductive health care would be left in the lurch.
As the protest began to wind down, the discussion turned to electoral contribution as a solution. An organizer urged the crowds to donate to Defend the Taxpayers, a political action committee that is courting moderate Republicans in a bid to unseat U.S. Representative David Schwiekert. The Republican represents congressional district 1, which stretches from central Phoenix to Cave Creek to Fountain Hills, and has long been a target of progressive activists. The district leans Republican but is highly competitive, with an almost even split between the percentage of voters who cast their ballots for Democratic and Republican candidates. At the same time that Scottsdale residents gathered near the Fashion Square Mall, another protest was taking place in front of Schwiekert’s office a few miles away.
For protestors at the busy intersection, the enthusiasm on display gave them hope that the upcoming midterms will bring change.
“People are fed up with what’s going on,” Contrara said.
Mark Pelofsky, who sported a small American flag in his bike helmet, added that Arizona’s status as a battleground state could mean the difference not just for Schwiekert’s seat, but for the federal government as a whole. Control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate is up for grabs in 2028.
“Arizona is a swing state, we have a chance to make a difference,” he said.
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This post was originally authored and published by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, Gloria Rebecca Gomez, Emily Holshouser from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
