From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

Thousands gathered at Philadelphia City Hall to kick off Saturday’s “No Kings” protest, one of at least 40 taking place across the region and the third in the city since June 2025.

Protesters of all ages filled the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, toting signs decrying President Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran as they marched to a stage at 22nd Street.

According to organizers from Indivisible, a self-described nationwide movement against authoritarianism, about 40,000 people participated in Saturday’s protest.

Rose DiGregorio, 68, of Upper Chichester, Delaware County, has attended all three of the “No Kings” protests. She said she is most concerned about the Jeffrey Epstein files and the war with Iran.

“I’m just hoping that there’s an end soon to this,” she said. “We can’t do three more years of this. It’s unbearable.”

Linda Thomas, who attended the protest with DiGregorio, said she is protesting ICE because the agency is “trampling on our constitutional rights.”

“Just arresting people without warrants, going into their homes. … Killing American citizens who have a right to protest and a right to carry arms,” she said, referencing the shooting deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January.

She also criticized the ongoing war with Iran, noting that “prices are going up.”

“Gas is expensive. Food is expensive,” she said. “We have to cut back on so many things. They cut Medicaid. They cut subsidies for health care. People can’t get health care. People can’t eat. This has to stop, and we’re funding a war because of Israel.”

Thomas said she hopes Congress listens to its constituents “and starts taking action and stops giving away all their power. … We have three parts of our system, and only one of them seems to be making all the laws and the rules.”

Dean, Boyle decry immigration enforcement’s ‘absence of humanity’

Mark Laywhyee, 20, attended the protest with three fellow students from Rosemont College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He said he is most concerned about the “aggressive immigration policy” of the Trump administration and its direction of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.

“I come from an immigrant family, myself,” Laywhyee said. “So to see DHS, and specifically ICE officers, in our airports and in our schools and hospitals and invading every part of our life, just to attack and persecute immigrants, the people that are the lifeblood of this country — it’s very disheartening to myself and my family.”

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Montgomery County, criticized ICE and the administration during a speech at the rally.

She said that during a visit to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas two weeks ago, she saw and heard firsthand stories of “medical neglect, mental neglect, educational neglect,” including a 2-year-old with an infected mouth “that was green to look at,” and an educational program that Dean described as “fake.”

“We witnessed an absence of humanity at this for-profit detention camp,” she said.

Dean listed grievances against Britain’s King George III that were recorded in the Declaration of Independence, equating them with the Trump administration’s actions.

“Whether it is Epstein or an insurrection or ICE, the inhumanity of immigration, from Venezuela to Greenland to Iran to Putin, we are better than this, because [the] American people are better than this,” Dean said.

“Renee Good was one of those good American people,” she added. “Alex Pretti was one of those good American people. Little Liam [Conejo Ramos] and all the Liams I just met two weeks ago are good American people. America is great because her people are good.”

The demonstration comes as many people throughout the region and country are feeling the effects of the ongoing partial government shutdown.

U.S. Rep Brendan Boyle, D-Philadelphia, was scheduled to speak, but he was held up in Washington, D.C., so he instead addressed the crowd in a pre-recorded video. He said that after the U.S. Senate passed a compromise to fund DHS except for ICE, the House rejected the measure Friday, with House Republicans instead proposing a stopgap measure to fully fund the entire department for eight weeks.

“Our government on the Democratic side have quite rightly, rightfully and justifiably, said we will not fund one more dime for ICE unless you have meaningful changes and reforms. We cannot see again on the streets of Philadelphia or anywhere else in America what we saw play out on the streets of Minneapolis,” Boyle said. “Unfortunately, President Trump and Republicans in Congress had decided to hold every other agency within Homeland Security hostage.”

The Trump administration said Friday that workers for the Transportation Security Administration, who have been working without pay since Feb. 14, will start receiving paychecks Monday even as the shutdown continues.

Speakers also criticized the Trump administration’s attacks on historical information presented at national parks, including the effort to remove an exhibit at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia about the lives of enslaved people who had lived there.

“You got to know the good, the bad and the ugly before you claim that you love America,” said Michael Coard, an attorney and founding member of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, which fought to create the slavery memorial at the Independence Mall site and has publicly campaigned for the restoration of the panels.

Protesters see the demonstration as ‘a launching-off point’

Twins Philo and Cassandra Solis, both 18, of Mt. Airy, attended the protest with their grandfather, Raymond Torres, 74, also of Mt. Airy.

They are concerned about “basically everything that Trump is doing,” Philo Solis said.

“ICE, anti-trans laws, involvement in wars that have nothing to do with us,” added Cassandra Solis.

Torres said he attended with his grandchildren because he wants to “set a good example for them.”

“I really believe that Trump is really leading us into dictatorship,” he said.

The previous “No Kings” protests, held in June and October 2025, saw millions of participants across the country.

Philadelphia was the flagship protest for the June “No Kings” protest, which took place the same day as a military parade in the nation’s capital that coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.

In response to the October “No Kings” protest, Trump said it was a “joke,” and that he is “not a king at all.”

Protesters like Aidan McMahon, 26, of West Philadelphia, expressed hope that the continued demonstrations will have an impact on U.S. domestic and foreign policies.

“There’s been a lot of things going on recently, and I think it’s really difficult for people to stay politically involved without feeling exhausted, and to stay tuned in without feeling exhausted,” McMahon said.  “And I think that it’s important to try to express political beliefs and First Amendment rights in a way that is a part of community.”

Laywhyee, the student from Rosemont College, said he hopes the protest is “a launching-off point” for people who attend.

“I feel like the best thing about protests is it allows people to sort of find out what a lot of people are thinking and feeling and that they share a lot of those same feelings. And then they can take that opportunity to move on and do other things outside of this process,” he said. “Calling their politicians, or going out and voting for specific things, or joining the organizing process, themselves.”

Fellow Rosemont student Tori Jones said she thinks protests can influence the people who witness them.

“I always really hope that even if systems of power … can’t change, people’s minds can change, and that people who don’t understand the ways that their actions are affecting other people can … grow and gain more empathy,” she said.