Roughly 10,000 people packed the Statehouse lawn in Montpelier on Saturday while thousands more gathered at approximately 50 events across Vermont, joining a nationwide wave of “No Kings Day” demonstrations aimed squarely at the Trump administration.
The Vermont rallies were part of a coordinated day of action that organizers said included more than 3,000 events across the country. From Burlington’s City Hall Park to Bennington, protesters carried signs, sang songs, and delivered speeches covering a wide range of concerns: immigration enforcement, the ongoing war in Iran, attacks on reproductive rights, and what many demonstrators described as a drift toward authoritarianism in Washington.
In Montpelier, Brett Chornyak carved out his own corner of the protest. The Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development grants manager from Richmond stood alone across the street from the Capitol, banging a makeshift drum that echoed down the block. It was his third No Kings rally. He hasn’t missed one.
“I think it’s a message,” Chornyak said, pausing his drumming to scan the crowd. “It’s a message for all of us. We need to be involved in our democracy. We need to speak out.”
Four neighborhood rallies from around Burlington converged at City Hall Park, where activists took the stage for speeches while demonstrators waved colorful signs. Marguerite Francescani, a Burlington resident, pointed to the signs she wore on her body. “I’m hoping we can dump Trump, stop ICE and have peace,” she said.
Immigration sits at the center of the tension, and in Vermont, that tension has recently turned acute. In early March, federal immigration agents’ attempt to detain one man outside a Dorset Street home in South Burlington escalated into a prolonged standoff involving federal authorities, state and local police, and a crowd of protesters. The incident put the administration’s immigration priorities in stark, local terms for many Vermonters.
Saturday’s demonstrations mark the third round of No Kings events in the state. Thousands of Vermonters attended the previous editions in June and October of last year. The movement has grown each cycle, organized by local groups including 50501 Vermont and the Indivisible movement, a nationwide progressive activist network that formed in the aftermath of Trump’s first election in 2016.
Vermont’s elected officials showed up, too. U.S. Sen. Peter Welch was scheduled to speak in Montpelier, and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint was set to address the crowd in Bennington. Their presence signals how mainstream the demonstrations have become, drawing not just grassroots organizers but the state’s Democratic political establishment into the same space.
What’s striking about the Vermont protests is how they connect local, tangible grievances to larger constitutional anxieties. The signs calling out ICE enforcement sit next to signs about the war in Iran. Opposition to cuts in federal housing programs appears alongside warnings about executive overreach. Protesters aren’t treating these as separate issues. They’re treating them as symptoms of the same problem.
That synthesis is what gives the No Kings framing its rhetorical power. The name itself carries a historical charge that resonates in a New England state with deep roots in republican democracy. Vermonters, famously independent and civic-minded, have turned out in winter coats and flannel for three straight rallies now, which suggests the movement has found something durable beyond the initial spike of outrage that often fades from political organizing.
Chornyak, still drumming alone across from the Capitol, embodied that durability. He wasn’t on stage. He wasn’t leading a chant. He was just marking time, making noise, refusing to stop. The crowd of 10,000 around him was doing the same thing, in their own ways, at events stretching from one end of the state to the other.
Whether the energy of a single day translates into lasting political pressure is a harder question. What Saturday made clear is that the coalition showing up in Vermont is broad, local, and still growing.
