The nationwide “No Kings” protest movement is back for round two — and after avoiding Washington during the summer, protesters are expected to descend on the nation’s capital Saturday amid an 18-day government shutdown that has no end in sight.

The demonstrations are part of the second national day of action, organized by dozens of liberal advocacy groups to protest what they call “authoritarian power grabs” on the part of President Donald Trump.

Organizers said they expect the more than 2,600 events across all 50 states to surpass the more than 5 million people who attended the first wave of “No Kings” rallies in June. The marches come amid heightened criticism from Republicans about this weekend’s rallies.

“They might try to paint this weekend’s events as something dangerous to our society, but the reality is there is nothing unlawful or unsafe about organizing and attending peaceful protests,” said Deirdre Schifeling of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s the most patriotic and American thing you can do, and we have a 250-year-old history of disagreeing in public.”

Amid the heightened tensions of the shutdown, Republicans have repeatedly sought to vilify the planned protests. House Speaker Mike Johnson and other leading Republicans have referred to the protests as a “hate America rally” and sought to tie it to Hamas and antifa. And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also announced Thursday that he would be sending members of the state’s National Guard — as well as state troopers, Texas Rangers and Department of Public Safety personnel — to Austin on Saturday in response to the planned demonstrations.

In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Trump said “some people say [Democrats] want to delay” ending the government shutdown because of the rallies.

“They’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” Trump said in the interview.

Organizers remain undeterred by the response, though. Leah Greenberg, progressive advocacy organization Indivisible co-executive director, called it “part of a broader effort to create a permission structure to crack down” on peaceful protests.

“They are panicking and they are flailing and they are searching for anything — literally anything — to distract from their own governing failures,” Greenberg said of Republicans at a press conference. “And in their desperation, they have decided to go with smearing millions of Americans who are coming out to peacefully, joyfully assert our rights.”

The first wave of rallies that took place on June 14 — the same day as Trump’s military parade in Washington, which coincided with the army’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 79th birthday — were overwhelmingly peaceful, and organizers said then that they intentionally avoided a counterprotest in Washington to avoid the military parade.

The events went off almost entirely without incident, save for one notable exception of volunteer rally “peacekeepers” shooting and killing a bystander at a Utah march because they believed another man with a gun was about to fire on the crowd.

Republicans’ efforts to demonize the rally comes amid a White House push to target left-leaning nonprofits perceived as hostile to the administration’s agenda.

Unlike the June protests, the Saturday slate of events also includes a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. When asked for comment on Saturday’s rallies, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded: “Who cares?”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who is set to address the crowd in Washington, earlier this week criticized the push as an effort to “suppress turnout.”

“They’re showing us how much they hate free speech,” he said in a Wednesday social media video. “The rhetoric has ramped up from Republican leaders in the last few days.”

The speaker list in D.C. also includes Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Karen Attiah, a former Washington Post columnist who was fired last month after attracting criticism for several social media posts in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder.

Forrás