Angry Antifa Mob Descends On DC! (For No Kings Protest)

And Dom was there!

No Kings protesters rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, Oct. 17, 2026.

On Saturday, hundreds from across the Washington DC region gathered in Arlington, Virginia, to march to the Lincoln Memorial. Officially, it was a No Kings/Get Out the Vote/Throw the Bums Out sort of thing. Unofficially, it was a reminder of all the crazy things that have happened in less than two years thanks to the Republican-led Congress that’s refused to check a president governing as an autocrat.

Things started with a rally at Memorial Circle in Arlington, the proposed site for Donald Trump’s vanity arch. A lone police officer on a power trip seemed to delight in yelling at anyone caught walking on the grass inside the actual traffic circle.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it there in time for the initial rally. There was a seemingly unannounced and unspecified construction project at all the stations immediately around Arlington. Several people commented that it was as convenient as it was suspicious, but seeing as the Washington Area Metro Transit Authority is known and derided for its incompetence, it’s entirely possible the WMATA just shit the bed (again) along this one particular stretch of track.

Regardless, when I finally arrived at the protest, I had to make a mad dash across the Arlington Memorial Bridge in the cold, blustery wind to catch up to the crowd.

No Kings protesters march down the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington DC, Oct. 17, 2026.

The first and earliest No Kings event of the day, the march and rally were not just about pushing back on Trump’s monument to himself. It was also about his war in Iran; his second tax cut for the super rich; the flagrant violations of citizens’ rights enshrined in the Constitution, and of the democratic principles the nation was founded upon. It was about the seizures of government institutions and federal funds for vanity projects nobody voted for, or wanted. It was about the gutting of civil service jobs, and staffing the government agencies with blind sycophants, cowardly yes-men, unqualified crackpots, shameless grifters, and complete fucking idiots. It was about the GOP-held Congress’s fear, complacency and/or support of this reckless stupidity.

Some marchers carried crude effigies and puppets of Trump and his administration. Others carried hastily made signs on recycled cardboard. Some brought their pets, some wore costumes. It was about showing up, showing solidarity, and letting others know that they weren’t suffering alone.

Typical radical anti-fascist complaints.

No Kings protesters rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, Oct. 17, 2026.

At some point during the day, the No Kings account on Instagram, a primary source for information, was suspended. It’s generally considered a dick move to limit information from a primary source on a day when large, multi-city actions are planned, not to mention unsafe. The account was restored later in the day with a spox calling it an “error” due to an automated something-or-other.

Some of the journalists and photographers who actually work for a living began kvetching and trading information about the other marches and rallies throughout the day. There were at least a dozen different actions throughout the DC region, some happening simultaneously.

One group was organizing at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to push back on funding cuts to the NIH, medical research, and the dangerously stupid anti-vax nonsense spouted by HHS secretary and edible roadkill chef Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Over a hundred students at George Washington University gathered to march on the Supreme Court. There was a plan to gather near the White House at Lafayette Park to protest the removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza. There was a march up in Baltimore. And this is just what we could all remember.

But because there were so many loosely connected events scattered throughout the day, it wasn’t possible to give them all coverage. A few photographers griped that all the tiny gatherings made it impossible to show the scale of all the different actions. While it looked impressive on Indivisible’s map, that can lead to a few dozen people standing around holding signs as opposed to 12,000 people.

Despite the murky planning in DC, rallies were held in cities large and small across the country. The main message from all of them: Vote early, and vote often.

No Kings protesters rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, Oct. 17, 2026.