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As President Donald Trump celebrates his birthday on Saturday with a $45 million military parade in the nation's capital, organizers are expecting a big turnout for alternative "No Kings" programming in Grand Junction and some 1,800 other sites across Colorado and the United States. According to the event's website, protesters aim to spotlight growing authoritarianism within an administration that has defied courts, disappeared and deported Americans, and deployed active military personnel on U.S. soil.

Mallory Martin, Grand Junction organizer with the group Indivisible, said since the moment this nation was founded, 'we the people' don't do kings.

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"We have a constitutional republic, and we really want our president to follow the rule of law, to be respectful of our constitution, and to give people the due process that they deserve," she said.

A list of protest sites is available at 'NoKings.org.' Trump's defenders say the president is making good on campaign promises to deport immigrants, to remake government by disrupting entrenched bureaucrats branded as the "deep state," and to push back against so-called activist judges. In the 2024 election, American voters gave Trump an electoral college victory and wins in all swing states. Trump was also the first Republican president to capture the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.

Martin said regardless of who won the last election, American presidents take an oath to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution, in which the executive branch is co-equal to Congress and the Judiciary. She believes too many of Trump's executive orders are testing democracy's guardrails.

"And so many of them are being found to be unconstitutional," she continued. "He then goes after those judges, many of whom he appointed in the first place, and calls them radical leftists."

More than 45 events are planned throughout Colorado from Greeley to Trinidad, Cortez, Gunnison, Steamboat Springs and in metro areas along the Front Range.

Wendy Petry, a Grand Valley community organizer, said people in Colorado and across the U.S. will have to step up to heal the nation and build a future that works for all Americans.

"People who have checked out of politics because it has become so unpleasant can check back in; they just need to join the movement," she said. "We need more people to check back in, just to make it clear that they're not happy with what's happening in Washington."