Thousands of people gathered in opposition to President Donald Trump’s administration at a rally and march in Denver on Saturday, the largest of more than 50 No Kings protests held across Colorado amid rising tensions over the country’s direction in his second term.

An overflow crowd spilled into Civic Center Park, and multiple streets surrounding the Capitol grounds were shut down as the event began just after noon. Near the state Capitol steps, attendees heard from a lineup of speakers including former state Representative Joe Salazar, who told the crowd in a fiery speech that Trump’s agenda “threatens to tear the fabric of this country apart.”

“There is no king in America, and we will not be silenced by authoritarians,” Salazar said to cheers. “We will not be painted as domestic terrorists. We are just Coloradans, just Americans, who are calling a spade a spade and a dictator a dictator — because that is our constitutional right to do so.”

Tiffany Weber, founder of the activist group Solidarity Warriors and one of the Denver protest’s organizers, blasted U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s characterization of the nationwide No Kings event this week as a “Hate America” rally.

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“He has the gall to say we hate America. We love America,” Weber told the crowd. “We love the loud, beautiful, chaotic streets of Denver. We love the variety of ways that people show up to protests, and we hate the fact that not everyone can safely exercise their American right to free speech.”

Organizers of the Denver protest estimate that more than 25,000 demonstrators were in attendance, Salazar told Newsline. An estimated12,000 to 15,000 demonstrators gathered in Colorado Springs. The nationwide No Kings Coalition, partners of which include liberal and progressive groups like Indivisible, MoveOn and the ACLU, estimated 7 million people turned out Saturday to demonstrate against what it called Trump’s “authoritarian actions and power grabs.”

The latest round of protests come as Trump has ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the cities of Chicago and Portland, which he has falsely described as “war ravaged” in spite of recent nonviolent anti-ICE protests that have prominently featured inflatable animal costumes and naked bicycle rides.

I’m hoping to save democracy. We need to defeat these people trying to tear us down and destroy our Constitution.

Throughout the day, the atmosphere at Saturday’s demonstration in Denver was similarly peaceful and festive, featuring countless satirical anti-Trump protest signs — “The Only Thing Colorado Likes More Than Hiking on a Saturday Is Our Democratic Rights,” read one — and dozens of protesters clad in inflatable costumes of the kind recently popularized by protesters in Portland.

Gerry Lauer, a demonstrator dressed in an inflatable chicken costume, said he had been inspired by footage of the Portland protests and ordered the costume online before Saturday’s event.

“Portland did a great job of finding a way to eliminate the hostility, (and) kind of create that safe place to be,” Lauer said. “It’s a real serious time, but we don’t need to be creating violence and hostility. We need to figure out how to get it around that.”

‘This insanity has to stop’

Coloradans also turned out for a No Kings protest in Grand Junction, where an organizer with Indivisible said thousands had turned out in the Western Slope city to protest the Trump administration.

One of those participants was Jerry Hawthorne of Fruita.

“I’m hoping to save democracy. We need to defeat these people trying to tear us down and destroy our Constitution,” he said.

Kerri Osterguard traveled from the town of Mesa to attend the No Kings rally in Grand Junction.

“This insanity has to stop. It’s out of control,” she said.

Rick Griffith, Bev Griffith, Bill Shelton and Connie Ellenberger displayed protest signs designed by Shelton. Bev Griffith said the Grand Junction event was their first No Kings rally and that they participated because President Donald Trump is “running our country into the ground” and “he should be behind bars.”

Tensions over immigration enforcement

In his second term, Trump has pledged to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” aiming to remove all of the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country without permanent legal status, regardless of how long they have been in the country, the legal status of their family members or whether they have criminal records.

Tensions have risen in cities like Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles as ICE enforcement operations have become more expansive and aggressive, drawing protests that Trump administration officials have in turn harshly criticized and sought to meet with further crackdowns by federal law enforcement, as well as troop deployments. Trump told an audience of top U.S. military leaders last month that American cities should be used as “training grounds for our military,” and he has repeatedly spoken of invoking the Insurrection Act to broaden his authority to deploy the military against U.S. citizens.

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Trump’s mass deportation program has been bolstered by $45 billion in new ICE funding in the Republican federal spending and tax cut law approved in July. At least 170 people with U.S. citizenship have been swept up in the agency’s expanded enforcement operations so far this year, ProPublica reported Thursday.

“We can’t treat people like this. We can’t treat anybody like this, let alone immigrants who are minding their own business and doing their work,” said Emily Magner, an Aurora resident who attended Saturday’s protest at the Capitol. “(They say) ‘We’re only after the bad ones.’ Well, then why are you going to meatpacking plants (and) places where you think immigrants would work?”

After hearing from rally speakers, thousands of demonstrators marched away from the Capitol down 15th Street into Denver’s Central Business District. Before the march, Julian Camera of the American Civil Liberties Union spoke to the crowd about their constitutional rights, including the right to free speech and the right to remain silent if detained by law enforcement.

“The reason I share these rights with you today is because it’s rookie hour at the federal government, and if you’re detained by law enforcement, they might try to intimidate you and lie to you about your rights,” Camera said. “We’re not going to let them get away with trying to rewrite the Constitution just because Trump is telling them to.”

Following the march, most demonstrators left the Capitol area by 4 p.m. A much smaller group of protesters later marched to 20th and Chestnut streets, where Denver Police Department officers “dispersed the group to deny access to the highway” and made multiple arrests, according to a DPD social media post.

Chase Woodruff reported from Denver. Sharon Sullivan reported from Grand Junction.