No Kings! St. Paul

On the morning of June 14, 2025, a gunman shot several Minnesota state lawmakers, killing House Speaker Melissa Hortman. Hours later, despite law enforcement warnings to stay away while the suspect remained at large, thousands of people gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul for a No Kings rally that had already been planned.

The No Kings movement had been building across the country for months as a decentralized response to the Trump administration's consolidation of executive power and the policy agenda associated with Project 2025. The June 14 rallies were coordinated nationally, but the one in St. Paul was transformed by the morning's violence into something the organizers had not anticipated — a simultaneous act of political protest and public mourning.

Hortman, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislator who had served in the Minnesota House since 2005 and as Speaker since 2023, was one of the state's most prominent elected officials. Her assassination cast an immediate shadow over the Capitol grounds where protesters gathered, and signs honoring her appeared alongside the broader anti-authoritarian messaging that defined the No Kings movement. Local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong addressed the crowd from the Capitol steps.

The day also saw a counter-presence near a Tesla dealership in Golden Valley, where a smaller group of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered at a Tesla Takedown event, some of them traveling from out of state. The two gatherings, separated by a few miles, captured the depth of the political divide in the Twin Cities on one of the most volatile days in recent Minnesota history.