Hundreds of people turned out for the “No Kings Day” rally in downtown Riverhead Saturday afternoon— undeterred by steady rain — to send a defiant message to President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.
The “No Kings Day” rally, one of over 2,000 coordinated events nationwide, marked the six-month point of Trump’s second term with a wave of public opposition. Participants filled Griffing Avenue in front of the Suffolk County courthouse, waving American flags, chanting, and holding hand-lettered signs. Many wore gold-colored paper crowns to symbolize what they see as the president’s authoritarian overreach.
See photos from the rally. (Below.)
National organizers said Saturday was “one of the largest days of protest in American history.”
Local organizers estimated the event drew more than 1,000 people. Riverhead Police put the number at about 500.
The rally in Riverhead drew people from across the region, across party lines and political ideologies. Among them was Barbara Clay of Greenport, a former lifelong Republican who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
“This is not normal. This is not a normal administration, not even a normal Republican one, and it’s up to the country now to stand up and say, ‘We do not accept this,’” Clay said in an interview. “I’m no longer a Republican. I left the party when Donald Trump was in his first term, and now I am taking to the streets because that’s what we need to do as Americans. We need to say no kings,” she said.
“Ronald Reagan wasn’t a king. George Herbert Walker Bush wasn’t a king. They were willing to ask people who knew better than they did for advice, and to accept that advice. They did what was best for the country, after consulting many, many people, Donald Trump does none of that. He sees himself as a potential autocrat, dictator — choose your word, and he is acting like one.”
Clay said today’s Republican Party “has rolled over and played dead” in the face of “the threat that Trump poses to individual Republicans who go off track, don’t toe the line,” she said. “I know people from my Washington days who say one thing behind the scenes and then publicly say how much they support Trump and his policies. The threat is a real one,” Clay said. “He can destroy people’s reputations and he mobilizes quite an army of negative supporters.”
The rally was peaceful and energetic, commencing with the Pledge of Allegiance and featuring a lineup of speakers calling for civic action and political engagement.
New York’s lieutenant governor gives rousing speech
“I want you to understand that we’re here today because you remember something. We don’t want monarchy, we don’t want class and status and bloodline to dictate power. We want power to be with the people everywhere,” New York Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado told the crowd from the courthouse steps.
“America was founded on these values, these principles — freedom, equality and justice for everybody, every single person, irrespective of your race, your class, your gender, your religion, your sexual orientation… If you’re a human being…You’re free here in America,” Delgado said.
“We celebrate the greatest generation that beat back nazism, that beat back fascism, that fought for democracy. And we call them great not because of military might, but because of the values and the principles that they fought to save and protect. That is why we call them great,” Delgado said.
“This country is great,” he declared. “It need not be made great again.”
He said the source of America’s greatness is the “freedom and justice and equality and opportunity” that America represents. “It is our values that define who we are,” he said.
Southold Town Council Member Greg Doroski decried the methods being used in the Trump administration’s mass-deportation effort and the president’s federalization of the California National Guard and the deployment of active military troops in Los Angeles, which he called “a recipe for tragedy.”
“Now let me be clear, we all support the removal of violent criminals, but it must never come at the expense of the rule of law, due process and basic human rights,” he said.
“I call on our local government officials to join with me in standing up for our communities, our law enforcement officers, our civil rights, our public safety and our democracy,” Doroski told the crowd.
‘We are not the background, we are the backbone’
Twenty-six-year-old Southampton native Jon Lopez gave a heartfelt personal account of his life and its roots in the East End’s immigrant community as “a proud first-generation Mexican-American college student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.”
As the son of immigrants, Lopez said he’s had to navigate life without the guidance of parents and grandparents who fully understand American institutions.
“I walked into higher education, civic life, government systems, alone, carrying the weight of my family’s dreams without…a safety net — just faith, just grit, just long nights and the pressure to succeed in rooms where no one looks like me,” Lopez said.
Lopez took the opportunity to remind residents that “the Hamptons are made up of more than what you see on magazine covers.”
“We’re the workers rising before the sun, the construction crews building million-dollar homes they’ll never sleep in,” Lopez said. “We’re the bilingual caregivers, the landscapers, the line cooks and bussers, the cleaners … We’re the first to show up and the last to leave. We are the trade parade on County Road 39,” he said.
“We are not the background, we are the backbone,” Lopez declared. “Our sweat, our hands, our sacrifices have shaped the Hamptons today, just as much as those cedar shingles, the summer hydrangeas and the beaches we rarely get to enjoy,” Lopez said.
“Since the 1970s both of my grandfathers and many others came here to till what used to be potato fields, mow these lawns, clean these homes, not just for work, but for a dream — the American dream— that one day their children could stand where I stand today,” Lopez said. “And still, even now in 2025, our communities are treated as invisible, disposable, replaceable. That ends now,” Lopez declared.
“We reap what we sow, and while this movement of fear and division tries to take root, all it’s really done is awaken a sleeping giant— a generation filled with compassion, a generation that refuses to give up, a generation that will reverse every injustice, a generation that will build a tomorrow worthy of our ancestors’ sacrifice,” Lopez said.
Pastor Tisha Williams of First Baptist Church in Bridgehampton issued a stark warning. “This is not a drill,” she said. “This is go time. This is a declaration. They are not planning to take power. They are planning to erase us now that they got it.”
Williams said Americans don’t know how to react when “the greatest threat to freedom is the man who once swore to protect it.”
“We stand today boldly declaring we do not crown this man. Do not let your apathy become your lullaby,” Williams said. “Do not let your silence take your soul… This isn’t about red and blue. It’s about blood and bones. This is about the people in my pews and in your communities who are rationing insulin, about the mamas who have to skip meals and the elders who have to skip their meds, and the youth who are skipping hope,” Williams said.
“And if your gospel hasn’t got room for that, then it’s not gospel. It’s gaslighting,” she said.
Denise Silva-Dennis, a member of the Shinnecock Nation, reminded those at the rally that there were communities in ‘Riverhead long before Europeans arrived on local shores. The Corchaug people once had a village right where the rally was taking place, Silva-Dennis said.
She spoke of how her ancestors welcomed Europeans here from Massachusetts. “We took care of those immigrants. And today, we get to say, who can stay, who can go, and I say let them come, because they are Americans too,” Silva-Dennis said. “North America, Central America and South America —there were never any borders…We are all related,” she said.
Other speakers included Assembly Members Tommy John Schiavoni, and Steve Stern, former congressional candidates in New York’s First Congressional District Dave Calone and John Avlon and U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman of New York City.
Riverhead Democratic Committee Chairperson Laura Jens-Smith told the demonstrators they must channel their energy into political activism, to elect a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives next year, as the only way to restore the checks and balances contemplated by the framers of the Constitution.
In a phone interview Saturday night, Jens-Smith said she was impressed by the number of people who attended the rally and how the crowd had grown since the “Hands Off” rally held in the same location in April.
“People don’t like what’s happening,” she said. “We had people from across the political spectrum. We had people unhappy with the way the country is being managed,” Jens-Smith said.
“Rallies like this put the elected Republicans on notice. People are watching, listening and are upset. We’re not going to stand by idly. We’re going to continue to gather, protest and demand that they respect us, the rule of law and the Constitution,” she said.
Rep. LaLota responds
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), who represents New York’s First Congressional District, said in a statement he appreciated that protestors in Riverhead “kept things peaceful,” which, he said, was “in contrast to the violence and lawlessness unfolding in other parts of the country.” His statement, sent by email from a staff member in response to RiverheadLOCAL’s inquiry, did not elaborate.
And while these protestors “remain loud,” LaLota said, “polls show that more Americans believe our country is heading in the right direction than at any point in the last two years,” he said in the statement.
His communications director sent a link to the Real Clear Politics website which averages polls taken by selected polling firms. The average of polls in the last month that were analyzed by the website indicates more Americans believe the country is on the “wrong track” than going in the “right direction” — as polls have consistently shown going back to 2010, according to the analysis — but the spread has narrowed in 2025 to 8.9 points, with 51.6% of respondents saying the country is on the “wrong track” and 42.7% replying that the country is heading in the “right direction.”
The spread was much wider toward the end of President Joseph Biden’s term when there was a difference of more than 35 points — with more than 60% saying the country was on the wrong track just before the November election. But during the early months of 2021, Biden’s first year in office, the “wrong track” numbers hovered around 50%, according to the Real Clear Politics polling averages.
RiverheadLOCAL photos by Emil Breitenbach Jr. and Denise Civiletti
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