Sherrill, Zwicker Rally Princeton Crowd At 'No Kings' Protest: 'Not Here, Not Now, Not Ever'

PRINCETON, N.J. — Gov. Mikie Sherrill and state Sen. Andrew Zwicker rallied with a crowd Saturday at Monument Park, Princeton, joining a nationwide day of protests calling for limits on executive power as part of the growing "No Kings" movement.

The event, co-organized by Indivisible Princeton and the ACLU of New Jersey, was one of more than 1,000 held across the country on Saturday and one of 54 staged throughout New Jersey.

Organizers had aimed to draw 12 million participants nationally.

Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, catalogued a series of legal and political conflicts her administration has had with the Trump administration, including a court fight over what she described as a federal demand for New Jersey's private voter data.

"Every single time he comes after us in every single way, we're going to fight hard for people, because this is ridiculous," Sherrill told the crowd. "Every single time that anyone comes after New Jersey, I'm going to say no way."

The governor also cited the administration's freeze on Gateway tunnel funding, which she said threatened thousands of jobs, as well as what she characterized as risks to health care and air travel. She noted she recently signed legislation banning private militias from operating in New Jersey.

Zwicker, a Democrat who represents the 16th Legislative District, which includes Princeton, invoked the region's Revolutionary War history to frame the moment.

"We are in Princeton, near the battlefield where the 10 crucial days changed the course of the Revolutionary War and led to the birth of American democracy," he said. "I'm here in 2026 chanting 'No Kings' — 250 years later, I would like to think the founders would be proud. I'd also like to think that they would be absolutely baffled that we still have to do this."

Zwicker also addressed what he called the deliberate nature of the political exhaustion many demonstrators described feeling.

"Despair and exhaustion are their strategy, but they are not our truths," he said. "That exhaustion and that hopelessness is not something that happened to you, it's something that's being done to you, deliberately, systematically and on purpose — and we will not give that to them."

The rally also featured remarks from Ezra Rosenberg of the ACLU-NJ and representatives from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the League of Women Voters of New Jersey and the Climate Revolution Action Network.

The No Kings movement has previously organized rallies drawing an estimated 5 million participants in June 2025 and approximately 7 million at more than 2,700 events across all 50 states in October 2025.

Here are more photos from the rally, courtesy of Wayne Hollendoller and Sophia Latorre-Zengierski:

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