The senator delivered a powerful message on Iran at the No Kings Rally in Minnesota.
Bernie Sanders speaks during the “No Kings” rally concert at the Minnesota State Capitol on March 28, 2026.(Astrida Valigorsky / Getty Images)
St. Paul—Bruce Springsteen closed his remarkable performance at the No Kings rally on the steps of the Minnesota state Capitol Saturday with a bold cry of “No kings! No war!”
He was not alone.
The Minnesota rally, like so many of the more than 3,300 No Kings events that drew at least 8 million Americans nationwide to pickets, marches, and demonstrations Saturday, featured loud and clear opposition to Donald Trump’s wars in general—and, in particular, to the president’s disastrous assault on Iran.
Public Citizen president Rob Weissman set the tone for the day, telling the cheering rallygoers, “We have to persist to end this illegal, unconstitutional, and devastating war on Iran—and make sure that Congress does not give a penny more to pay for or extend this war.” When he chanted, “No kings! No ICE! No war! Democracy is what we’re fighting for!,” there came a thunderous echo from the crowd. (The Minnesota State Patrol estimated a turnout of 100,000, while organizers with Indivisible Twin Cities said it was closer to 200,000. Whatever the precise number, it was widely described as the largest protest rally in Minnesota history.)
Those who attended the St. Paul rally and others like it nationwide had plenty to protest, from the abuses of Operation Metro Surge—the Trump administration’s assault on civil society that saw armed and masked federal agents flood into Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities—to Trump’s broader anti-immigrant, anti-workers, anti–civil rights, anti–civil liberties agenda. But the war with Iran, which has metastasized into a deadly regional conflict with daunting international economic implications, became a vital theme of the latest No Kings Day rallies.
In St. Paul, signs with the message “Healthcare Not Warfare”—distributed by Social Security Works to highlight the administration’s warped priorities—were ubiquitous. Homemade signs announced: “Fund Education, Not War,” “No More War, Dump Trump,” and “The Epstein Files Aren’t in Iran.” Speaker after speaker, performer after performer, expressed opposition to Trump’s misguided militarism.
“Under the so-called ‘anti-war president,’ we have now seen the launching of military operations in Iran and Venezuela, and in Ecuador. They are floating an illegal takeover of places like Cuba and Greenland—like it is some kind of real-estate deal,” said US Representative Ilhan Omar. The Minnesota Democrat invoked the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, Iran, which left at least 175 dead on the first day of the war, and said, “Trump’s idea [of] liberating women in Iran is to bomb and murder school children.”
Saturday’s most detailed comments on the war came from the main speaker in St. Paul, US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The two-time presidential candidate ripped apart Trump’s agenda, saying, “It is an Orwellian vision which says that we must live in a constant state of fear, that we must always have an enemy and that we must always be at war. It is a vision which says that we have unlimited amounts of money for bombs and guns and killing, but never enough money to feed our children, provide affordable housing or enable our parents to retire with dignity.”
Sanders was scathing in his analysis of US militarism. “Let’s be honest,” he declared. “The American people were lied to about the war in Vietnam. We were lied to about the war in Iraq. And we are being lied to today about the war in Iran. This war must end immediately.”
Sanders’s fierce denunciations of the war were interrupted, repeatedly, by thunderous applause.
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“One month ago, Trump and his partner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, started a war with Iran. This war is unconstitutional. Trump did not seek or receive authorization from Congress. This war is in violation of international law. One sovereign nation cannot simply go about attacking another sovereign nation for any reason it chooses,” said Sanders, who continued:
Since this war began, 13 American soldiers have been killed and hundreds have been wounded—including another 12 yesterday. In Iran, nearly 2,000 civilians have been killed and many more wounded, and 498 schools have been attacked by American and Israeli missiles.
In Lebanon, more than 1,000 people are dead and more than one million Lebanese people—15% of their population—have been displaced from their homes. In Israel, 20 people have been killed and over 5,000 have been wounded.
In the West Bank, Israeli vigilantes are burning down homes and killing Palestinians.
At a time when gas prices are soaring, when many Americans cannot afford the basic necessities of life, it is estimated that this war has already cost us a trillion dollars.
At a time when the American people are politically divided, there is one issue that is bringing us together. Conservatives, moderates and progressives are speaking out in unison: End This War!
“End This War! End This War!” chanted the crowd, as Sanders promised to fight Trump administration demands for another $200 billion to fund the war and said that “supplemental appropriation for the war in Iran must be defeated.”
The chants and the cheers grew even louder as the senator joined his critique of Trump to a critique of Netanyahu. “I will be forcing a vote on legislation to block the sale of nearly a billion dollars in weapons to the Israeli military for bombs and bulldozers,” said Sanders. “A nation that has committed genocide in Gaza does not need more military support from American taxpayers. We must block the bombs and block the bulldozers.”
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.