Rebecca Marrin, a 14-year-old from Harrisonburg, Virginia, asked her mom to make the two-hour drive to Washington, D.C., so that she could attend the “No Kings” protest in her nation’s capital. Though protests were taking place in her home city, Marrin felt joining the voices on Pennsylvania Avenue would be more impactful.

“I just wanted to be a part of history,” Marrin said.

She marched alongside her mother, Rebecca and her sister Melody, making the march a family affair.

“No Kings” is a national protest that first took place on June 14, President Donald J. Trump’s birthday. Hitting the streets once again, protesters gathered across the nation on Saturday. The district’s event took place on Pennsylvania Ave. along the National Mall and Memorial Parks with an estimated 200,000 people in attendance.

Bernie Sanders headlined the protest, calling out the Trump administration and supporters for endangering democracy.

“Our country is in danger when we have a president who threatens to arrest or imprison political opponents who stand against him,” Sanders said, highlighting Governor Gavin Newsom as one of those adversaries.

The recent government shutdown was another point Sanders harped on, insisting the shutdown was a direct result of “Trump’s big beautiful disgraceful bill,” which included cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

According to Sanders, 15 million low-income Americans will lose healthcare as a result of the bill, and an estimated 50,000 people could die each year. An additional 20 million Americans are estimated to see a doubling of their healthcare premiums. These numbers were predicted by researchers at a virtual seminar hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.

“So today, right now, I say to my Republican colleagues: come back from your month-long vacation,” Sanders said. “Start negotiating, and do not allow the American healthcare system to be destroyed. End this shutdown.”

Rebecca, the Marrin matriarch, works for a law firm in Virginia that handles estates. According to her, the companies’ healthcare premium was recently raised to 15%, and her firm’s partners ultimately decided to “eat the cost” for their employees.

Additionally, Rebecca said recent fears due to Medicaid cuts have led to her firm receiving an influx of business.

“We actually are super, super busy, because people are like, ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’” Rebecca said. “We’ve had a lot more estates, and so if they don’t get their Medicaid, they’re gonna die.”

Anxiety surrounding health stretches beyond cuts in health insurance for protesting families.

Anahita Rahimi-Saber and her husband, Josh Bill, residents of Capitol Hill, walked Constitution Ave. with their eight-month-old, a sign that read “My hands are bigger than yours” strapped to his stroller.

“We thought eight months was appropriate for his first protest,” Rahimi-Saber said.

Fears persist for their family surrounding access to vaccines and disinformation being spread about issues such as the recent allegations that Tylenol causes autism. As an emergency room doctor, Rahimi-Saber is worried about her son’s health, as well as his safety.

For Bill, he is not happy with the kind of example Trump is setting for his son, saying the president once acted as a role model for young Americans.

“For him to see examples like that … people who call people that don’t agree with them names or they bend the rules or break the rules. This is so far and away from me when I first started paying attention to politics,” Bill said. “This world is different from that.”

Now that the National Guard has been deployed in their city, the family of three has also faced a new cause for alarm that was not as prevalent before Trump entered his second term.

Rahimi-Saber said she has often been confused as her son’s nanny, as she is Iranian-Armenian while he is white-passing. Though she once found humor in it, she grapples with the possibility that her son could be mistakenly taken or separated from her.

“What if ICE thinks I’m not his mom and they take me?” Rahimi-Saber said.

Born in Copenhagen, Rahimi-Saber moved to the U.S. at the age of 10. She has since spoken to an immigration lawyer who advised her to keep her passport on her person at all times.

Rahimi-Saber and Bill ultimately said they were marching alongside their son because their country was beginning to feel like a monarchy, a “dictatorship in facism” – which they are ardently against.

Though labeled as a “hate America” rally by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the “No Kings” protest that took place in Washington, D.C., was truly a gathering filled with families. However, one sentiment rang true from Johnson’s words. The protest did draw “the antifa people” to the streets – or more accurately, Aunt Tifa.

Caroline Kenney proudly attended the protest with her mother, Helen, as well as her young niece and nephew, holding a sign that labeled her “Aunt Tifa.” She said she was marching for the rights of her niece, whom she feared was growing up in an America less free than the one she had previously known.

“My entire life I’ve had the right to control my body, and I don’t know if she’s ever going to have that right,” Kenney said. “It frightens me, because I think there will be only pockets of this country where she will get the health care that she deserves.”

Beyond her role as an aunt, Kenney also protested in honor of friends and family who are federal employees. She said the attitude among them is to “go down fighting.”

“I really think that our president should abide by the rule of the Constitution,” Kenney said. “I really wish Congress would step up and maybe try to stop him, but right now, I feel like we have one voice, and his voice is the law, and that is not the way the constitution was written.”