Welcome to the beat everyone. I'm Ari Melbert. It will begin following these two major stories that have

upended the United States, millions of Americans protesting this weekend. If you look at these shots that we have

in places big and small, it was a true outpouring. And that comes against the political violence that we see there in Minnesota,

that terrible, tragic assassination this weekend that we're covering. So I'm going to give you both

these stories right now because they are in some sense related, but also both having a huge

impact on how we understand what's going on in the country.

I could tell you that in Saturday, when you count it all up, over five million people

turned out for these No King's demonstrations.

What you see on your screen is just one shot among so many, because if you fan out around the

country, it was over 2,000 cities and towns

in, of course, states red and blue where people gathered. The visuals sometimes quite striking,

the numbers, some of the broadest modern protests in the last several decades, and including

the Trump era, a much broader uprising or outpouring than we saw at this point in the first term.

Cities stretching from coast to coast, Seattle, Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa, Chicago, New York.

Millions of people, some who'd been planning for some time to do the no king's messaging against the

unusual birthday slash military parade that Trump had long planned. Others, we could see this

in indications that we got in our coverage over the weekend, deciding just in the last few days to

come out after a week where we saw some of the most intense clashes of this term about the use

of federal power, National Guard, and even military power on American streets. All of that

against the immigration protocols and raids that continue to really drive questions about what kind of country we're

living in.

This is a First Amendment right.

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