Army 250th parade in DC; No Kings protests draw millions nationwide

On 14 June 2025 the U.S. Army held a military parade in Washington, D.C., to mark the 250th anniversary of its founding (14 June 1775). The Army said more than 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles including M1A2 Abrams tanks and Stryker armoured vehicles, approximately 50 aircraft (including Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and Golden Knights parachute teams) and 34 horses participated; the route ran along Constitution Avenue NW between approximately 23rd Street and 15th Street, ending at a review stand on the Ellipse where President Donald J. Trump observed the procession on his 79th birthday.¹² Army officials briefed reporters that the parade cost was estimated at between $25 million and $45 million including road-repair costs to Constitution Avenue (the figure widely sourced to Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll).³ The parade was the first large-scale Army parade in Washington since the 4 July 2019 Salute to America event, which featured a static armour display and flyovers but no marching parade.⁴ Across the country, the “No Kings” coalition — organised principally by Indivisible and the 50501 movement, with the ACLU, MoveOn, and labour groups participating — held approximately 2,100 rallies; organisers estimated total attendance at 4-5 million participants, with Philadelphia as the announced flagship city.⁵ One person was shot at the Salt Lake City rally; the Salt Lake City Police Department reported a suspect in custody and an investigation ongoing as of the dateline.⁶ Organisers said they deliberately held no flagship No Kings event in Washington, D.C., to avoid amplifying the parade.⁵

1. Parade staging required temporary road closures, weight- bearing reinforcement of Constitution Avenue for tracked vehicles, and coordination with the National Park Service (under the National Mall and Memorial Parks permit framework at 36 C.F.R. § 7.96) and the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department.⁷

2. Time-place-manner restrictions on protest permits in public forums operate within the framework of Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569 (1941), and Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781 (1989), each upheld under content-neutral intermediate scrutiny; permitting is by local jurisdiction.⁸⁹ The First Amendment right of peaceful assembly anchors the doctrine but does not foreclose narrowly tailored content-neutral permitting requirements.¹⁰

3. Concurrent assembly events at the parade’s size and the counter-protests’ aggregate scale draw federal, state and local law-enforcement personnel from regular duties for the day; the Salt Lake City incident will turn on local prosecutorial action and any federal charging decisions arising from federally-protected activities.