To celebrate her 70th birthday, retired government worker Peggy Cole says she and a friend drove nearly 10 hours from her hometown of Flint, Michigan, to join a protest in Washington, DC, on Saturday.

Cole said she felt compelled to mark the milestone at the large demonstration because it’s a “scary time” for Americans and democracy is at stake.

“It seems to me, (Trump is) taking our government, our democracy, and dismantling it piece by piece, slowly, but surely, if we sit by and don’t do anything about it,” Cole said.

The event was one of more than 2,700 “No Kings” rallies held across the country on Saturday, protesting what organizers describe as President Donald Trump’s “authoritarian” agenda. That’s hundreds more events than were planned for the first go-round in June, when about 5 million people across the country took to the streets to protest Trump’s administration as he held a military parade in Washington.

Nearly 7 million people showed up for Saturday’s rallies – including more than 100,000 people in New York, organizers and officials said. Along with larger events in major cities, small pockets of “No Kings” protesters cropped up along busy thoroughfares, in small town squares and at municipal parks in red and blue states alike.

Thousands of protesters fill New York's Times Square during a "No Kings" protest Saturday. Olga Fedorova/AP

The largely peaceful protests followed a tumultuous summer of mass immigration raids, demonstrations against federal immigration enforcement and the deployment of federal troops into Democratic-led cities.

Trouble came later in the day when some individuals targeted protesters: A woman in South Carolina was arrested for brandishing a firearm while driving near a demonstration and a man in Georgia was seen on video taking a protester’s flag and pushing another demonstrator to the ground.

While the Trump administration and some GOP officials have painted anti-Trump pr