Marian Figlio will be at the Maryland State House on Saturday morning, cheering as a costumed reenactor portrays George Washington resigning his military commission.

She helped organize this No Kings Day protest in Annapolis, one of hundreds around the country and across Maryland. When others balked at venerating a Founding Father who enslaved people, Figlio reminded them he was the revolutionary leader who rejected a crown.

Can a retired librarian from Pikesville be a rebel?

“I’m not as, not as active as some but more active than most,” said Figlio, who moved from Annapolis four years ago. “I’m involved because I’m 78. I have been on dialysis. So, you know, what the hell?”

What the hell. It’s a pretty apt summary of the moment.

President Donald Trump has broken norms and dented the Constitution in the five months since he returned to office, gutting federal agencies, usurping power from Congress and ignoring the courts. It’s become the atmosphere we breathe.

He spent millions to send a parade of tanks, fighting vehicles, Howitzers and 6,000 soldiers down the streets of Washington on Saturday. It’s to celebrate the birth of Washington’s army and — no one really doubts — his 79th birthday.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents started a mass sweep of Southern California, protests sprang up in Los Angeles. Trump sent in the National Guard and then the Marines, ignoring California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections and expanding his powers again.

“We’re not a perfect country by any stretch, but people don’t want this,” said Francie Hunt, a Chesapeake Indivisible member.

“Just yesterday, somebody stopped by and said, ‘This is just madness. It’s just madness.’”

And it’s a distorted madness. A kaleidoscope of past events and live coverage makes it difficult to figure out what is happening.

Provocateurs such as U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s lone Republican, add to the unreality with distortions.

“Los Angeles is under siege by violent rioters,” he wrote Monday on X. “This is not peaceful protest — it’s chaos. Calling in the National Guard is a necessary step to restore order and uphold the rule of law."

I checked in with the Los Angeles Times, which fact-checked exaggerations like Harris’ in “All of L.A. is not a ‘war zone.’”

Here’s what those hometown journalists say happened. Days of protests included isolated violence, looting and a few self-driving cars getting torched. Police arrested hundreds, some while officers were protecting the National Guard, and Mayor Karen Bass established a curfew.

Protests spread to Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas and other cities.

Thursday, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was briefly handcuffed when he confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a news conference. Federal courts have split on Trump’s actions.

Check posts on X and comments include calls for more violence from Trump supporters: “Coming to a blue city (ie, Baltimore) near you.”

Forgotten is Trump’s inaction as his supporters stormed the Capitol and attacked officers on Jan. 6, erased with pardons and amnesia. Forgotten, too, is the backlash to Black Lives Matter protests that spawned Trump’s second coming.

Into this atmosphere lands No Kings Day, planned by 1,800 groups nationwide to protest the parade in Washington. Almost 50 events are set across Maryland, from Cumberland to Salisbury, Columbia to Solomons Island.

“There’s that idea of the autocratic breakthrough, that moment in a period when a would-be dictator, basically, is trying to consolidate their power and crush institutions,” said Ellen Rosenstock of Baltimore Indivisible. “This is the time. I mean, it’s right now.”

She’s a co-organizer of what could be one of the biggest No Kings Day protests in Maryland. More than 3,000 people are expected Saturday afternoon at Patterson Park in Baltimore, an unexpected swell of anxiety motivated by events in Los Angeles.

Indivisible is the link. It’s a progressive grassroots group formed after Trump’s 2016 election and reenergized when he returned to the White House in January.

The protests Saturday are the latest in Maryland this year, some organized by Indivisible and others by separate groups such as 50501 or CASA Maryland.

Indivisible offers online training and coordination, picks dates and then passes the word to affiliates. Volunteers meet on social media or at a protest, then decide where they belong and step in when they can.

That’s how Hunt, a retired behavioral psychologist from Annapolis, met Figlio, the retired librarian. Hunt helped organize an event outside Annapolis Mall, then decided to go to Lawyers Mall first on Saturday.

“I said, ‘You know, let me know how I can help,’” she said. “And they just asked me to show up.”

Some of Saturday’s rallies will be small gatherings at private homes.

Others are classic protests, with sign waving and arms linked. After the one at the State House, protestors plan to ring Annapolis Mall and line the Glen Burnie Town Center. Patterson Park will be a festival with music and speeches.

“We’re lining 2 1/2 miles, almost three miles, of Rockville Pike, and we have, as of this morning, 13,123 people saying they’re coming,” organizer Annie O’Connell DeMeo of Indivisible MoCoWoMen said. “And we get more by the hour. I mean, it’s insane.”

Organizers skipped Washington to avoid a Tiananmen Square moment, putting the main event in Philadelphia. In sea-blue Montgomery County and across sky-blue Maryland, no one expects the National Guard.

In purple Anne Arundel and on Harris’ red Eastern Shore, the goal is to encourage activism from those awake to the danger and wake those still asleep.

If enough people say this is madness, maybe Trump and his Republican allies will back down. Maybe not.

The threat is an invisible threshold, a moment or event when democracy gives way to a government willing to use military force to quell dissent. This might be it, or we might not know till we’re well across and screwed.

“If we don’t stand up nonviolently — it’s got to be nonviolent as a mass movement — if we stand up as a mass movement, then I feel like there will be a breakthrough,“ Rosenstock said.

“And then, after the breakthrough happens, and it’s happened in a lot of different countries, it’s hard to walk that back.”