On Saturday, April 5th, over 1,300 ‘Hands Off!’ Protests were held across the United States against President Trump and Elon Musk. This country-wide protest has been the largest to date since Trump’s second term started. Protests were even held in cities abroad such as Frankfurt, London, and Paris.
These organizers say that they have three main demands, “an end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration; an end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs that people rely on; and an end to the attacks on Immigrants, trans people and other communities.”
In D.C., thousands of protesters gathered on the grass near the Washington Monument. They held signs supporting reproductive rights, Social Security, Veterans’ benefits, LGBTQ rights, and ones that were opposing tariffs. Along with the protesters, multiple representatives took up a podium to speak about the Trump administration.
Among these people was Jamie Raskin, a democratic representative for Maryland who said that there isn’t a future with a President that has “the politics of Mussolini and the economics of Herbert Hoover.”
In Boston, the protesters had gathered to push back against the federal cuts done on research and the arrest of a Tufts University doctoral student, Rumeysa Ozturk. Meanwhile, in Sylva, North Carolina, over 300 protesters banded together to oppose the cuts to national parks, veteran services, and education.
In Portland, Oregon, several thousand people gathered against “an illegal, billionaire power grab” that is occurring due to President Trump and Elon Musk.
A protester, Patty Kim, who is a retired federal worker, protested in D.C. and spoke to NPR about her reason for rallying.
“This is the first time that I am trying to regularly participate. I felt so frustrated and paralyzed by the bunch of things that are going on that undermine human rights and humanity in this country that I love, that I had to do something.”
There are already talks of more protests against Trump’s second term.
