Protesters tee off against Trump and Musk in ‘Hands Off!’ rallies in Minnesota and across U.S.
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Crowds of people angry about the way President Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the Republican’s first weeks in office.
So-called Hands Off! demonstrations were organized for more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists.
A rally at the State Capitol in St. Paul attracted an estimated 25,000 people, according to the Minnesota State Patrol. Demonstrators there carried hundreds of creative handmade signs lambasting the Trump administration.
“DOGE: Department of Greed and Evil,” read one.
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Among a trio of women in red robes and white bonnets: “The Handmaid’s Tale was supposed to be fiction.”
Alicia Mason of St. Paul Park came dressed as the Statute of Liberty with streams of red, white and blue paint coming out of her eyes.
“She must be weeping right now,” said Mason. “She stands for justice and welcoming immigrants to our country, the freedoms, unity, liberty, everything, you know. And right now, we are losing all of it.”
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration's moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.
Musk, a Trump adviser who owns Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has played a key role in the downsizing as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. He says he is saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
Joy Thomas attended the St. Paul protest with her 16-year-old son, in protest of the dismantling of diversity and equity initiatives. Thomas described herself as a proud Black woman and the daughter of civil rights activists, saying her mother marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Chicago.
"Growing up in the ‘70s, I was always told by my parents that things were getting better, that things would be better, and it's — I can't even describe how disheartening it is to know that my children are going to have to deal with things that I just assumed were never going to be an issue for them."
Leor Fleischman moved from Florida to Minnesota with his family a couple years ago to escape anti-transgender bias in that state.
"It's really nice to know that this many people aren't complacent,” Fleischman said. “If you stick to your morals and you stick to what you believe in, you're always just gonna be out there to help other people,” Fleischman said.
The St. Paul rally was organized by Indivisible Twin Cities, Women’s March Minnesota and MN50501. Indivisible Twin Cities co-founder Lisa Erbes said people are a lot more interested in getting engaged now than they were in 2017 during the first Trump administration.
“When he was re-elected, I think it really woke a lot of people up because they realized that there is a way, possibly, to destroy our democracy and turn us into a dictatorship,” Erbes said.
Indigenous dance group Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue opened the rally with drums and by burning copal. “We are here to start out with the medicine for our fight,” said kalpulli leader Susana De Leon. “We know what it means to fight for hundreds and hundreds of years. Four years are nothing.”
Several politicians spoke at the “Hand’s Off!” rally in St. Paul including St. Paul mayor Melvin Carter, U.S Representative Betty McCollum, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy and state rep. Emma Greenman, flanked by other DFL lawmakers.
“The people have the power and they have to come through us first,” said Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis. “This is what democracy looks like.”
Hundreds of people also demonstrated in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, a few miles from Trump's golf course in Jupiter, where he spent the morning at the club's Senior Club Championship. People lined both sides of PGA Drive, encouraging cars to honk and chanting slogans against Trump.
“They need to keep their hands off of our Social Security,” said Archer Moran of Port St. Lucie, Florida.
“The list of what they need to keep their hands off of is too long,” Moran said. “And it's amazing how soon these protests are happening since he’s taken office.”
The president planned to go golfing again Sunday, according to the White House.
Asked about the protests, the White House said in a statement that “President Trump’s position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors.”
Activists have staged nationwide demonstrations against Trump and Musk multiple times since Trump returned to office. But before Saturday the opposition movement had yet to produce a mass mobilization like the Women's March in 2017, which brought thousands of women to Washington after Trump's first inauguration, or the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted in multiple cities after George Floyd's killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020.