In the United States and across six other nations, a mass mobilization of dissent is underway, organized in reaction to the intensifying conservative overhaul being imposed by President Donald Trump and his influential private-sector ally, Elon Musk. Today, on April 5, 2025, over 1,200 coordinated demonstrations are scheduled to erupt simultaneously on a single day—Saturday—marking the most extensive unified act of civil resistance since Trump’s return to power in January of this year. This transnational protest movement, which has been titled “Hands Off!”, unites an unusually broad coalition of activist groups, labor unions, environmental organizations, and human rights advocates determined to oppose what they describe as the authoritarian and plutocratic restructuring of both American governance and social life.
Today, thousands of Americans streamed into downtown Washington, D.C., as light rain fell over the National Mall. The protest unfolded in the shadow of the Washington Monument, where more than 20,000 people gathered for what organizers predicted would be the centerpiece of this vast uprising. Demonstrators arrived from across the country, some by bus, others by plane, carrying hand-painted signs that read “No Kings in the USA,” “Send Musk to Mars,” and “Deport Musk,” channeling anger not only at the President but at the perceived technocratic despotism represented by his closest advisor. Protesters lined Connecticut Avenue waiting for transport into the city’s core, forming long, slow-moving lines of resistance converging on the symbolic center of American democracy.
The demonstrations, however, were not limited to the capital. “Hands Off!” protests ignited in all 50 U.S. states and spilled across borders into Canada, Mexico, Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal. Earlier that morning, anti-Trump Americans living abroad had rallied in London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Berlin, waving banners that proclaimed “Resist Tyrant,” “Feminists for Freedom, Not Fascism,” and “Save Democracy.” In Paris’s Place de la République, an estimated 200 people gathered to express solidarity with their compatriots back home, echoing the broader sentiment that Trump’s second term represents a threat not merely to American values but to global democratic norms. “We have to show solidarity with all the demonstrations in a thousand cities today in the USA,” said Timothy Kautz, a spokesperson for Democrats Abroad in Frankfurt. Protester Jose Sanchez declared Trump “a con man who is destroying U.S. democracy.”
The “Hands Off!” movement emerged as a direct response to a series of radical executive actions undertaken by President Trump that have been widely interpreted as encroachments on democratic institutions and civil liberties. Chief among these is the effort to reinstate Schedule F, a bureaucratic maneuver that would reclassify thousands of civil service jobs as political appointments, allowing for the purge of federal employees and the installation of ideologically compliant loyalists. This policy, grounded in the unitary executive theory, is designed to collapse the distinction between the state and the executive and has drawn fierce opposition from both constitutional scholars and civil servants. Its reimplementation is among the clearest signs yet that the administration’s actions are aligned with the ideological roadmap known as Project 2025, a policy blueprint drafted by The Heritage Foundation to remake the U.S. government into a streamlined instrument of executive control.
The material consequences of this administrative offensive are already evident. With Trump’s endorsement, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has orchestrated the mass dismissal of over 200,000 federal workers from a total civil service of approximately 2.3 million employees. On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service alone began laying off more than 20,000 workers, accounting for nearly a quarter of its workforce. The firings have extended to other vital agencies. In Baltimore, several hundred protestors assembled outside the headquarters of the Social Security Administration (SSA), one of DOGE’s primary targets. The agency recently announced the elimination of 7,000 positions and the discontinuation of phone-based support for millions of claimants. Many in the protest crowd were retirees holding signs that read “Hands off Social Security!” and “Where Has My Country Gone?”
One of the speakers at the SSA protest, Linda Falcao—who is nearing her 65th birthday—gave voice to the desperation shared by many. “I’m terrified, I’m angry, I’m pissed, I’m bewildered this could happen to the United States,” she said to a chorus of supporters. “I do love America and I’m heartbroken. I need my money. I want my money. I want my benefits!” Her testimony was met with chants of “It’s our money!”—a rallying cry directed squarely at the Trump-Musk administration and its restructuring of the welfare state.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive organizing network Indivisible, which has helped lead the resistance since 2016, characterized the protests as an urgent stand against a broader authoritarian shift. “This is an enormous demonstration that is sending a very clear message to Musk and Trump and congressional Republicans and all the goose-stepping allies of MAGA that we don’t want their hands on our democracy, on our communities, on our schools and our friends and our neighbors,” Levin stated. The choice of metaphor—“goose-stepping”—evokes images of authoritarianism, nationalism, and paramilitary conformity, showing the moral seriousness with which protesters interpret the current political moment.
Meanwhile, Trump’s opponents point to the administration’s deepening commitment to dismantling social programs. On April 1, the Department of Health and Human Services imposed a freeze on $27.5 million in Title X family planning grants, disrupting access to contraception, cancer screenings, and reproductive health services for low-income patients. These cuts follow a broader trend of defunding institutions considered to be in conflict with Trump’s social agenda, and they have been interpreted by many protesters as part of a concerted rollback of the social safety net.
Although the White House has dismissed the protests as partisan overreaction, Assistant Press Secretary Liz Huston released a statement doubling down on familiar rhetorical lines. She insisted that President Trump “will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries,” while accusing Democrats of seeking to extend those benefits to undocumented immigrants—a claim not substantiated by any mainstream legislative proposal but effective in fueling anti-immigrant sentiment. Protesters have largely dismissed such messaging as propaganda, arguing that the administration’s actions, not its public relations spin, reveal its true intentions.
The administration’s approach has also provoked anxiety in the legal and economic sectors. Following threats to their federal contracts, four major U.S. law firms—Milbank, Skadden Arps, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and Paul Weiss—committed $340 million in pro bono legal aid for veterans. Although framed as charitable, critics suspect these pledges were made under duress, signaling a new form of soft coercion by the executive branch. Simultaneously, Trump’s aggressive tariff regime has sparked fears of inflation and international retaliation. The new trade measures have driven up the cost of imports and could add thousands of dollars to the retail price of consumer electronics. Economists have warned that, under current policy trajectories, a basic iPhone could soon cost upwards of $2,300, highlighting the downstream consequences of the administration’s protectionist agenda.
Resistance to this sweeping realignment of American governance had until recently been fragmented and reactive. The “Hands Off!” demonstrations mark the most cohesive articulation yet of a popular opposition front. Participating organizations span a vast ideological and social spectrum: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Human Rights Campaign, Greenpeace, pro-Palestinian campus coalitions, labor councils, veteran advocacy networks, and feminist collectives. Many of these groups have previously operated in silos, but now, confronted with a political regime that appears intent on subverting the foundations of democratic pluralism, they are forging common cause.
Saturday’s uprising evokes memories of the 2017 Women’s March, which mobilized hundreds of thousands in response to Trump’s first inauguration. But this new wave of resistance is deeper, broader, and more structurally organized. It is not merely a reaction to a controversial figurehead—it is a response to a system-wide transformation that many believe threatens the entire constitutional order. As Levin and others argue, the Trump-Musk axis does not simply represent a policy shift—it signifies the potential birth of an illiberal political formation in which executive power, corporate capital, and information control coalesce into a singular, unaccountable force.
In this emerging reality, the political distinctions between public authority and private wealth have begun to blur, and opposition evolves accordingly. The “Hands Off!” protests are thus not only an act of defiance—they are an assertion of democratic survival in a moment when the very terms of governance are being rewritten. As civil liberties are curtailed, institutions hollowed out, and power centralized, the streets have once again become the primary theater for reclaiming the republic.
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