Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
Last Saturday, Apr. 12, protests across America and foreign cities like Paris and London gathered to push back against President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk. According to CNN, nearly 600,000 people signed up to take part in the protests but reports haven’t been able to verify the exact number of protestors who joined in. Organizers of these “Hands Off” protests have said millions of people showed up from coast to coast. Some of these protestors were standing in front of the Washington Monument with signs putting the president on blast.
According to CNN, organizers and protestors had three demands “for 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 working people rely on; and an end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.”
State representatives immediately got involved, calling out the current administration and standing with the protestors including Democratic Maryland State Representative Jamie Raskin who described the future of America as one without a president who seems to have “the politics of Mussolini and the economics of Herbert Hoover.”
“Our founders wrote a Constitution that does not begin with ‘We the dictators,’ the preamble says ‘We the people.’ No moral person wants an economy-crashing dictator who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Raskin said according to CNN.
Florida Representative Maxwell Frost condemned Trump saying “Throughout human history, authoritarians, they’re never satisfied with the power they have, and so they test the bounds, they push the limits, they break the law, and then they look at the public to see if they’re quiet or if they’re loud.”
Even Labor Union presidents have spoken out against Trump and joined the millions of voices calling out his actions while in office. Protests call out Musk’s cuts made by DOGE and his habit of misleading the public about federal spending to garner support for his actions. These protestors also call out the Trump Administration’s actions in repealing the Green Card and subsequent deportation of Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Kahlil.
According to NPR, Veteran Sonia Lundy and Veteran Colleen Boland have been participating in these protests. “We took an oath long ago to protect against all enemies foreign and domestic, and I don’t think either Sonya or I ever imagined that we would have to kick in on the domestic piece of our oath, but we have, we are, and we will,” Boland said.
Through these “Hands Off” protests, the public have now expressed their disdain for the current administration en masse. As of now, in the wake of the “Hands Off” protests, the government has not made any such moves to meet the demands of the American people.
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