There are more than 120 protests worldwide against Trump and Musk
A protest outside the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, in response to the Trump administration’s attack on the ephemeral economy
The crowd in Washington, DC — more than 100,000, per organizers’ estimates — was peaceful and orderly. A group of people, including the President of the union, spoke at a stage behind the Washington Monument. Attendees around them quietly listened as the chants, cheers and boos were for the Trump administration. A group of protesters marched around the Monument yelling, “Hands off! Dump Trump!”
Jessica Toman, who went to the protest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, texted the above image to me. A person posting images of the same protest on Bluesky guessed that protesters numbered in the thousands.
Protesters took to the streets around the country to show their opposition to Musk and his attempt to carry out mass federal workforce layoffs and hollow out government agencies. As Tesla’s sales have plummeted this quarter, Musk has threatened to “go after” the company’s critics, while the FBI has created a task force to investigate individual acts of vandalism and other actions aimed at the company.
There were a lot of messages in Washington that didn’t seem to conflict with one another. As I stood on a street corner outside the National Mall, a handful of protesters urged people to join them for a pro-Palestine rally at the Capitol at 1 PM, an hour after the main event programming began. A man holding a federal worker union sign interjected, telling one of the pro-Palestine protesters that while he supported their message, he worried about diverting people from the central protest. He told people not to leave the main rally. The protester made an adjustment to her message. “Join the Palestine rally at whatever time carries your spirit,” and “go to both rallies but do not forget Palestine.”
In front of the Washington Monument, a woman named Susan was draped in blue pool noodles festooned with signs that flapped in the wind: “DOGE is a SCAM,” said one, “Stand with Ukraine,” another. A third bore a long list of things the government should keep its “hands off”: law firms, universities, and many federal agencies. She said that many of Trump’s actions are outrageous, such as Musk and the Vice President. “Every single day, there are four or five things. Whether it’s snatching people off the street, cutting agencies that perform really vital functions — things that may make sense to somebody wielding a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel.” Susan, who refused to reveal her last name, said that she chose pool noodles to highlight the peacefulness of the event. The January 6th insurrectionists brought flag poles and other things to use as weapons, whereas everybody who is here is here to peacefully protest.
Some organizers arranged buses to help people travel to the nation’s capital for the rally, though many people showed up closer to home at the events spread across the country (and, thanks to protests in several major European cities, the world.) There was a similar turnout in New York City to the one in DC and protests occurred in many stereotypically deep-red states. But for many who attended the DC rally, the event was deeply personal. “Russell Vought said that they wanted to put us into trauma, and they are delivering on that promise every day,” says one person who identified herself as a federal worker and declined to give her name, referring to the Project 2025 author who leads the Office of Management and Budget. 3 million federal employees have been through a lot since January 20th.
Leonard Bailey, a retired Department of Justice worker, crafted an enormous figure of a man in a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cap out of chicken wire and expandable foam. Bailey said that it hurt him to see how Musk’s employees are treated when he worked with them for 33 years. “My experience with the colleagues I’ve worked with over that time were these were people who worked well into the night, through the weekend, through family vacations to keep the American public safe,” he says. He started his retirement in January and he says people keep telling him what a good time it is.
Being a member of the agency’s union brought some comfort to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement attorney Doug Wilson. The acting director of the bureau ordered his employees to stop work until a judge ordered them to come back, but the case was not complete at the time.
