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Sam Phillips decided it was not too soon to set an example for her 15-month-old son, who rolled alongside her in a stroller.
“It’s really important to both stand up for his future and to also show him that in our family, we stand up to bullies,” said Phillips, who attended an anti-Trump rally Saturday with her husband in downtown Los Angeles, a gathering that also was strongly critical of Elon Musk — the billionaire advisor President Trump tasked with slashing government spending.
The crowd easily numbered in the tens of thousands, starting with an afternoon kickoff in Pershing Square, followed by a march to City Hall and a sunset rally there that filled the street and adjacent Grand Park.
The demonstration was peaceful, colorful and creative, but there also was a palpable and diverse sense of outrage as participants cataloged a wide range of the Trump administration’s actions, including government downsizing, attacks on the rights of immigrants and transgender people, and tariffs that are roiling economies across the globe.
Phillips, 38, certainly had her list.
“It just feels to me like with the tariffs that have been put in, we are going to be paying more to get less,” Phillips said. “They’re eliminating so many essential and useful services. The library is a big one that I’m really concerned about,” she added, alluding to federal cuts in library funding. Story time in her local library has been “a huge part of sort of helping my son learn to socialize.”
More than 500,000 people nationwide RSVP’d to attend one of the 1,200 protests organized by Hands Off!, Indivisible, MoveOn and other organizations, many tied to progressive politics.
They took to the streets in New York, Washington, Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco and dozens of other cities from coast to coast. Demonstrators in Sonoma County wine country sang along to Woody Guthrie folk songs. Drumbeating activists in the conservative heart of Orange County drowned out the shouts of a smattering of Trump supporters who waded into a Huntington Beach rally.
“This is amazing. I’m crying now because when we came in February, we only covered one corner,” said Oxnard resident Katherine Clark Goldman at a Ventura demonstration with some 1,000 attendees who lined the street for two blocks.
In Los Angeles, prior to the downtown rally, several hundred people with signs lined two busy intersections in Los Feliz.
“We the people are pissed,” one sign read. “Canada not for sale,” read another. Sporadic chants punctuated a steady stream of tambourines, car horns, applause and cheering.
Dunbar Dicks, 47, of Studio City, helped organize the protest. He has volunteered with Indivisible Hollywood since 2016 and said that the group came back to life and “started organizing soon after the inauguration.”
The coordinated “Hands Off!” protests were probably the biggest demonstrations to date since Trump returned to office.
“This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies,” according to the event description for the “Hands Off” protest. “Alongside Americans across the country, we are marching, rallying, and protesting to demand a stop [to] the chaos and build an opposition movement against the looting of our country.”
Los Angeles County Republican Party Chairman Roxanne Hoge called the demonstrations “boring, predictable tantrums.” She said they carried little weight with the Trump administration.
“Radical leftists are protesting President Donald Trump with marches and a parade balloon?” Hoge said. “We are interested in good governance and public safety, and wish our Democrat friends would join us in advocating for both.”
The political street theater in the main downtown L.A. event included an Uncle Sam pleading with a sign that said “LIBERTY,” a woman costumed as a skeleton wearing a dress emblazoned with an image of Trump, and a speaker who identified himself as a trillionaire for Trump. Floating overhead, a giant Humpty Dumpty balloon sported a Trump hairdo.
Speakers were mostly rank-and-file activists and leaders of grassroots groups. Big-name Democrats were sometimes secondary targets of criticism for accepting corporate donations or not doing enough to resist Trump.
“We believe in unionizing more workplaces and holding greedy bosses and the rich accountable,” said one speaker, Alex Vargas, the chair of the California Young Democrats labor caucus. “We’re seeing the largest transfer of wealth since the Gilded Age. More people at the top have that wealth and we get nothing.”
The reasons for attending were as varied as the Trump agenda.
“I’m really upset at how fast that we seem to be moving toward authoritarianism,” said Stuart Swezey, 63, a documentary filmmaker. “I grew up with the idea that Congress controlled the budget, and what I’m seeing is that was kind of a myth.”
“They say they’re deporting criminals,” said Christina Fernandez, 59, who teaches at a local community college. “Well, yeah, maybe. But also a lot of other people are getting caught up in that sweep.”
“I’ve seen the government defunding so many services that we all rely on,” said Jessica Depies, 29. “I’m seeing the ways that government impacts our lives. That funding for everything from cancer research to mental health services to legal services for immigrants are being put on the chopping block, and I believe that we all have to show up and show that we actually want to save these services that people rely on.”
One point that Ronnie Lee Reece, 64, wanted to make was his dissatisfaction with the level of resistance from Democrats.
“I think we’ve looked to the Democrats, and we really can’t look to them to get anything done in regards to resistance, because in my view, they’re complicit with some of the things that are driving this present administration,” said Reece, a musician and a leader of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council.
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Middle school teacher Wil Page, 48, was concerned about the rising rate of absences for students with immigrants in their families.
Teesha Sreeram, 20, and UCLA classmate Karli Oppenheimer are concerned about women’s rights. And Sreeram is worried a hiring freeze at UCLA could endanger a campus job crucial to her ability to remain in school.
Oppenheimer said the culture of the campus has deteriorated.
“The student climate has become, honestly, more divisive than people would assume,” she said. “Anywhere you go, you face backlash, and it’s a scary time to be a college girl surrounded by, yeah, a lot of men who have a lot of power in their positions.”
“It’s because of protests across the country that we have voting rights, that we have civil rights ... and it’s protests like this across the country that got my ass home from Vietnam,” Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), a recipient of the Purple Heart for combat injuries, exhorted several thousand rally attendees in Sonoma Plaza, according to the Press Democrat. “You are on the right side of history!”
The signs also were varied and decidedly homemade — many of them off-colored and direct.
“Having to protest FASCISM in 2025 is literally so embarrassing,” one said.
One defined MAGA as “Morons Are Governing America.” The Trump slogan is supposed to stand for “Make America Great Again.”
In Washington, home to the biggest swath of employees whose agencies have been gutted by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a sea of people swarmed the National Mall, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Musk and Trump have got to go!”
Others carried signs reflecting their status as federal workers, including “I took an oath to defend the Constitution” and “Feds’ Jobs Matter.”
“It does give me hope to see this many people here making this protest,” said Terry Manzo, 86, who sported a hat covered in political pins. “In the D.C. area, there are so many [federal employees] who are so afraid.”
Manzo handed out pink postcards she’d hand-made to send to elected officials, blasting them for not curtailing the actions of Musk and Trump.
Musk’s DOGE has led the effort to drastically reduce the scope of the federal government through large-scale job cuts and mass layoffs of tens of thousands of employees.
This week, the Trump administration announced that it would impose sweeping tariffs on imports from all countries on Saturday, tanking the stock market, stoking fears of a U.S. recession and raising questions about whether businesses would pass on the higher costs to consumers.
Trump also announced Friday that his administration isn’t moving forward with a Biden-era proposal that aimed to expand eligibility for anti-obesity drugs to millions of Americans on Medicaid or Medicare.
The White House rescheduled spring garden tours intended for Saturday, citing “an abundance of caution and to ensure the safety of all within proximity to public demonstrations planned near the White House.”
Whitney Sherman, 38, who traveled from Philadelphia to Washington for the protest, said she has been despairing over Democrats, who have largely failed to assemble a coordinated response to Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress. She pointed to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who have toured the country in recent weeks for rallies they’ve dubbed “Fighting Oligarchy.”
While their events have drawn thousands, they’re only “independent voices,” Sherman said.
“For all the bad things you can say about [Republicans], they have rallied around a single person. Not saying falling in line is a good thing … but it’s effective,” she said. “We need our own Project 2029.”
In Atlanta, thousands marched toward the Georgia State Capitol, holding signs that read, “Trade war makes us poor” and “Honk if you hate Elon Musk.”
David Williams, 79, who attended the rally, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he had built up his retirement savings for more than 45 years. He called the Trump administration’s handling of the economy and “attack on Social Security nothing but outrageous.”
“They’ve gone way, way too far,” he said. “It’s so obvious he’s destroying our basic rights with no regard for the rule of law. He’s a train wreck.”
—CNS contributed to this report.
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