Thousands Across Bay Area Join Nationwide Rallies Slamming Trump and Musk

Updated 6 p.m. Saturday

Thousands of people turned out in protests across the Bay Area Saturday, joining crowds across the country who say President Donald Trump is taking the country in the wrong direction.

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. The rallies appeared peaceful, with no immediate reports of arrests.

In Downtown Oakland, thousands gathered with signs supporting various government programs under threat from the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“Hands off of all of it, hands off of our Medicaid, hands off of our VA nurses, hands off of our union rights,” said Katie Roemer, a registered nurse from Oakland. “The reason we have these services is because the people of our country have decided that is something that is important. That we take care of each other. And as nurses, we want to support that.”

From the National Mall and Midtown Manhattan to Boston Common and multiple state capitols, thousands of protesters assailed Trump and billionaire Elon Musk‘s actions on government downsizing, the economy, immigration and human rights. In Seattle, in the shadow of the city’s iconic Space Needle, protesters held signs with slogans like “Fight the oligarchy.”

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.

Oakland School Board Vice President Valarie Bachelor said
she fears how government cuts will affect her school district.

“By defunding the Department of Education you’re taking away food lunch programs, you’re taking away funding from vulnerable students,” said Bachelor. “It scares me to think about what’s going to happen to our immigrant families and students in the district. By gutting these systems they’re attacking all of us in different ways and that’s why we need to stand together and say absolutely not.”

Other attendees said they were worried about threats to climate initiatives, social security and DEI programs.

Oakland resident and parent Monica Laboskey spoke about the importance of uniting and coming out as a community to “fight the good fight.”

“Hands off our funding. … It is so critical that our important services, our education, our nonprofits, our health care, our universities, that we continue to get the funding we need to continue to do the good work that everyone’s doing,” said Laboskey. “We need to figure out what’s next, and how do we take this passion and this anger and turn it into a real movement.

“We deserve to live in a safe, joyful society,” Laboskey said.

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.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group, criticized the administration’s treatment of the LBGTQ+ community at the rally at the National Mall, where Democratic members of Congress also took the stage.

“The attacks that we’re seeing, they’re not just political. They are personal, y’all,” Robinson said. “They’re trying to ban our books, they’re slashing HIV prevention funding, they’re criminalizing our doctors, our teachers, our families and our lives.”

“We don’t want this America, y’all,” Robinson added. “We want the America we deserve, where dignity, safety and freedom belong not to some of us, but to all of us.”

In Boston, demonstrators brandished signs such as “Hands off our democracy” and “Hands off our Social Security.”

Mayor Michelle Wu said she does not want her children and others’ to live in a world in which threats and intimidation are government tactics and values like diversity and equality are under attack.

“I refuse to accept that they could grow up in a world where immigrants like their grandma and grandpa are automatically presumed to be criminals,” Wu said.

Roger Broom, 66, a retiree from Delaware County, Ohio, was one of hundreds who rallied at the Statehouse in Columbus. He said he used to be a Reagan Republican but has been turned off by Trump.

“He’s tearing this country apart,” Broom said. “It’s just an administration of grievances.”

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.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, protesters said they were supporting a variety of causes, from Social Security and education to immigration and women’s reproductive rights.

“Regardless of your party, regardless of who you voted for, what’s going on today, what’s happening today is abhorrent,” said Britt Castillo, 35, of Charlotte. “It’s disgusting, and as broken as our current system might be, the way that the current administration is going about trying to fix things — it is not the way to do it. They’re not listening to the people.”

This story was reported by Dave Collins of The Associated Press, with contributions from AP’s Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Erik Verduzco in Charlotte, North Carolina. KQED’s Billy Cruz contributed reporting from Oakland.