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Millions flocked to the streets across the country in protest of President Donald Trump’s administration’s cuts to health program funding, mass firings of federal workers and steps toward shuttering entire agencies.
“Hands Off” protests, organized by nearly 200 advocacy groups, cropped up in more than 1,000 locations across the U.S. and around the globe Saturday in what became the largest day of collective action since Trump was inaugurated for a second time.
The protests aimed to put a stop to the “most brazen power grab in modern history,” organizers said. Millions — from Los Angeles to London — marched to advocate for civil rights, healthcare, democracy, workers’ rights and LGBTQ+ rights that have been under “assault” by the Trump administration and GOP Congress members, they added.
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The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency has taken a chainsaw to the federal government, haphazardly firing thousands of federal workers, cutting humanitarian aid programs, and planning to shutter federal office buildings.
The Trump administration is drowning in court battles as it swiftly moves to deport a host of immigrants, implement sweeping tariffs, and attempts to ban transgender Americans from serving in the U.S. military.
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“What we witnessed today was nothing short of extraordinary. Across the country and around the world, people came together to say: we will not be silent while our rights, our futures, and our democracy are under attack,” Rahna Epting, executive director of advocacy group MoveOn, said in a statement Saturday.
“This peaceful movement is powered by everyday people—nurses, teachers, students, parents—who are rising up to protect what matters most,” Epting continued. “We are united, we are relentless, and we are just getting started.”
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Speaking to the crowd at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin denounced the president’s recent tariff plan that led to a stock market bloodbath this week.
“No moral person wants an economy-crushing dictator who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Raskin said.
As business leaders know, the congressman claimed: “There is no prosperity with stupid trade wars against the whole world. There’s no prosperity with stock market collapse and mass unemployment. There’s no future with presidents who have the politics of Mussolini and the economics of Herbert Hoover.”
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The Maryland Democrat also called for the administration to keep its “hands off” Greenland, Canada and Panama Canal — all of which Trump hopes the U.S. will absorb.
Florida Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost took the stage after Raskin, taking aim at billionaires, corporations and oligarchs, whom he accused of “this insidious rise of authoritarianism.”
The rightwing “movement is run by fear, trying to put us against one another,” the Congressman said. But, he continued, “we’re in this situation not because of our neighbors. I promise you, your bank account looks a lot more like your trans neighbors and your immigrant neighbors and nothing like Elon Musk.”
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Trump himself, meanwhile, was at a golf tournament in Florida.
