‘Hands Off’: Protesters deliver a sweeping message to Trump and Musk at a DC rally

Surrounding the Washington Monument Saturday were thousands of signs with messages spanning innumerable topics. “Support Ukraine,” “Beware of DOGE,” “Protect Trans Lives,” were just a few of them. Others struck a note of exasperation: “Where do I start…”

The nationwide Hands Off protests this weekend turned out millions of protesters across 1,300 different events, organizers estimate, motivated by a wide array of causes but two people: President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk. In the signs they brought to the DC rally, some protesters focused on a single issue. Others tried to fit as many as they could. The throughline was a message to the US government: protect democracy, and stop messing with programs and agencies that matter.

The crowd in Washington, DC — more than 100,000, per organizers’ estimates — was peaceful and orderly. On a stage behind the Washington Monument, lawmakers like Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Maxwell Frost (D-FL) and organizers including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler spoke. Attendees around them quietly listened, save for the occasional call-and-response chant, cheers, or boos for the Trump administration. Farther away, a group of protesters marched around the Monument chanting, “Hands Off! Dump Trump!”

The many messages and movements converging in Washington mostly seemed to coexist easily, with the occasional exception. 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. “Don’t leave the main rally,” he urged passersby. The pro-Palestine protester adjusted 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. “There are so many things that Trump has done — and Musk and [Vice President JD] Vance — that are outrageous,” she told me. “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 declined to give her last name, says she chose the pool noodles to underscore the peacefulness of the event. “This is a non-violent movement, and unlike the January 6th insurrectionists who brought flag poles and other things to use as weapons, everybody who’s 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.) New York City reportedly had a similar turnout to DC — which is a much smaller city — and protests cropped up in stereotypically deep-red states like Idaho and West Virginia. 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. “And it has been nothing but a nightmare since January 20th for 3 million federal employees.”

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. Speaking to me while holding up his sculpture from the back, Bailey said that it really “pains” him to see how the colleagues he spent 33 years working with are being treated by Musk’s DOGE. “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 pre-planned retirement in January, and while he says “people keep telling me what great timing, I’m nursing a case of survivor’s guilt.”

The person who identified themselves as a federal worker stood in the crowd near the stage handing out small American flags, offering to tape them to people’s signs. “White supremacists have been marching with our flag for way too long,” she said. “I just think it’s time to reclaim it. They’ve abused it. They’ve turned it into something that it was never meant to stand for, and it’s supposed to be freedom for all, not for a select fucking few.” (Some people seemed hesitant to take a flag, reconsidering only when she told them “we’re going to take it back from the far right.”) Despite recent reports that Elon Musk may be on his way out of the White House, the worker is pessimistic that DOGE’s impact on the federal workforce will end.

Being among other federal workers brought some solace to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) enforcement attorney Doug Wilson, a member of the agency’s union. The CFPB has had a rocky couple of months, with Acting Director Vought ordering employees to stop working, until a judge recently ordered them to return while a broader case is pending.

For months now, federal workers in DC have been organizing protests in front of federal buildings, pushing back on the havoc Trump and Musk have wreaked on the federal workforce. Many of the early protests were tiny, turning out something on the order of 50 attendees. The Hands Off protest in DC — and the day of action at large — operated on an entirely different scale. But for some attendees, it served a similar purpose: letting them show up to defend the work they’ve done for years or decades. “It’s good to just be together and experience that solidarity,” Wilson said Saturday, arriving at the protest. “I want the country to hear that we do our jobs to protect them … I want the American people to know that we just want to work.”