Over the weekend in the United States, millions of Americans from both the Democratic and Republican parties took to the streets in all 50 states for the “Hands Off!” protests against the Trump administration and his deputized billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday – many from strong Trump-supporting voting districts.
European and Ukrainian press widely reported as several thousand protesters hit the streets in cities including Washington, DC, New York City and Boston. Estimates by the organizers of the nationally coordinated events put the total number of protesters attending the events on Saturday, April 5, at around 5 million people in over 1,400 locations, including all 50 state capitals.
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The protests were not limited to large cities in Democratically dominated states. For example, according to the Alabama Political Reporter, “Protesters gathered in Montgomery, Birmingham, Huntsville, Opelika, and even the tiny town of Dadeville.”
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The report said, “An organizer from the nonprofit ‘Indivisible’ remarked at the Montgomery rally that about 10 times as many people showed up as they had expected.”
The American protesters want to get the White House to take its hands off programs legislated by the US Congress in its Article I powers under the US Constitution and limit the executive branch’s Article II authorization to implement the laws enacted by Congress.
Specific programs and issues protesters are concerned about are Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, massive federal layoffs, Veterans Affairs, elementary school lunch programs and childhood cancer research, national parks, NATO, unilateral global tariffs put into effect by the White House, and the Trump administration siding with aggressors in Gaza and Ukraine, according to multiple news agencies, including Newsweek.
In the heavily Republican state of Alabama, the Political Reporter wrote:
“The protests touched on many issues: Trump’s disregard for due process in the removal of non-citizens, Elon Musk and DOGE’s wrecking ball approach to dismantling the federal government, Trump’s push to purge DEI and LGBTQ+ rights from every nook and cranny of government institutions, the crashing of the stock market through Trump’s unprecedented tariffs.”
In addition to variations on the “Hands Off!” slogan, signs held by protesters also read: “No Kings!” “Turd Reich No!” and “We are Tariffied!”
Some made pop-culture references: “Super callous fragile racist sexist nazi potus” – a pun on the nonsensical word “super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious,” popularized in Disney’s 1964 Mary Poppins film.
Some were targeted at the owner of Tesla: “No Swastikars!” Another was aimed at the Vice President: “We’re ALL the COUCH NOW!”
And “Stand With Ukraine!”
According to the “Hands Off!” organizer’s website, their demands are:
- An end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration.
- An end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on.
- An end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.
These protests have been preceded in recent weeks by rallies at record levels in traditionally Republican strongholds and so-called purple districts in swing states.
These “Fighting Oligarchy” protest rallies have been organized by progressive congressional leaders, led by Vermont’s independent, Democratic party-caucusing Senator Bernie Sanders and New York City’s Democratic House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, widely known as AOC.
One rally attracted over 34,000 people in Denver, Colorado, according to local news reports, and a Thursday lunchtime rally in Las Vegas had more attendees than Trump attracted in his campaign stop there during the election cycle.
Although the “Hands Off!” protests were planned before Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day,” the fallout from the administration’s announcement to unilaterally implement sweeping tariffs on over 200 countries have only added to the public disillusionment with the administration.
According to many economists, these tariffs are likely to spark international trade wars, plunge the United States into rampant inflation, and precipitate an economically crippling recession, according to multiple international news platforms, including Reuters. According to the reports, investment firm JP Morgan put the likelihood of a global recession specifically triggered by these Trump administration actions at 60%.
According to Reuters:
“Countries around the world threatened to wage a trade war with the United States as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs fed expectations for a global downturn and sharp price hikes for swathes of goods in the world’s biggest consumer market.
“The US tariffs would amount to the highest trade barriers in more than a century: a 10% baseline tariff on all imports and higher targeted duties on dozens of countries.”
Some of these “countries” include uninhabited islands, such as the Antarctic Heard and McDonald Islands inhabited by penguins, and Diego Garcia, where the only people present are US military personnel providing forward basing for US Air Force B-2 “Spirit” stealth bombers.
The National Constitution Center, a non-profit, non-partisan institution that is devoted to the study of the US Constitution, delineates the power to enact these import sales taxes as being controlled by Congress, the Article I branch of the US government:
“Tariffs are a form of taxes placed by the federal government on imported goods and services. The president does not have the direct power to set or impose tariffs on nations that trade with the United States and can only take such action if a law is passed by Congress granting him such powers.”
The official White House website claims the US president has the authority to enact such tariffs based on an emergency situation involving national security:
“President Trump is invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit that is driven by the absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships and other harmful policies like currency manipulation and exorbitant value-added taxes (VAT) perpetuated by other countries.”
Newsweek, however, noted that Wall Street had “tumbled to its worst week in five years as global markets braced for the impact of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.”
The White House did not impose any tariffs on Russia noting its ongoing, but stalled negotiations for a Peace Plan with Putin for the Kremlin’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while it did slap a 10% across-the-board tariff on Ukraine amid negotiations for a lucrative mineral deal where Trump believes he holds all the cards.
The millions of protesters in the US were joined by simultaneous protests in Europe, Asia and Australia.
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