WASHINGTON — From Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, Topeka, Kansas to Chicago and several of its suburbs, in all 50 states and in many cities worldwide, hundreds of thousands of people assembled to protest against Donald Trump and his billionaire financier and adviser Elon Musk on Saturday.

The “Hands Off” protests included around 1,200 demonstrations planned in advance, according to organizers, with more than half a million people RSVPing to attend the marches and protests, which looked to be the largest single day of protest since Trump took office. Per the event’s website, more than 150 groups signed on to participate. 

In Washington, D.C., where more than 20,000 people were expected to attend the rally held at the National Mall, people held signs protesting the massive cuts to federal agencies, including health and Social Security workers; defending constitutional rights, which have been under threat from the administration and Trump’s executive orders; and supporting human rights for immigrants, women, and trans people.

“NOT PAID AND PISSED OFF,” read one sign, a reference to Musk’s baseless claims that protests against him are being funded by liberal billionaire George Soros. One man hefted a model of a human spine onto a pole. “HEY GOP, WHERE’S YOURS?” read the accompanying sign. One of the chants which received a big reaction from the crowd was when someone began calling out “Where is Congress?” to which the crowd shouted back, “Do your job!” Protesters’ reasons for attending the event varied widely, with the thousands who flocked to the National Mall on Saturday being fueled by various degrees of frustration, grief, outrage, and outright anger. 

One couple, both veterans who served in Afghanistan, told Rolling Stone that they were “extremely pissed off” about Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s treatment of military service members. Veterans make up nearly a third of the federal workforce, so they have been disproportionately affected by Trump and Musk’s job cuts, as well as those to the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

One protester was motivated by the Trump administration’s recent Signal scandal, in which Hegseth shared sensitive details about America’s planned attacks on the Houthis in Yemen in advance with other officials — as well as a journalist from The Atlantic. 

“I was a special operations aviator,” the protester said, “if I had released a timeline the way [Hegseth] did for a mission, I would be in jail. Fuck that guy.” 

Rolling Stone spoke to several current and former federal workers who felt it was their duty to speak out against the administration’s hatchet job cuts to all manner of executive departments and government programs. “I still have my job right now, but it’s so tenuous because I don’t know what’s going to happen. I figured I need to be out here and show that we actually matter,” one current government employee said. 

Another protester — whose concerns were echoed in hundreds of signs and banners — said that he was “most opposed to the violations of due process” being carried out against immigrants and pro-Palestinian protesters by the Trump administration. “Without due process, nothing matters. None of us are citizens, none of us have rights if they’re unwilling to allow us to defend ourselves in the court of law,” they said. 

One young woman, who grew emotional during a conversation with Rolling Stone, said she attended the protest after hearing Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) read a portion of a letter from a constituent during his record-breaking protest speech earlier this week. 

“Not only is the U.S. not stronger, not safer, not more prosperous, but the beacon of our democracy grows dim across the globe,” she quoted, explaining: “That really hit me. I feel like what’s happening right now is not what America means to us, or at least to me. The way we’re just treating people is very inhuman, and I feel like we need more empathy.” 

“They’re eating checks, they’re eating balances” was one popular sign seen across protests nationwide — a reference to Trump’s maliciously false claim in a presidential debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats. Some signs mentioned Trump’s tariff announcement this week, which sent the markets tumbling. Others were direct calls to fire Trump and Musk, many spoke for democracy, railed against fascism, or simply said “No King” and “Fuck Trump.”

In Portland, Maine, Rolling Stone witnessed hundreds of protesters lining both sides of Congress Street. Protesters held signs such as “Keep Your Fascist Hands Off My Social Security” and “Hands Off Health Care.” Another sign said, “Send Elon to Mars.” (Musk wants to colonize Mars with his space company, SpaceX.) The protest caused Maine’s equivalent of a traffic jam, as cars streamed in from all directions.

Meanwhile, protests took place worldwide. In European cities, hundreds also gathered against Trump and Musk in the wake of the global tariffs that tanked financial markets earlier this week. In Berlin, Germany, protesters chanted, “Fuck you, Elon” as hundreds rallied outside of a showroom for Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company. Protests in Australia and New Zealand were also held outside of Tesla showrooms.

In London, people chanted “Hands off” and “Donald Trump has got to go” in Trafalgar Square. “The most important office in democracy is the citizen,” one sign read, while another said: “Party for democracy.” In Paris, protesters assembled on the Place de la République, where they held signs saying “Drump Trump,” “Hate never ‘made America great again,’” and “Hands off Canada, Hands off the EU, Hands off Greenland, Hands off Gaza, Hands off Ukraine, Hands off our Freedoms, Hands off Education.”

“Every single day it seems like [Trump] starts doing things on a whim. You don’t really know what he’s going to do. It doesn’t seem like he knows what he’s going to do,” one woman told Spanish sports newspaper Diaro AS. “He also lets himself be influenced by other dangerous people — people with money … He’s not thinking about [the] people, he’s thinking about his billionaire buddies. There’s no limit to the issues that he’s causing.”