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By Nick Mordowanec
Staff Writer
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Numerous organizations and activists across hundreds of cities in every state are galvanizing to send a message to President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and others supporting the current administration's agenda: "Hands Off."
What Are The 'Hands Off' Protests?
Hands Off! is described as a pro-democracy, pro-worker movement taking place "in defiance of the Trump-Musk billionaire takeover and the Republican assault on our freedoms and our communities."
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Organizations including Third Act, Indivisible, MoveOn, Fight Back Table and countless others have been urging a groundswell of support from individuals across all political ideologies, claiming that the current administration is engaging in an "illegal power grab" equating to "a crisis we must stop."
Hands Off! is meant literally in most instances, encouraging Americans to peacefully revolt against the gutting of services, price hikes and attempts to slash programs like Medicaid and Social Security.
"Whether you are mobilized by the attacks on our democracy, the slashing of jobs, the invasion of privacy, or the assault on our services—this moment is for you," the Hands Off! website reads. "We are setting out to build a massive, visible, national rejection of this crisis.
"On April 5, we will host events across the country, in major cities and small towns in every state. Our goal is to show that the people—the majority—are taking action to stop the corruption and power grab."
A Hands Off! spokesperson told Newsweek that, as of April 3, more than 1,000 events had been planned across all 50 states. Events will range from rallies and protests to teach-ins, digital actions, and community gatherings. Some locations will feature marches, public demonstrations and high-profile speakers from impacted communities.
A full, updated list of locations and times is here.
"Across the country, grassroots activists, workers, community leaders and everyday people are coming together to say that it's time for billionaires and extreme lawmakers to take their hands off our health care, our wages, our safety and our rights," the spokesperson said.
"Trump and his billionaire allies are openly planning a power grab to roll back our rights, strip workers of protections, and dismantle the foundations of democracy in service of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. The stakes couldn't be higher."
When And Where Are The 'Hands Off' Protests?
The protests will all take place on Saturday, April 5.
Hundreds of thousands of people are anticipated to descend on every corner of the country to oppose the current political climate just over two months into Trump's second term.
Events vary by city and state, with some protests beginning in the morning while others kick off in the afternoon. The length of each protest is to be determined.
For a list of all events, visit this link.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment about the planned protests.
Fight For All Ages
Bob Fulkerson of Reno, Nevada, is a lead national organizer for Third Act—an organization composed of elder Americans who work throughout 35 national chapters to campaign, build political bases and fight for issues like democracy and climate change.
There are reportedly roughly 10,000 Americans who turn 60 years old daily.
"Given the cascade of outrageous things that have been happening, and the attacks on students or seniors or the environment, whatever—people just have a lot of pent-up anger and want to get out there and express it," Fulkerson told Newsweek. "This is a vessel for everybody to get out there, on the same day at the same time in all 50 states, and really show that the country is rising up."
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Robert Wald of Silver Spring, Maryland, about 7 miles outside Washington, has been a Third Act volunteer since 2023. After retiring at age 59, he felt it imperative to fight for issues on a grander scale—not just for people of his generation but those yet to enter adulthood.
He has one child, a 27-year-old son engaged to be married.
"I've always felt as a parent it's been my responsibility," Wald, 62, told Newsweek. "I think just about all parents feel like they need to do what they have to do to keep their children safe and healthy and ensure that they have a good future.
"I view climate change as a direct threat to the future of all young people, and so I, therefore, have a responsibility to do something about that."
He said when he joined the organization, there was a feeling of shared responsibility among the more than 100,000 members to preserve democracy and the climate and other facets of American life that he and others who plan to attend Saturday's events typically take for granted.
"We come from all walks of life," he said. "We have retired schoolteachers and lawyers and doctors and librarians. I worked in health and science communications. We have scientists, former NASA scientists and microbiologists. I've met truck drivers, former cops and [it's] like a cross-section of the United States."
Participants will march throughout Washington to sites like the Washington Monument, to spread their messages, Wald added. He hopes to see hundreds of thousands of people in the streets.
"Democracy is under attack in this country and there essentially is a coup taking place where you have a billionaire president and one of his billionaire friends cutting the government, the executive branch so that the executive branch will no longer actually function as such—just generally creating chaos and anxiety and fear," he said.
'Not Left Versus Right'
One the groups partaking in the protests is MASS 50501, a nonpartisan group part of the broader "50 Protests, 50 States, One Movement" national coalition.
Rebecca Winter, a leadership council member for the Massachusetts-based group, coordinates with several partners for events such as these. She told Newsweek that MASS 50501 is quite new, having just 80 active members since its inception about two months ago.
"One thing that's very different with us though is we are very committed to being nonpartisan, and we do have members that span across the political spectrum because we're firm believers that the fight for democracy is not a left versus right issue," Winter said. "It's an up versus down issue."
One of the conservative-leaning members of MASS 50501 is Bryan Winter (no relation), a U.S. Army veteran and software engineer who lives near the New Hampshire border.
Bryan, a public speaker who also does outreach to veterans' groups, for example, told Newsweek that he joined following Trump's election victory—a day that began a string of about six weeks of mostly sleepless nights for him.
He had an intuition that others felt the same. Upon communicating with various groups and talking to activists on social channels like Discord, he discovered more like-minded people than he could have imagined.
"The whole theory is [that] if I have to get involved then I need to develop a lot of social capital very quickly, and it turned out that there's just tens of thousands of people who are kind of feeling that feeling—and I actually would suspect that this number actually goes into the millions," Bryan said.
"So, what we are trying to do as a movement is we're trying to capture that energy, kind of the rage, the despair and the fear. But we want to channel that in an inspirational direction and provide actual real opposition. You know people are mad and angry at the Democratic Party, not because the Democratic Party is wrong but because they're not fighting hard enough."
When asked why a more conservative person like himself would attend an event firmly opposing Trump and company, Bryan said that Trump 2.0 is "more authoritarian" and will only get worse.
"We believe he's going to run over our institutions, and then when he does that and when he is allowed to do whatever he wants," Bryan said, "the things he does will be horrible and good for no one. We think the evidence for this case is overwhelming.
"We also think that the mealy-mouthed language around this and being afraid to kind of call the thing what it is to turn this into an issue of debate is a mistake because you're not being honest with people, and people can sense that. I believe this administration is a five-alarm fire for the nation."
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Kylie Bemis of Boston is an assistant teaching professor at Northeastern University who joined MASS 50501 in late February.
"For me, [I'm concerned about] the existential crisis that the country is facing," Bemis told Newsweek. "I'm Native American, I'm transgender, I'm autistic, so I've always been involved to a lesser extent in advocating for issues. For so long, we've kind of taken our democracy for granted and have been trying to work within the system as it exists.
"But what we're seeing right now is really a threat to our Constitution, and to democracy itself. And I know that if we do not act now and do something...that we're going to lose all of those rights that we've fought so hard to gain and to protect."
One person intending to participate on April 5 spoke to Newsweek but requested anonymity because he was fearful of being targeted.
The 51-year-old male in the Washington, D.C., area said that "people are riled." Soon to be a grandparent, he compared the present moment to the rise of the Third Reich in Germany nearly a century ago.
"Fascism is a spiritual movement with the declared aim of separating from reality and constructing an alternative reality through propaganda that over time becomes the new reality," he said. "Like communism, fascism is a perpetually transitional state; and like communism, it is founded on lies. Truth is forever the enemy of despotic regimes."
He added that he became a political independent in March following Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's deal with Republicans to prevent a government shutdown.
"The DNC [Democratic National Committee] is an amalgamation of decent people, corporate shills and cowards," he said. "[Former U.S. Attorney General] Merrick Garland should be in prison. His inaction went way beyond dereliction of duty."
For more information, visit www.handsoff2025.com.
Updated 4/3/25, 12:24 p.m.: This story was updated with an updated count of national protests.
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