Massive anti-Trump protests expected Saturday in DC and across US

Left-leaning organizations say that more than 500,000 people are expected to take to the streets to protest in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere around the country on Saturday to oppose Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.

MoveOn, one of the organizations planning the day of protest they’re calling Hands Off along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests are planned across the US, including at state capitols.

“This is shaping up to be the biggest single-day protest in the last several years of American history,” Ezra Levin, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups planning the event, said on a recent organizing call.

The largest event is expected to be on the National Mall in Washington DC, where members of Congress, including the Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are scheduled to speak to crowds.

“This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history,” says the website for the protest. “Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights – enabled by Congress every step of the way.

“They want to strip America for parts – shuttering social security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid – all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam. They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.”

The protests come after the stock market plummeted this week following Trump’s 1 April announcement of tariffs. Despite the economic fallout, Trump said on Friday: “My policies will never change.”

Trump’s approval rating this week fell to 43%, his lowest since taking office, according to a Reuters poll.

After Trump was first elected to the White House in 2016, at least 470,000 people – three times the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration – joined the Women’s March protest in Washington DC, and millions more rallied around the country, making it the largest single-day protest in US history.