Tens of thousands of protesters crowded around the Washington Monument on Saturday afternoon to rally against President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk’s “authoritarian overreach” in dismantling federal agencies, implementing tariffs and carrying out immigration raids.

Demonstrators donned Handmaid’s Tale and early 20th century suffragette costumes, carried signs like “Hands off our Constitution” and “There are smarter cabinets at IKEA” and shouted chants like “Where is Congress? Do your job” and “Elon Musk has got to go.” The “Hands Off” D.C. rally was one of more than 1,000 protests across all 50 states on Saturday in mass dissent of the Trump administration’s recent actions, including gutting government agencies, imposing heavy tariffs that have shocked the global economy and Musk’s encroaching presence in the federal government.

Protesters flooded the National Mall at noon with signs in support of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, researchers and scientists. The crowd swelled to a peak at about 1:30 p.m. 

“I feel like college students especially have to get out, especially GW, we’re right here, right under the government,” sophomore Madison Bender, who attended the rally with a sign that read “No big $$$$ criminals in our politics, government, court,” repurposed from January’s Women’s March, said. “They’re the second-largest landowner in D.C., obviously they’re in cahoots with the government.” 

Bender, who is from Boston, said she was glad to see turnout for the rally but that she wishes she had seen her friends and more people her age in attendance. She said GW students need to “get out here,” especially after government officials “quieted” pro-Palestinian protesters’ free speech on campus last spring.

Six Republican members of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee visited the encampment in University Yard in May, where they called on D.C. officials to arrest protesters involved in the demonstration.

On Saturday, some protesters swarmed around speakers — including Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin (MD), Maxwell Frost (FL), Don Beyer (VA), Ilhan Omar (MN), and Lateefah Simon (CA), as well as union leaders and protest organizers. 

“If they think they’re going to overthrow the foundations of democracy, they don’t know who they are dealing with,” Raskin said in a speech at the rally. 

Other demonstrators beat drums and encircled the base of the Washington Monument, chanting, “Hands off Elon Musk, hands off Linda McMahon, hands off our schools” and “We showed up,” while others huddled on grass nearby displaying signs like “Make fascism wrong again” and “Firing scientists don’t make our climate great again.”

More than 150 groups planned the rally, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LGBTQ+ activists and veterans. Organizers hoped the protests would be the largest anti-Trump rallies since his return to office. 

On Friday night, organizers expected at least 20,000 attendees in D.C., but on Sunday afternoon estimated that the crowd was five times as big as their prediction. Indivisible, one of the almost 200 partner groups involved in the effort, reported nearly 400,000 attendee sign-ups.

Sophomore Lydia Zeleznik said her mom, who teaches English as a second language at a New Jersey public school, saw a decline in class attendance after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Newark. Seeing people unable to attend class is disheartening because growing up her mom always told her to focus on her education, she said.

“Whether it’s them or their family, they’re there and they were part of the community, and now they’re 8 years old and they can’t get an education,” Zeleznik said. 

Zeleznik said it’s “refreshing” to see “a lot of people” at the rally. 

“As much as the college kids aren’t here, there are so many people that are,” Zeleznik said. “It’s really empowering.”

Gus Griffin, a 33-year-old vegetable farmer from Vermont, said he drove nine hours to attend the demonstration because “there’s not a farmer” he knows that hasn’t faced consequences from policies Trump implemented since taking office. He said Trump’s January orders freezing federal funding meant his business lost grants totaling about $50,000, including funds for smart agriculture, new greenhouses and preparations for vegetable cultivation.

“That’s across the board,” Griffin said. “All of our friends, all of our neighbors have that same problem.”

Griffin said he felt he must protest on the Trump administration’s “turf” in D.C. instead of attending protests in Vermont because his presence amplifies the message that Trump is hurting small farmers. Despite Trump contending that funding freezes save the government billions of dollars, he spent $10 billion to “bail out” farmers due to the economic fallout of his tariffs in 2019, Griffin said — something Trump is now weighing again as the agricultural industry is expecting losses from retaliation to Trump’s recent tariffs.

“You can take my money, you can take our customers money, you can put tariffs on what we’re buying,” Griffin said. “But you can’t stop us from coming out to fight for our jobs and our neighbors and our friends and our employees.”

Codi-Alyssa Southerland, who traveled to the rally from North Carolina, was dressed in a red robe and white bonnet similar to that of handmaidens in The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel and television series about a dystopian United States where a totalitarian government has forced women into reproductive servitude.

She said she wore the costume because the “male government” is controlling women by threatening to roll back reproductive health care.

“Everything’s super radical, and it feels like we’re entering an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale,” Southerland said. “And I’m not cool with that.”

Ron Pollack, an 81-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, said he came to protest because he’s “terribly worried” that Congress is considering legislation that gives tax breaks disproportionately to the wealthy and plans to finance it by cutting programs like Medicaid, a government health insurance program for low-income and disabled adults. 

He said that for 34 years he ran Families USA, a nonprofit health advocacy and policy organization, that led the coalition to pass the Affordable Care Act and to expand Medicaid.

“It’s the beginning of an effort by more and more people to resist what is really a terrible thing that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are trying to achieve,” Pollack said of the rally.