A crowd of more than 1,000 people, ranging in age from children to the elderly, gathered in downtown Iowa City Saturday to protest President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, leader Elon Musk as part of nationwide “Hands Off” rallies.
Sue Thompson, a member of Indivisible, a progressive movement made up of local groups advocating for democracy and justice and organizer of the Iowa City protest, said “Hands Off” refers to the wide range of Americans’ concerns with the Trump administration.
“It’s hands off everything,” Thompson said. “Hands off our bodies, hands off First Amendment [rights], hands off our 401Ks, hands off our economy, hands off our allies. We just need to stop what’s going on.”
Originally planning on traveling to Washington, D.C., to participate in the rally near the U.S. Capitol, Thompson said she decided her efforts could be more helpful in Iowa City. Thompson told The Daily Iowan the night before the rally that over 900 people were signed up to attend.
“I initially thought it would be maybe a couple hundred,” Thompson said.
The Guardian reported that over 1,000 “Hands Off” rallies were held nationwide with an estimated total of 500,000 demonstrators.
The Iowa City rally began at 11:30 a.m. on the corner of Clinton Street and Iowa Avenue. After a brief march through downtown, attendees gathered around a stage on Iowa Avenue, which the Iowa City Police Department blocked off for the protest, to hear from a lineup of speakers.
Elected officials urge varying strategies
Among the speakers was Iowa House Rep. Adam Zabner, D-Iowa City, who decried the funding and job cuts under Trump’s DOGE and encouraged attendees to get involved in local elections.
“People from all over this state are calling me and asking, ‘How can I run for office and change this state?’” Zabner said.
Zabner pointed to the recent election of Mike Zimmer in Iowa’s Senate District 35 — a district that favored President Donald Trump by a 21-point margin in 2024 — as a reason to be optimistic. He also reminded attendees that U.S. Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, won by only six votes in 2020.
“It’s easy for us to feel powerless in this moment,” Zabner said. “But six people can change everything.”
Iowa Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, also sharply condemned the actions of the Trump administration and encouraged attendees to take action by calling their representatives.
“Tell them to stand up to the bully,” Weiner said.
Iowa Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, D-Hiawatha, and the first openly transgender woman to be elected to office in Iowa, encouraged attendees to pursue a wide range of organizing efforts, including and beyond voting.
Wichtendahl criticized Trump and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for advancing policies that, in her view, contradict the regime’s stated commitment to freedom — pointing to the removal of gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, revocation of reproductive rights, deportations of students over the First Amendment activity of speaking out against Israeli military actions in Gaza and the West Bank, denial of due process to immigrants, historical revisionism, rollbacks on labor protections, and cuts to essential services as examples.
“What we need to do is replace the governor, and we need to get a new Congress,” Wichtendahl said. “We need to get state legislators who understand that liberty and justice for all is not optional.”
Describing that political shift as a long-term goal, Wichtendahl also urged the crowd to engage in direct mutual aid at the grassroots level as an immediate means of providing community protection.
“Never say, ‘This isn’t my fight.’ Stand with immigrant communities. Stand with communities of color, stand with the queer community,” Wichtendahl said. “Stand for the rights and dignity and humanity of your neighbor, because the thing that fascists fear is a united people. Fascists rely on people surrendering in advance.”
Newly elected Iowa City City Council member Oliver Weilein, known for his anti-government beliefs, also spoke at the rally, expressing his belief that grassroots organizing and mutual aid will be more effective in resisting the Trump administration than focusing solely on electoral politics.
“I’m not saying don’t vote,” Weilein said. “I’m saying that there is so much more to fighting back against the fascist takeover of the country than voting or even attending protests like this one, as amazing as it is.”
Weilein said organizing efforts would give those opposed to Trump tangible leverage to demand change, enabling them to strike in their workplaces and disrupt the economy and daily life until their demands are addressed.
“We need a unions movement, a tenants movement, mutual aid networks, a student movement that are so strong that we can clog the arteries of capital and force our will onto the capitalists, the exploiters, and the fascists,” Weilein said. “We do not need to wait for a Democrat to deliver our salvation for us. We can do it ourselves.”
Weilein emphasized that transformative change has historically come not from the Democratic Party but from organizers in radical traditions — like socialists, communists, and anarchists — who forced the political establishment to act through mass pressure and disruption.
Michael Powers, chair of the Iowa City chapter of the Communist Party USA, who attended the rally with other CPUSA members, described Weilein’s decision to acknowledge radical political movements as brave, saying that in his view, many elected leaders shy away from praising communism because of its historically negative perception in the U.S.
“I thought it was also important because communists and socialists have been very important to all kinds of social movements all throughout our history,” Powers said.
Other speakers included Johnson County Supervisor Mandi Remington, Veteran’s Affairs nurse and president of the VA labor union Patrick Kearns, Jennifer Breon with the Food and Water Watch organization, Mayor Pro-Tem Mazahir Salih, and Johnson County Democrats member Ed Cranston.
Diverse concerns bring crowd together
Maher Josephson, vice-chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Arab-American Caucus, held a large Palestinian flag throughout the speeches and identified U.S. support for Israel as one of the main issues that brought him to the rally.
He said he believes that donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, influence U.S. politicians to continue voting in favor of billions of dollars in aid to Israel.
The Intercept reported that AIPAC spent over $100 million on congressional races in 2024.
“Hopefully, the power of grassroots [can] force this administration to stop aiding and abetting Israel genocide in Gaza,” Josephson said. “It’s happening daily, on TV — the United States bombs are raining on Gaza.”
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Embry O’Leary, a graduate student at the University of Iowa, came to the rally wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab head scarf, and also condemned U.S. aid to Israel.
“It’s disappointing, it’s shameful, it’s embarrassing,” O’Leary said.
As an openly transgender individual, O’Leary said the recent removal of gender identity from Iowa’s Civil Rights Act was a key reason they attended the rally, expressing their view that anti-transgender legislation is not about protecting women and girls but about targeting transgender people for defying the American status quo.
O’Leary said the large turnout demonstrated the power of community members coming together through grassroots organizing.
“They should be more scared of us than we are of them,” O’Leary said. “There are more of us than there are of them.”
Iowa City resident Patti Benson, a retired nurse, referenced funding cuts to science and National Institute of Health grants as a primary motivation for attending the protest.
“I’m a retired nurse, and the defunding of all the medical research is uncalled for,” Benson said. “You can’t just stop some of those projects and expect that you’re going to resume them in another week or two if something changes.”
Benson, 68, said she hadn’t expected to witness another large-scale uprising like Saturday’s rally after seeing the Vietnam War protests during her high school years. However, she said the threats posed by the Trump administration are too serious for people to remain silent.
Anne Schulte, a 48-year-old Iowa City resident, cited immigration enforcement and ICE deporting and detaining people without due process as among her reasons for protesting. Schulte expressed optimism for the crowd size.
“We’re all kind of depressed with what’s going on, and that just makes you feel like there are other people of like mind,” Schulte said.
Also concerned about immigration enforcement, Iowa City resident Will Thomson distributed double-sided cards in English and Spanish outlining the rights individuals should know if confronted by ICE.
Thomson condemned the recent deportation of hundreds of migrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process and in defiance of a judge’s order, as well as the detention of Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk for co-authoring an op-ed — calling both actions unconscionable and, in his view, a scare tactic by the Trump administration.
“They want us to see this happen and be too frightened to come out and protest what they’re doing,” Thomson said.
A spokesperson from the Republican Party of Iowa provided a statement to KCCI dismissing the protesters’ concerns.
“Democrats are in disarray — they have no message, no platform, and no leader. They still cannot seem to figure out why they lost on Nov. 5. Instead, they’ve resorted to screaming group therapy sessions — manufactured and funded by dark money puppet masters, including George Soros,” the statement read.
In addition to blocking off Iowa Avenue, a liaison for the Iowa City Police Department briefly addressed the crowd to state that police cars were set up on the perimeter of the protest to prevent any outside agitators. No counter-protests took place, and the rally concluded around 2:30 p.m.