‘Not My President’s Day’ protests take place at Texas State Capitol, across U.S

By Gracie Kirschner

Reporting Texas

Protests have erupted across the United States since President Donald Trump took office this January. Austin is no stranger to these protests, and President’s Day was no exception. 

On a day meant to celebrate our nation’s leaders, thousands of protesters gathered at the Texas State Capitol to protest the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s influence on U.S. policy. This protest and others like it are part of the “No Kings on Presidents’ Day” or “Not my Presidents’ Day” created by 50501, a grassroots movement focused on “ending executive branch overreach” by hosting 50 protests in 50 states on one day. 

“I think a lot of people are upset that this president is not a leader. He’s not for the people,” said Anna Sweeney, a protestor at the event.

People were heard chanting phrases like “Not my president” and “The people united will never be divided.” Many protesters came to speak out against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to the DOGE website, the department’s purpose is “to implement the President’s agenda by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” 

This has resulted in a significant drop in the labor market, the largest since the pandemic in 2020. U.S. employers announced 172,017 layoffs in February, up 245% from January, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement research firm.

More than one-third of the total layoffs came from the federal government and Elon Musk’s DOGE department. Since Trump took office, there’s been 62,242 federal job cuts, spanning 17 agencies, according to the Challenger study. 

Kristin Jenn was one of the federal employees impacted by those cuts. She lost her job as an interpretive park ranger at Denali national park just two days after Trump was inaugurated. 

“Losing my dream job was traumatizing. Honestly, I couldn’t believe that the federal government would take my job away just because they are trying to trim the budget,” said Jenn.

She decided to take action by coming out to protest.

“If you want to get stuff done, if you want to make change, you’ve got to mobilize and organize,” said Jenn.

Jenn was one of the many people to tell their story to the crowd on the Capitol grounds before protesters took to the streets and marched down Congress Avenue.

This event was not the first of its kind in Austin. 50501 organized its first nationwide day of action on Feb. 5 through Reddit. According to the organization’s website, they organized 80 peaceful protests across the U.S. on that first day alone. 

Alexandra Haddix, the media liaison for the Texas chapter, said she’s mind blown by how quickly they’ve been able to organize.

“We are just 28 days old and we’re over 130,000 on Reddit. It’s crazy how we’ve been able to organize so quickly,” said Haddix.

It’s now or never and 50501 will only continue to grow, said Haddix. 

“We are asking the American people to break out of the framework. If you want to see change, you have to be a part of the change. It’s uncomfortable,” she said. 

50501 held another national day of protests at the Capitol on March 4 and is planning for their next nationwide day of action on April 5th. Haddix said that these programs are just the beginning of the change they plan to create. 

“I’m scared. I think we’re all scared. But I think we’re more curious and we’re more ready for a change,” said Haddix.