Hundreds rally in Westwood to protest Trump, Musk's government cuts: 'It's just evil'

When Jesse Ugalde, who served successful the Vietnam War, entered a Department of Veterans Affairs gathering Friday, helium noticed a difference.

“Already, radical are leaving,” Ugalde, 74, who relies connected the VA for his healthcare, said of VA employees. “I was told that they’re going to effort to supply services, but it’s going to instrumentality longer.”

To protestation President Trump’s propulsion to slash the size of the national government, which includes drastic unit cuts astatine the VA and different agencies, Ugalde took to the streets with hundreds of others successful Westwood connected Saturday.

It’s “not lone the VA, but there’s different programs that we request desperately,” Ugalde said. “There’s nary crushed to bash it this way. ... I fought for this country, and I’ll combat for it again.”

Angelenos and residents from passim Southern California enactment successful a march and rally extracurricular the Wilshire Federal Building.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The protesters marched toward the national gathering connected Wilshire Boulevard astir noon, rallying against the authorities cuts and what they described arsenic wide law violations.

“We are present due to the fact that we are not going to fto Trump, we’re not going to fto Elon Musk, his co-president, oregon anybody other instrumentality the United States Constitution down,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) told the crowd.

Musk’s advisory team, which helium calls the Department of Government Efficiency, oregon DOGE, has fired thousands of authorities workers, frozen billions of dollars successful national spending and ordered the astir implicit shutdown of aggregate national agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Education.

In a statement, VA property caput Pete Kasperowicz said the section is inactive successful the readying signifier for wider unit reductions and volition spell done a “deliberative process” to amended attraction and benefits. “We’re not talking astir reducing aesculapian unit oregon claims processors, we’re talking astir reducing bureaucracy and inefficiencies that are getting successful the mode of lawsuit convenience and work to veterans.”

Musk, a billionaire known for his “move accelerated and interruption things” attack astatine his companies, described wasteful authorities spending arsenic an urgent and existential menace successful an interrogation Tuesday with Fox News.

“The state is going bankrupt,” helium said, referring to the increasing nationalist debt. “If we don’t bash thing astir it, the vessel of America is going to sink.”

But radical astatine the protestation — organized chiefly by Democracy Action Network, a pro-democracy enactment founded past twelvemonth — said the programs connected the chopping artifact are acold from wasteful.

Protesters clasp signs and the U.S. emblem extracurricular the Wilshire Federal Building.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Shaun Law-Bowman, 67, spent 15 years arsenic a nationalist schoolhouse teacher earlier moving into an administrative position.

“There’s nary reasoning. There’s nary excuse,” she said of Trump’s program to unopen down the Department of Education. “I was a peculiar ed head — those are national funds. There’s a immense magnitude of kids that request peculiar help, and each that wealth is going to beryllium gone. It’s conscionable evil.”

This month, a national justice ruled that Trump and Musk’s dismantling of USAID was astir apt unconstitutional, arguing that the cuts were incompatible with the volition of Congress.

Federal judges person besides ruled that the administration’s firing of probationary employees did not travel the due procedures for layoffs and that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management lacked the authorization to bid the firings.

The medication has bashed these rulings, with Vice President JD Vance posting connected X that judges “aren’t allowed to power the executive’s morganatic power.”

Protesters clasp upside-down U.S. flags portion marching extracurricular the Wilshire Federal Building.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Many protesters spoke retired against the apprehension of Mahmoud Khalil, a erstwhile Columbia University postgraduate pupil and pro-Palestinian activist. Khalil, an Algerian citizen, is being held successful migration detention adjacent though helium is simply a greenish paper holder with nary transgression record.

Trump, without instantly providing evidence, accused Khalil of supporting the militant radical Hamas, which the U.S. considers a “foreign violent organization.”

For many, the objection was a mode to instrumentality matters into their hands.

“For each those radical that accidental the protests don’t substance … we wouldn’t person the civilian rights we had successful the ‘60s without protests,” said Elizabeth Gietema, 28. “Vietnam mightiness person gone connected longer without the protests.”