Alamosa’s Hands Off demonstration against the alliance between President Donald Trump and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, drew a few hundred protesters to the downtown corridor on Saturday, April 5.
Signs that read, “Hands Off Public Education, Libraries, Lands, Forests,” and “Hands Off Our Personal Data and Wallets,” among other expressions, filled the intersection at Main Street and State Avenue.
The demonstrations were held across America. They come less than 100 days into Trump’s second term in office and on the heels of massive new tariffs the Trump Administration ordered. The tariffs set off a global trading war and sent U.S. financial markets tumbling on back-to-back days at the end of the week.
The Associated Press reported more than 1,200 demonstrations across the United States on Saturday in protest of the bombardment of executive orders by Trump and the unprecedented gutting of the federal government by Musk and his DOGE unit.
The demonstrations were planned by some 150 groups that advocate for a variety of causes, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, military veterans, elections activists and LBGTQ advocates.
In March, Alamosa hosted a town hall that drew a capacity crowd to Society Hall to speak out against the Trump policies.
The six-county San Luis Valley is a region that with its agriculture economy, national park, national forest and federal lands, and public university in Adams State, has a strong dependence on the federal bureaucracy and its agency budgets.
It’s also a region, with a population of 46,600 residents, that has a high percentage of Medicaid recipients. Another economic driver for the region is San Luis Valley Health, Alamosa’s single largest employer, which relies on Medicaid reimbursements for its own financial health. Listen to this episode of The Valley Pod with SLV Health CEO Konnie Martin to understand more about Medicaid reimbursements.
At the Adams State Trustees meeting on Friday, April 4, an aide to U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd said the Republican congressman is frustrated with Trump’s “meat-cleaver” approach to the federal government and believes cuts to federal agencies instigated through DOGE are subject to judicial review. She also described a chaotic federal government under Trump.
“As you know, we don’t know if we’re coming or going. We don’t know what is happening in Washington because one thing is said today and tomorrow it switches. Everything’s going so fast, it’s hard to keep up with legislation and what Trump is doing and DOGE is doing. So it’s really, really hard to tell you, well, this is happening and that is happening,” Hurd aide Cathy Garcia said to the Adams State Trustees.