Federal employees protested en masse over the weekend as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency announced it would close 47 Social Security Administration offices across the country.
Over a hundred people demonstrated outside a federal building in Raleigh, North Carolina, fed up with the Social Security cuts as well as Musk’s suggestions the U.S. Postal Service—which is as old as the nation itself—and Amtrak should be privatized.
“I want everyone to know, I want the public to know, that the post office is the people’s post office,” called out Tonya Freeman, president of the local postal workers’ union, reported the Raleigh News & Observer. “It belongs to the people, it doesn’t belong to Trump or Elon Musk.”
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Four Social Security offices are being shuttered in North Carolina alone, forcing those in the hurricane-ravaged Smoky Mountains to now drive as far as 68 miles to reach the closest office, reported the Smoky Mountain News, which add there is no scheduled public transportation to take people to and from the now-distant offices.
That headache for residents has been replicated across the nation as DOGE cancels leases and cuts staff at breakneck speed. Some of the decisions appear to go against issues central to the Trump administration’s priorities—like the canceling of a lease for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Corpus Christi, Texas, where staff handle a deluge of human smuggling, drug trafficking, and immigration cases at the southern border.
These make up just a sliver of DOGE’s cuts across the federal government, which have uprooted the means of living for tens of thousands of Americans, some of whom are MAGA supporters, veterans, or both.
Protesters conceded Sunday there is likely waste within the government, but said the speed at which Musk’s team of young engineers have slashed workforces, leases, and programs have done more to harm essential services than it has rooted out waste.
Heather Hughes, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3509, was among those making exactly that point.
“You don’t go in for the weight loss surgery and have your legs amputated,” she told a crowd, according to the News & Observer. “You look for (waste) and then you figure out a way to do it that doesn’t damage everything else.”
Demonstrators reportedly held up signs calling Musk a “terrible president” and demanded he “stop the war on America’s workforce.”
Hughes said federal workers have become politicized by Musk and Trump. Now, she says, some in MAGA will call into Social Security offices and harass the very workers who are trying to help them.
“We have people calling the Social Security office, for whatever help they need, and then saying, ‘I can’t wait till you get fired,’” Hughes claimed. “What? You just called because you needed something that you can’t get anywhere else, and you just told me you can’t wait ‘til I get fired?”
Other demonstrations took place over the weekend at Tesla dealerships in the U.S., Canada, and London to protest Musk, who remains the company’s CEO despite him spending most of his time hopping between Mar-a-Lago and Washington these days.
Signs spotted outside a Chicago dealership read, “Launch Musk to Mars” and “Democracy Dies with DOGE,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Photographers captured protesters being placed in zip-ties in New York City, where another demonstration took place outside a Tesla dealership.
“They’re stealing from us, and we are out here to express how angry we are at that,” Denise Poloyac, a board member of Indivisible Chicago told the Tribune. “[Musk] is eliminating vital services that we all need and expect from our federal government... Ultimately, he’s using it to enrich himself and his cronies.”
