A 20-foot-tall balloon depicting President Donald Trump wearing a diaper, and a 15-foot-tall helium-filled balloon of his likeness in a Russian military uniform will float down the streets of Los Angeles on Saturday.

Those balloons, along with an expected thousands of protesters in downtown Los Angeles, are part of the nationwide day of demonstrations, aimed at pushing back against the Trump administration’s spending cuts and mass layoffs of federal workers, which protesters say are threatening essential public services and social safety nets.

More than 100 protests and marches, dubbed “Hands Off!” are planned across California on Saturday, April 5, including in Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Ana, San Bernardino and San Clemente. Over 200 organizations, including the ACLU, Greenpeace, League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Working Families Power, are listed as partners on the Hands Off! website.

More than 1,500 people had already RSVP’d for Santa Ana’s protest as of Thursday morning, April 3. But Stephanie Wade, one of the key organizers of that demonstration and a member of the Lavender Democrats of Orange County, a group that supports LGBTQ+ policies, said she expects that number of protesters could grow as high as 3,000 come Saturday to include those who did not RSVP.

Wade said the focus of the protest will be on what she sees as a deliberate erosion of legal rights under the Trump administration.

“None of what the Trump administration is doing is legal,” Wade said. “And I think Americans have been basically asleep.”

In addition to opposition to the White House’s economic policies, Wade, a veteran, said veterans’ benefits have become a key issue for her. She is particularly concerned about cuts to veterans’ services.

The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to eliminate more than 80,000 jobs, aiming to reduce its workforce to fewer than 400,000 employees, according to the Associated Press, and has already let go of more than 2,000 employees.

“Veterans make up a huge portion of the federal workforce … the cuts to these services are deeply concerning for them,” said Wade, adding that she has a serious heart condition and other ailments and has been hospitalized five times in the past 18 months. “There’s no way I could have afforded to pay co-payments on private insurance, and so the VA made me whole.”

Wade said that Lavender Democrats, along with progressive group WAVE and super PAC Active America, are the primary sponsors of the Santa Ana event at Sasscer Park, securing a $4 million insurance policy and paying a $2,000 permit fee to make it happen.

Hunter Dunn, an organizer for the downtown Los Angeles protest and a spokesperson for 50501 SoCal, one of the groups behind the Hands Off! protests, said the goal of the demonstrations is for protesters to show the world they feel that the American people are not being properly represented by their government.

“Americans are being attacked on so many different fronts right now, whether it’s women’s rights, trans rights, minority rights, whether it’s economic protections, whether it’s the price of the dang eggs,” he said.

The protest in downtown Los Angeles, which Dunn predicted to draw around 7,000 people, will end at L.A. City Hall and feature a number of speakers, including actress Jodie Sweetin, comedian Francesa Fiorentini and former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, who was recently arrested at a Huntington Beach City Council meeting after protesting a proposed plaque at the Central Library with references to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Some progressive organizations say they’ve seen surges in their group’s membership following the November election and Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Once Trump was elected, it absolutely exploded,” said Kim Anderson, co-president of the Democratic Women of South Orange County, which has a demonstration planned in front of the old Kirkorian Theater in San Clemente on Saturday. “This year, we currently have 900 members.”

Anderson said at the end of last year, the club had 800 registered members, the highest it’s ever had. Typically, she said, the membership hovers around 550.

The San Clemente protest will also take aim at Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, who has become a key adviser to Trump and is spearheading efforts to shrink the federal workforce and weed out programs the administration considers wasteful.

“Our goal is to be visible in how upset and angry and distraught we are about what Trump and Musk are doing,” she said. “These policies are highly damaging to the bulk of Americans.”

Will O’Neill, chair of the Republican Party of Orange County, called the protests misguided.

“Rather than celebrating a historically secure border and significant reductions in government fraud and abuse, far-left groups regularly rally to call people Nazis and attack electric vehicles,” O’Neill said, referencing the recent spate of attacks on Tesla dealerships, including setting vehicles on fire. “I expect more of the same this weekend, though hopefully the EV attacks will only be verbal this time.”

Matt Lesenyie, who teaches political science and voter behavior at Cal State Long Beach, said a potential ripple effect of such demonstrations is that they “connect voters who are highly motivated and informed.”

“These connections can form the backbone of the next political movement, which can lean on this network of engaged citizens,” he said.

While it’s too early to predict the impact these protests might have on the 2026 midterm elections, Lesenyie said the growing number of rallies still poses a challenge to those in power in Washington.

“When we think about what motivates people to get involved, the threat of loss typically outweighs the possibility for gains. The protest is a clear indication of that divide; people are losing their jobs, legal protections, libraries are being shuttered, the list goes on. Those provocations will produce energy for change, motivated voters,” he said.

Lesenyie said that a strong turnout could push Republican lawmakers and even Trump to “temper their positions” on Musk’s actions.