OAKLAND — A hand-crafted sign outside the downtown Social Security Administration office mimicked a street sign, depicting the intersection of “Prosecute” and “Trump.” The chants came from about 50 people surrounding it, holding furious signs aimed at President Donald Trump and Elon Musk: “Hands off! Hands off! Hands off!”

In downtown Concord, several hundred carried signs — “There are more protesters here than there are billionaires on Earth,” read one — while yelling, “Hey ho, Trump must go.” At Santana Row in San Jose, a sign taped to a cardboard figure of Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, read: “Looter in Chief.”

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Similar sights and chants have appeared across the nation in demonstrations last month and on May 1. The protests against Trump and Musk have carried one central theme: Leave the Social Security system alone.

“You know,” protester Ernest Johnson, a longtime postal worker, said as he walked in Oakland, “there are just some things you shouldn’t even have a thought to do. This is one of those things. My Social Security is my Social Security.”

“I’ll tell you something else,” he said after a pause. “I worked all my life for it.”

Now, Trump and Musk, in their efforts to upend federal spending, provide tax cuts for the wealthy and fund mass deportations, have put the 90-year-old system in their sights.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, establishing a social insurance program as a federal safety net for elderly, unemployed and other disadvantaged Americans. The program — which has been more successful than any other at lifting people out of poverty, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities — has not been amended in any major way since 1983.

Nearly all wage earners pay into the system throughout their working lives on the promise of monthly checks at retirement. According to the agency, nearly 69 million Americans receive benefits, which are expected to total about $1.6 trillion this year.

“I share their outrage,” U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Solano, said of the protesters. “The total lack of empathy, the lack of basic human care that goes into this thought process, shows a portrait of those who don’t have any concern at all for how many people rely on Social Security. Many use it as their only source of income. People need it for any number of reasons. You can see that any thought to what happens or care for what happens to them is just not there.”

Garamendi has co-sponsored the Social Security 2100 Act and introduced the Fair Cost of Living Adjustment for Seniors Act to ease rising costs facing the system. Neither has become a law; both seek to address the long-term challenges the Social Security system faces — without any change, the system will face a shortfall equivalent to 25 percent of its total benefits paid out beginning in 2033.

The changes Trump and Musk have already tried to initiate through executive order — including allowing DOGE unfettered access to sensitive data on millions of Americans — have so far largely been challenged in court through lawsuits that contend the “nearly unlimited access” violates privacy laws and creates massive information security risks. On Friday, Trump asked the Supreme Court to give Musk’s agency access to the sensitive data of millions of Americans.

DOGE also announced plans to effectively end phone service for the 9.5 million people who make claims each year by phone, as well as closing 47 field offices. The Trump administration eventually changed course on those proposals.

Musk told conservative talk show host Joe Rogan that the Social Security system was “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” and Fox Business host Larry Kudlow said that when it came to wasteful government spending, the system was “the big one to eliminate.”

Garamendi countered that narrative, saying: “The DOGE boys are clearly honing in on it. They’ve attempted to reduce the number of employees. They’ve proposed an older age at which you can collect, an older age at which you can take early retirement. It’s all on the table for them.”

That may mean the social safety net could eventually close for many Americans. Garamendi said the endgame for those opposed to the basic concept of the program is to create enough chaos within the system for Americans to lose their faith in it.

Seniors in the region already are limited in their choices when it comes to getting help from the agency. In the East Bay, 20 Social Security offices cover an area running from Antioch to Richmond to Berkeley to Livermore. Ten offices serve Santa Clara County. San Mateo County has one.

To hear some recipients tell it, the system already lacks efficiency.

Jose Ruiz, a 71-year-old resident of San Jose, said he recently had to make three visits to the downtown office because the check he received had his name misspelled. As a result, he couldn’t cash it.

“The line is sometimes long, but that’s normal,” Ruiz said.

Ricardo Alexander Duram, who was assisting his mother at the same office, said she was an immigrant from El Salvador and had temporarily protected status, thus making her benefits difficult and complicated to renew annually.

“We always go through stuff like this,” he said. “It’s every year, and it would be nice if this department got some training.”

In Antioch, where customers stood in 80-degree heat one day or waited in their cars because each of the approximately 60 seats in the office was occupied, 67-year-old James Harris said he was going on his third hour of waiting.

“It’s hard to see how they can make it any more difficult than it already seems to be,” he said. “It makes you wonder whether Musk or Trump have even seen the inside of one of these places.”

Garamendi said one of the motivations behind the Social Security 2100 Act that he and Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut, were trying to lead into law is to help Americans keep their faith in the Social Security system, even as changes take place. Garamendi said the reforms in the act would keep enough money in the system “for the next 50 years.”

“I just hope it’s there,” 40-year-old Wendy Fischer said of her own Social Security while she waited outside the Richmond office last month. “I think that’s really the biggest concern we all have. Is it gonna be there for me? You hear what Musk and these other people say, and it really makes you wonder.”

Staff writer Caelyn Pender contributed to this report.