Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders attracted a record-breaking crowd at his Los Angeles rally on Saturday, featuring musical performances by Joan Baez and Neil Young, who energized the audience with a call to “take America back” as the crowd gathered in support.

Sanders’s Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go from Here tour, which has been attracting massive crowds across the country, teamed up with progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to set a record in Tempe, Arizona, for the largest political rally in the state’s history just three weeks ago.

Previously, in Denver, Colorado, more than 34,000 people turned out—marking a career-high crowd for the 83-year-old Sanders—while Saturday’s rally in Los Angeles broke that record, with at least 36,000 supporters filling a downtown park.

Ocasio-Cortez, 35, speaking to the crowd at Gloria Molina Grand Park, warned that power, greed, and corruption are taking over the country like never before while calling out several California lawmakers, including Bakersfield representative David Valadao and Orange County’s representative Young Kim, for backing recent Trump policies.

“We are living in a moment where the Republican party to a large degree has become a cult of the individual, obeying Trump’s every wish,” the Senator told the crowds, adding that the Trump administration is now “plotting how they can give $1.1tn in tax breaks to the rich."

The politician’s 40-minute critique of the administration, highlighting the influence of billionaires and big money in US politics, has gained urgency in the second Trump term as Elon Musk moves to dismantle parts of the federal government and threaten programs like Social Security and Medicare. 

Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, launched the tour in late February to channel Democrat voter frustration as party leaders struggled to respond to Trump’s swift power grabs, holding events in cities like Denver and Phoenix while targeting GOP-held districts that backed Biden in 2020 as Democrats look toward 2026.

‘Hands off!’ protests sweep US against Trump, Musk

On a related note, demonstrators filled streets across the United States on April 6 in a sweeping display of dissent against the Trump administration, staging more than 1,300 rallies under the banner “Hands Off!”

While protesters were animated by a wide range of grievances—cuts to education, threats to reproductive rights, fears over veterans’ benefits—the unified message was one of resistance to what many described as an authoritarian shift intensified by the influence of billionaire Elon Musk in federal affairs.

Participants carried signs such as “Hands off public schools,” “Hands off our unions,” “Hands off our freedoms,” and “Hands off our Constitution."

In Portland, Oregon, thousands marched against what organisers called an “illegal, billionaire power grab.” In Washington, D.C., demonstrators waved placards near the Washington Monument, demanding protection for the press, social security, and healthcare.

These events followed months of mounting unrest over mass federal layoffs, intensified immigration raids, and Musk’s growing role in public policy and infrastructure—particularly his controversial contracts with federal agencies.

In Boston, demonstrators condemned research funding cuts and the arrest of Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk by plainclothes federal agents. Meanwhile, in Sylva, North Carolina, more than 300 people turned out to decry reductions in national park services, education funding, and veterans’ care.