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When Jesse Ugard, a Vietnam War worker, joined the Veterans Affairs Bureau on Friday, he noticed the difference.
“People are already gone,” said Ugard, 74, who relies on the VA for his health care, of the VA employee. “They were told they were going to try to provide services, but that would take more time.”
Ugard took him on the streets Saturday with hundreds of others in Westwood as President Trump protests to significantly cut the size of the federal government, including drastic staff cuts in Virginia and other agencies.
It “is not just VA, there are other programs that are desperately needed,” Ugarde said. “There’s no reason to do this… I fought for this country, so I’ll fight again.”
Angelenos and residents across Southern California have been marching and rallies outside the Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood, one of Los Angeles’ biggest protests since Trump took office almost two months ago on Saturday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Protesters marched towards the federal construction of Wilshire Boulevard around noon, opposing government cuts and what they described as a clear constitutional violation.
“We’re here. We’re not going to let Trump go, so we’re not going to let Elon Musk, his co-president, or anyone else, defeat the U.S. Constitution,” Sen. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) told the crowd.
Musk’s advisory team, which he calls the Government Efficiency (Doge Bureau), fired thousands of government workers, frozen billions of dollars in federal spending, and ordered the near-complete shutdown of several federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Education.
Musk, a billionaire known for his “fast movement and broken” approach with his company, described futile government spending as an urgent and existential threat in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.
“The country is bankrupt,” he said. “If we don’t do anything about it, the American ships will sink.”
But protesters, organized primarily by the Network of Democracy Behavior, a pro-democracy organization founded last year, said the Chopping Bloc programme is far from waste.
Angelenos and residents across Southern California attend a rally outside the Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood on Saturday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Sean Law Bowman, 67, spent 15 years as a public school teacher before moving to management.
“There’s no reason, there’s no excuse,” she said of Trump’s plan to close the Department of Education. “I was a special administrator. They are federal funds. I have a huge amount of kids that need special help. All that money is gone. It’s just evil.”
Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the dismantling of Trump and Musk’s USAID was likely unconstitutional, arguing that the cuts were incompatible with Congressional will.
A federal judge also found that administration fire of probation employees would not follow the proper layoff procedures and that the U.S. Personnel Management had no authority to order them to be fired.
The administration defeated these verdicts, and Vice President JD Vance posted to X that “we are not permitted to control the legitimate power of enforcement.”
Angelenos and residents across Southern California are taking part in a peaceful march and rally outside the Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood on Saturday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Many protesters opposed the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist. A citizen of Algeria, Halil is held in immigration detention despite being a green cardholder with no criminal history.
Trump accused Halil of supporting Hamas without providing evidence immediately. Hamas considers it to be a “foreign terrorist organization.”
For many, demos were a way to take the problem into their own hands.
“For all those who say protests aren’t important… we wouldn’t have the civil rights we had in the ’60s without protest,” Elizabeth Zietema, 28, said.
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