Sara McNeil said she felt overwhelmed.
The Warner resident, standing in front of the New Hampshire State House, was “way past the point” of worrying only about the Trump administration’s impact on the issues that are most important to her: education and reproductive rights.
“It’s everything,” McNeil said. “It’s the environment … He’s going after the food pantries, USAID, things that are just humanity.”
McNeil joined a sea of protesters that covered the State House lawn and spilled out onto Main Street in Concord on Saturday as hundreds of people from across the state rallied against President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and cuts to federal spending, programs and jobs.
This was at least the sixth protest in Concord since Trump took office less than three months ago and was the largest by far, with organizers estimating that more than 2,000 people attended. Saturday’s was one of many demonstrations to take place across New Hampshire and the country, set up by an organization called 50501 – 50 Protests, 50 States, 1 Movement.
Kathy Grondine, a Litchfield resident, said she came to the capital city to protest because of Trump’s cuts to things like medical research and children’s services.
“The whole country is just making me very sad right now,” Grondine said, “and so I wanted to speak up around how I feel the Constitution is not being followed right now, and nobody’s stepping up.”
Grondine, an administrator for the state’s Division for Children, Youth and Families who protested in her personal capacity. She’s concerned about Medicare and Medicaid – especially for her sister, who has cancer.
“I worry about people who need it for treatment,” Grondine said. “I have a number of people in my life who have cancer, and that really bothers me.”
Several people also said they’re upset about the tariffs recently placed on dozens of countries, which led to a steep drop in the stock market in the days prior to the protest.
“It’s affecting everybody, I know. because I hang out with people who are the same age, who are retirement age,” said Chris Halvorson, a Peterborough resident. “We’re living off essentially what is the stock market.”
Halvorson said she chose not to look at the numbers in her retirement account yet because “I didn’t want to be depressed.”
Rally-goers also called on their members of Congress to take action. Andrew Peyton, a 22-year-old from Manchester, stood near Main Street, holding up a sign that encouraged New Hampshire’s senators and representatives to “fight back.” He said he doesn’t like that U.S. senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan have voted to confirm Trump’s cabinet members, whom he views as “unqualified” to lead the country. Both Shaheen and Hassan voted in favor of 10 Trump nominees and against 12.
“I think that voting for those and kind of supporting anything in the administration is a dereliction of duty,” Peyton said. “I want to see just more activism, more obstruction … I would like to see a lot more from them in terms of obstructing the current agenda, as well as just coming up with solutions to the problems that they’re currently facing.”
Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.
