Hundreds gather outside of Nevada Capitol to protest Trump admin
CARSON CITY — For Ray Bacasegua, protesting the United States government is nothing new.
The Reno resident and member of the Indigenous Yaqui tribe has fought in the American Indian Movement for decades. On a windy but bright Wednesday afternoon outside of the Nevada Capitol Building, he joined hundreds of others in a protest against the Trump administration.
“For my whole life we’ve made some tremendous progress, and now it feels like we’re stepping backwards, not just for Natives but for all people,” said Bacasegua, who wore American Indian Movement pins and carried a ceremonial drum.
A few hundred protesters gathered outside of the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon as part of a larger, nationwide rebuke on the Trump administration.
Protesters from around Northern Nevada spoke against recent actions taken by the new administration, such as its deportation policies and its pulling workers off the job from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides humanitarian aid.
Lining North Carson Street in front of the sandstone and marble Nevada Capitol Building, people carried signs saying “Make Orwell fiction again,” “Gaza is not for sale” and “Protect the Constitution.” They chanted “hey, hey, ho, ho, Elon Musk has got to go” and “fight for your rights,” as passing cars honked. They waved upside down American flags, as well as pride and Palestinian flags.
Jay Timmons, a Carson City resident at the protest, said there’s “a lot of stuff going down that we did not ask for.” He expressed concerns about the role Musk, a billionaire and tech owner who has joined the Trump administration in his role in the Department of Government Efficiency, has in the federal government.
“An unelected bureaucrat billionaire being given free reign to just do whatever he wants with no consequences,” said Timmons, who identifies as a nonaffiliated voter.
An 84-year-old Gardnerville resident named Mary Hamilton held a sign that said USAID on one side and DEI on the other. She brought up concerns about Trump’s deportation programs and his recent calls against transgender people, which she said is “just cruel.”
Drew Aschenbrener, a Dayton resident who works in Carson City, said there needs to be pushback with what’s going on in the White House.
“It feels tragic that so much of the current energy is focused on such negative attention to such a small population,” he said, mentioning the LGBTQ community and undocumented immigrants.
In response to the protests in both Carson City as well as Las Vegas, Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald said the recent actions the president has taken “was no surprise.”
“This is what he ran on,” McDonald said. “The American people overwhelmingly elected him. … The policies aren’t welcome by the far left of the Democrat party, and we’re seeing them scream about it now.”
Trump is putting America first and he is doing “everything he said he was going to do,” the chairman said. “He came in and went right to work on day one.”
Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.
