Regional Overview
United States & Canada
May 2025
Posted: 9 May 2025
In this Regional Overview covering April 2025:
Demonstration trends
This section provides key figures on demonstration events, which includes incidents categorized as 'Protests,' and 'Violent demonstrations' as recorded by ACLED. For more information on event and sub-event types, see the ACLED Codebook
United States
2,220 demonstration events
12% increase
compared to the same period last month
Canada
116 demonstration events
31% decrease
compared to the same period last month
United States: A surge in nationwide “Hands Off” protests leads to the highest demonstration activity in a single day
On 5 April, nationwide demonstrations mobilized under the “Hands Off” banner to oppose the Trump administration led to the highest single day of demonstrations since ACLED began recording United States data in 2020. These demonstrations, many of which were organized by Indivisible, the 50501 movement, and other grassroots organizations, expressed opposition to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its cuts to federal agencies and services, as well as President Donald Trump’s policies on migration, access to abortion, and climate, along with a litany of other progressive causes. Additional Hands Off demonstrations took place during the rest of the month, totaling more than 1,100 protests across all US states. These demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful and faced very few instances of counter-mobilizing in support of Trump or Musk.
Though previous ACLED analysis has noted that anti-Musk sentiment in demonstrations had outpaced anti-Trump sentiment in previous months, anti-Trump sentiment surged during April to roughly equal anti-Musk sentiment. This shift in demonstration sentiment was also reflected in Trump’s declining approval ratings. Polling at the end of April, which marked the 100th day of the Trump presidency, found that his approval rating of 41% was the lowest for any newly elected president going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.1Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy, “CNN Poll: Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades,” CNN, 27 April 2025
Radical group trends
This section provides key figures on far-right and white nationalist groups.
Far-right groups:
ACLED uses this term to refer to a variety of actors, from 'traditional' militias to militant street movements. Though they are also analyzed separately, this figure also accounts for white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups.
White nationalists:
ACLED uses this term to refer to groups that openly describe themselves as white nationalist, white supremacist, or neo-Nazi.
63
events, of which 50 involve white nationalist groups
12
radical groups active, of which 5 are white nationalist
Radical groups were most active in North Carolina, Utah and Massachusetts
White nationalist groups were most active in Arizona
Group Spotlight: Ohio Nationalist Network
On 3 April, in a social media post riddled with antisemitic rhetoric, the Ohio Active Club announced it was rebranding as the Ohio Nationalist Network, expanding its goals in a “much more broad struggle” beyond martial arts training, including protest and community engagement.2Observed by the author through monitoring the social media channels of extremist groups. ACLED monitors the online presence of numerous extremist groups as sources of information on their activity and receives information from local partners who specialize in tracking extremist activity (for more, see the US methodology articles on the ACLED Knowledge Base). Though it did not explicitly distance itself from other Active Club chapters, the group’s subsequent posts suggested it was acting in closer collaboration with the National Organization for Vital Action (NOVA), a recently founded white nationalist group that emerged from the leadership of the National Justice Party.
The Active Clubs have been one of the most prolific and fastest-growing extremist networks in North America in the past several years. The clubs operate as a network of loosely organized neo-Nazi chapters operating primarily as “fight clubs” across the continent. The Active Club Network first started organizing chapters in the US in 2022 and has since been recorded in more than 200 events in 35 states. Before its rebrand, the Ohio Active Club chapter had been one of the largest and most active in the country, organizing frequent martial arts trainings and participating in antisemitic demonstrations alongside other network chapters. As a result, Ohio ranks fifth nationally for Active Club activity. The Ohio chapter’s rebrand reveals simmering strategic and ideological frustrations within the network, while its alignment with NOVA represents a significant expansion of a relatively new organization. Because NOVA has mainly participated in propagandistic efforts in the past, its alignment with a group trained in fighting represents a more militant capacity for the group.
See More
See the Codebook and the User Guide for an overview of ACLED’s core methodology. For additional documentation, check the Knowledge Base. Region-specific methodology briefs can be accessed below.
Links:
For additional resources and in-depth coverage of demonstration and political violence trends across the US, check our dedicated US Crisis Monitor.
More Regional Overviews
