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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Politics
Alan Yuhas

Women's marches protest Donald Trump on anniversary of inauguration – as it happened

Donald Trump, seen in the Rose Garden of the White House.
Donald Trump, seen in the Rose Garden of the White House. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Summary

We’re going to close our rolling coverage of the second Women’s March protests and the government shutdown with a summary of the day’s events.

  • Well over 120,000 people took to the streets of cities all across the United States on Saturday, to protest president Donald Trump and his agenda. The march was scheduled to mark the anniversary of Trump’s first tumultuous year in office, and happened to coincide with a government shutdown, itself the result of failed negotiations between the president and a Republican-controlled Congress.
  • Speakers exhorted women to run for office in in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere, and to maintain pressure on policy issues such as healthcare, reproductive rights and climate change. They also linked the movement to the #MeToo movement, encouraging women to stand together and speak out against sexual assault and harassment.
  • Protesters broke out their most creative signs, including one that read “You Know It’s Bad When a White Middle Aged Man Living In The Napa Valley Is Marching” and another reading “I’ve Seen Better Cabinets At Ikea”.
  • In Los Angeles, speakers linked the issues of immigration, sexual assault and gender equality, launching into an Obama-era chant of “si se puede”. Among the speakers was Viola Davis, who said: “Every single day your job as an American citizen is not just to fight for your rights, it’s to fight for the right of every individual that is taking a breath, whose heart is pumping and breaking on this earth.”
  • Trump tweeted: “a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!”
  • Leaders in Congress bickered and tried to blame each other for the shutdown, with no resolution in sight between various factions, including hardline anti-immigration advisers in the White House. By early evening, Republicans in the House were voting on whether a chart there broke the rules. The president canceled plans to go to a party in south Florida, meant to celebrate his first year in office, and remained in Washington DC.

Updated

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An adviser to New York mayor Bill de Blasio has one of the first city estimates for crowd sizes on Manhattan. A few people came out.

Marches on the east coast are winding down in a mood of solidarity and renewed purpose to oppose Donald Trump’s agenda, which is currently paralyzed in Washington DC, where Congress and the White House can’t agree on how to fund the government.

The funding shutdown is the first in four years, and the first in American history to occur when one party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress spent most of Saturday flinging blame at each other for the shutdown, which has already furloughed hundreds of thousands of government workers.

Democratic senator Chuck Schumer said trying to talk to the president was like “negotiating with jello”. Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell said that Schumer had led the charge “plunging our country into this 100% avoidable mess”. Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi said Congress needed find long-term solutions for programs on children’s healthcare and young undocumented people. Republican representative Paul Ryan said Democrats were holding the country “hostage” to these demands.

According to reporters on the Capitol, including the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs, backroom deliberations are not going much better. The White House has at least two hardline voices on immigration, chief of staff John Kelly and adviser Stephen Miller, who are pressing for funding for a border wall and limits to protecting young immigrants. Republicans need to wrangle fiscal conservatives and anti-immigration hawks such as Tom Cotton, who tried to torpedo a bipartisan plan last week. With a slim majority in the Senate, they also need to win over at least a faction of Democrats to reach 60 votes necessary for a spending bill.

If the Senate can somehow manage these negotiations with some hope of Trump’s signature, they then have to count on Ryan to schedule a vote in the far more raucous and conservative House.

Through all of this, the president has canceled plans to go to his south Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he had intended to have a party celebrating the anniversary of his inauguration.

Signs of protest

Creative signage from around the country.

Updated

In Los Angeles, Carla Green reports that the bulk of the protesters have now gathered across the street from city hall, which has been fenced off for the occasion.

There are speakers and performers on a giant stage, and lines of food trucks and portapotties nearby.

About half a mile further south, Reggie Washington stands at the intersection of 7th and Broadway with a cardboard sign excoriating Trump, and asking for “help”.

Washington is one of an estimated 58,000 people who are homeless in Los Angeles county. He grew up here - in Watts - but he’s been living in a tent downtown for the past couple months.
Washington said he marched in the Women’s March last year. This year, in the hour he’d been out asking for money, nobody had even stopped to talk to him.
“I say please, but they walk right by like they don’t even see you,” he said

Updated

Sarah Betancourt is reporting from the rally at Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston.

“Any attempt to dismantle Roe v Wade is unconstitutional,” said Kayla Briere, an aide to Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty (CT-05). Briere was one of two women dressed as Handmaids at the Boston Womens’ March.

Fellow handmaid Cindy Sershen is a nurse practioner in Cambridge. She told the Guardian, “I could never deny a patient the right to speak for their own body.” Briere said they are wearing outfits reminiscent of the Margaret Atwood bestseller “Handmaid’s Tale,” because, “”it represents women’s reproductive rights.” They cited recent Texas abortion restrictions as reasons for why the issue is important.

Cambridge.
Cindy Sershen, 37 of Cambridge (left) and Kayla Briere, 26 of Connecticut at the Boston Womens’ March. Photograph: Sarah Betancourt

Sarah Betancourt is reporting from the rally at Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston.

Holding signs with messages varying from “How to Grab a Pussy,” to “We R Still Here,” to “Little girls with dreams become women with vision,” thousands flocked to Cambridge Common near Harvard Square for the Boston-area Womens’ March.

High school senior Prachi Jhawar, 17, said she was out there so her voice can be heard, even if she can’t vote yet.

Her sign (Hey Trump, Liberty and Justice for All,” included a long list of groups, like DREAMers, Muslims, and refugees. A daughter of Indian immigrants, Jhawar is looking forward to school at American University next fall.

“I want to be a politician one day,” she said. “These aren’t partisan issues. They are human rights issues,” she said, adding that she is a part of a human rights club that raised money for immigrant rights attorneys.

Cambridge.
Cambridge. Photograph: Sarah Betancourt

More from Carla Green, reporting from the march in Los Angeles.

There’s lots of free swag and food to be had at the protest if you know where to find it. There’s a company is handing out granola bars taped to promotional cards, there are people handing out donut holes with the slogan “donut holes not shitholes”, and Vice Media’s VICELAND has made branded bandanas and buttons.

One woman sporting a VICELAND bandana, Jazmin, said she liked the channel’s “edgy content” and had even done some marketing work for them, but hadn’t watched much of their programming.

Jazmin hadn’t heard about the allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and sexism lodged against Vice Media in a recent New York Times exposé. But she wasn’t surprised.

“It’s the whole industry,” she said.

Q’orianka Kilcher, Francesca Eastwood and Frances Fisher.
Q’orianka Kilcher, Francesca Eastwood and Frances Fisher. Photograph: Broadimage/REX/Shutterstock

In Los Angeles, Carla Green has spoken with marchers moving into downtown Los Angeles, where a number of celebrities, including Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Viola Davis, are in attendance.

Thousands of protesters have descended into downtown Los Angeles, sometimes marching shoulder to shoulder across four-lane streets.

Kathy Sovich, 61, had menstrual pads stuck to her head with the message “I will not go quietly back to the 50’s” in red ink.

She was visiting from Colorado, and had missed the march last year. “But I’ve always hated Trump,” she said. Another protester nearby chimed in: “amen!”

Sovich said she couldn’t remember the last protest she went to, or what, exactly, it was for. “Something pro-environment,” she said.

She’s marching today because she doesn’t trust Trump, she said.

“He doesn’t speak the truth, he doesn’t care about the American people, and his ideas are for the benefit of large corporations and himself,” she said. “I don’t like anything about him except that he doesn’t drink alcohol.”

Updated

Viola Davis: 'Americans must fight for each other'

Actor Viola Davis has just delivered a speech to marchers in Los Angeles, tying together the anti-Trump protests to the Me Too movement that has given women courage to speak out about sexual assault and harassment inflicted by powerful men.

Davis says that she wants Americans to remember “the women who are faceless, who don’t have the money, and don’t have the constitution, and don’t have the confidence. And don’t have the images in our media that give them a sense of self-worth to break the silence, a silence that s rooted in the shame of assault, in the stigma of assault.”

She says these women are “yearning to breathe free, to breathe free”.

“Every single day your job as an American citizen is not just to fight for your rights, it’s to fight for the right of every individual that is taking a breath, whose heart is pumping and breaking on this earth.”

Updated

Marches are on the move in cities on both coasts and everywhere in between, the AP reports.

Oklahoma City protesters are chanting “We need a leader, not a creepy tweeter!” with one woman donning a T-shirt with the likeness of social justice icon Woody Guthrie who wrote “This Land Is Your Land.”

Members of the group Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women of Seattle are burning sage and chanting in front of Seattle’s rainy march.

In Richmond, Virginia, the crowd burst into cheers when a woman ran down the middle of the street carrying a pink flag with the word “Resist.”

Several hundred people have gathered in Palm Beach, Florida, carrying anti-Donald Trump signs as they prepare to march near the president’s Mar-a-Lago home on Florida’s east coast.

A group of women wearing red cloaks and white hats like the characters in the book and TV show “The Handmaid’s Tale” marched in formation Saturday, their heads bowed.

Cincinnati.
Cincinnati. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
Boston.
Boston. Photograph: Cj Gunther/EPA

Two women dressed as handmaids – from the novel and TV series A Handmaid’s Tale, about a misogynistic dystopian America – appear in Philadelphia.

They turned out in south Florida, too, near the president’s private resort, Mar-a-Lago. He has called off his plans to travel there this weekend due to the failure by the White House and Congress to avert a government shutdown.

In Houston, hundreds have marched in more traditional wear (and plenty of pink hats).

Lauren Gambino is reporting from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where a few people have ventured onto the semi-frozen reflecting pool.

Photos from around the US, starting in Washington.

Protesters on the mall.
Protesters on the mall. Photograph: Networ/Sipa USA/REX/Shutterstock

… New York …

Marchers on Central Park West.
Marchers on Central Park West. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA

… Los Angeles …

Women at the rally in Los Angeles.
Women at the rally in Los Angeles. Photograph: Broadimage/REX/Shutterstock

… and Chicago.

Demostraters in Chicago
Demonstrators in Chicago Photograph: Jim Young/AFP/Getty Images

Trump: 'a great day for all women to march'

The president has commented on the protests against him.

Updated

Los Angeles: community and 'si se puede'

Carla Green is with the march in Los Angeles, where the streets are awash in pink hats and homemade signs.

When protesters first arrive at the Women’s March in downtown LA, they’re greeted by shouting vendors selling merchandise - buttons and pink “pussy hats” and branded scarfs. By midday, Spanish chants of “si se puede” – “yes we can” – were moving through the crowds.

One vendor, Walter Lopez, said he woke up at 3 AM to get here from Redondo Beach.

He’s on unpaid leave from his work as a warehouse supervisor, and found a listing on Craigslist offering to provide all the materials and a percentage of the profits. He’s working at bartender gig tonight.

Lopez wasn’t at the march last year, and almost didn’t come this year - it was cold when he woke up, he says. But he’s glad he came.

“I’m impressed by how many people showed up,” he said. “And I’m all about women; people; human beings. It’s a good thing I woke up.”

A couple thousand people are milling about at the starting point for the march, but it’s nothing like the 750,000-person crowd that throttled downtown Los Angeles this time last year - at least, not yet.

Sarah Park, 26, was at last year’s march - and has noticed the difference.

“There’s more of a community feel - but there are also way less people,” she says, laughing.

She came, in part, to protest the Trump administration’s push to repeal DACA, which would affect one of her best friends. “That’s why I brought her with me today,” Park said. Park feels less enraged than she did last year, but says Trump is “still doing shithole work”.

Protesters in downtown Los Angeles.
Protesters in downtown Los Angeles. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Updated

Adam Gabbatt is with the march through downtown Manhattan, talking with protesters against the Trump administration.

Thousands of people are now marching through Manhattan. The main streets on the west and south of Central Park have been closed off and the roads are a sea of signs and pink hats.

The march started just after 1pm, led by a group of people in electric wheelchairs. Behind them the beat of drums is echoing off the skyscrapers.

“Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” is being chanted with gusto.

Blythe Nobleman, a 56-year-old university professor from Hoboken, New Jersey, is among the marchers. Like many people here, Nobleman’s homemade sign has been inspired by Trump’s recent “shithole” comments.

“I don’t think he’s a good human being,” Nobleman said. “And I’m very open minded so it takes a lot for me to reach that conclusion.”

Nobleman didn’t march last year - something she said she deeply regrets - but she felt compelled to be here today.

“I’m enraged about daca. I have taught hundreds of daca students over the years. They grew up here like anyone else - they are Americans. They didn’t just slither over the border to take up illegal residence here.”

Over the sound of the vehement drumming - provided 40 women from Batala NYC, a Brazilian-inspired percussion ensemble - Nobleman said : “We actually to be very affirmative about voting and participating in governments.

“The midterms are a start but I think it’s going to be years now before we can remedy all of the problems caused by this administration.”

Tens of thousands of women are in the streets of Philadelphia, Washington DC and Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Denver.

Congress appears to be at a complete standstill over the shutdown. Ben Jacobs is at the Capitol, where Democratic leader recently compared talks to “negotiating with jello” and then gave a press conference.

“It’s next to impossible to reach a deal with president because he can’t stick to the terms, I found this out, Leader McConnell found this out, Speaker Ryan has found this out,” Schumer told reporters.

He then compared the president and Republican leaders in Congress to Abbott and Costello, the slapstick comedy duo from the 1940s.

In Washington DC, Lauren Gambino is reporting from the mall, where reporters have gathered round the semi-frozen reflecting pool.

And near where female scientists are gathering as a cohort of the larger protest.

Tens of thousands are marching in New York, starting on the western side of Central Park and heading downtown.

Signs and a Hillary Clinton cutout in New York.
Signs and a Hillary Clinton cutout in New York. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
The march in New York.
The march in New York. Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images
Marchers in Manhattan.
Marchers in Manhattan. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
The view on the western side of Central Park.
The view on the western side of Central Park. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

The Washington Mall, stretching from the obelisk to the Lincoln Memorial, has thousands of women, many wearing pink hats, ready to march.

New York is a mirror image on the street, framed by canyons of buildings down Broadway and the avenues.

Deadlock in DC

As Republican and Democratic leaders blame each other for the government shutdown, with mass protests against the Trump administration right outside their door, the White House makes a statement.

“The president will not negotiate on immigration reform until Democrats stop playing games and reopen the government,”press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, met with Trump on Friday. On Saturday, he gave a riposte from the Senate floor:

People participate in the second annual Women’s March in Washington, U.S. January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron Bernstein
People participate in the second annual Women’s March in Washington Photograph: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters

Updated

There is none of the mutual acrimony among protesters on the streets of major American cities. They’ve reserved it for the president, with chants that include:

“We want a leader not a creepy tweeter.”

“Whose shutdown? Trump shutdown.”

“My body, my choice.”

There are already tens of thousands in the streets of New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Los Angeles.

The Republican leader of the House, Paul Ryan, is now giving a speech from the floor of the chamber to denounce Democrats – a tit-for-tat reply to the blame that the minority party just threw at the majority party’s feet.

Ryan quotes several Democrats at length, including their Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, who in 2013 criticized Republicans for causing the last government shutdown.

“You shouldn’t hold millions of people hostage,” Ryan quotes Schumer. “That’s what the other side is doing, that’s what wrong, and we can’t give into that.”

He moves into his own speech. “As we speak, furlough notices are going to thousands of federal employees,” Ryan says. “Half of the defense department’s civilian workforce has been furloughed.

“All of this, all of this is completely unnecessary. But Senate democrats believe none of it is too high a price to pay for appeasing their political base.”

Ryan insists that Republicans “have been and remain willing to work together in good faith on immigration.” Last week, during a meeting at the White House, the president dashed hopes for a bipartisan plan to protect undocumented young people. Democrats have opposed funding for a border wall but said they would be open to border security measures.

“There is no good reason for seven democrats to keep willfully forcing a shutdown on this country,” Ryan says. “Stop holding our troops and children’s health insurance hostage.”

The children’s health program (Chip) ran out of money on 30 September 2017, since when the Republican-controlled Congress has declined to renew funding.

“Come to your senses, do the right thing, let this government open back up,” Ryan concludes.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, center.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, center. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Updated

Adam Gabbatt is talking with protesters in New York City, where thousands are gathering on the Upper West Side, at 71st Street and Columbus Avenue, before marching downtown.

The streets on the west side of Central Park are packed with thousands of people as the women’s march prepares to take place.

One of the closest subway stations to the start of the march is at Columbus Circle - which happens to be right by Trump International Hotel and Tower.

Lots of people are posing for pictures in front of the Trump sign,including Deborah Paray and Marteen Dinzes, both from New Jersey.

They’ve fashioned a sign depicting Donald Trump with a large hole for a mouth.

“A lot of shit comes out of that hole,” Dinzes said.

Both women were at the march in New York City last year - Dinzes is wearing a pin commemorating that event - but they said today’s event is more than just an anti-Trump demonstration.

“Along with this march it’s also about voting. We’ve got to make sure as many people are registered as possible,” Paray said.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to march here from 12.30pm. They won’t be heading past Trump’s former/future home of Trump Tower, but it will be pretty close - close enough for the president to take notice when he sees this on tv.

Updated

Democrats are giving a press conference on the current state of shutdown talks, and have denounced Republicans in control of the White House and Congress.

“They have proven that they are incapable of the most basic functions of government such as keeping the lights on,” says Representative Linda Sanchez. “How can we trust them to face the many challenges our country faces?”

Then the minority leader in the House, representative Nancy Pelosi, says that Democrats are frustrated with the repeated short term “continuing resolutions” that do not provide long-term solutions to programs, such as protections for undocumented young people or children’s healthcare.

“We are willing to go to a short-term CR if we are willing to come to a conclusion and an agreement on parity,” Pelosi says, primarily on the deferred deportation program (Daca) and more border security.

“It’s not only about defense it’s about transportation, it’s about education, it’s about all our needs.”

Another House leader, Steny Hoyer, says that Democrats have never wanted a shutdown but that “this incompetent leadership has not sent one appropriation bill to the president”.

Another Democrat echoes that point: “let’s not continue to lurch from one CR to the next.”

Pelosi alludes to a May tweet Trump wrote saying, “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”

“Happy anniversary Mr President, your wish came true,” Pelosi says. “You won the shutdown. The shutdown is all yours.”

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Updated

The marches begin in New York, Denver and Philadelphia.

While senators and representatives debate how to keep the federal government, hundreds of thousands of Americans are suddenly on furlough, without any idea of when they might get back to work or back to receiving a paycheck. Jamiles Lartey interviewed some of them.

Amad Ali joined the marines after 9/11, believing he would fight the terrorists who attacked the US. He wound up in Iraq instead, disillusioned, fighting in a “conjured-up” conflict.

“A lot of us didn’t make it back and a lot of us – like myself – didn’t come back the same,” he said on Friday. “So yes, feeling duped by the federal government is something that I can relate to.”

Ali is now an employee of the Social Security Administration, in Indiana. He remains disheartened by the way the government treats the people he works with: in this case, federal employees facing an unpaid furlough if the government shuts down.

“We do feel that we are used as pawns and bargaining chips in the overall political process,” said Ali, who is also executive vice-president of a local federal government workers union.

Sabrina is a 23-year veteran of the National Parks Service who works in Washington DC, which, with its proliferation of memorials, has the highest concentration of national parks in the country.

Sabrina has been sent home on furlough three times before. The last was in 2013.

“Financially it’s going to take a toll on me,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of savings. I just put a daughter through college.”

Federal employees are typically discouraged from discussing shutdowns. Sabrina asked that her identity be changed, to avoid any repercussions from doing so.

“All of us, we depend on that check,” she said. “A lot of these people are your middle class, and they’re check to check. Whenever we have shutdowns we feel like we’re always forgotten.”

Talks are not going well in Congress, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

Representative Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, told Cheney that a leading Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, was “close to a deal” with the Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell – and that it fell through after a call from the Republican leader of the House.

“They were close to a deal and then Ryan made a call and didn’t want anything on immigration,” Grijalva told Cheney.

Meanwhile, protesters are gathering on the mall for a march that will head toward the Capitol and the White House.

People participate in the Second Annual Women’s March in Washingto
People participate in the Second Annual Women’s March in Washingto Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

A year ago, Sarah Stankorb left her home in Cincinnati to join the women’s march on Washington. When she returned, talking about more activism with her friends, the topic of a run for city council arose. Her friends pointed at her, she writes for the Guardian.

Me? I felt uncomfortable with the idea of sweeping into a spotlight. I have spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder, which makes my voice shaky – not great for speaking in public. But in this time of uncertainty, I began to feel like I’d sleep better at night if I were more involved. “You should run,” women I respect told me. They convinced me.

Among people outside my home, it was the women who showed up with the most tenacity – hosting events, carrying campaign literature around in their purses and talking their neighbors into voting for me. They coached me on getting over the awkwardness of touting my achievements. They amplified everything I did. Whatever doubts I’d had about running in the first place, they pounded it out of me with their sheer insistence that I must win.

On election night, in a race where the top seven would win seats, I climbed to third. A friend who’d been with me throughout, also won a seat. In many ways, she and I had taken the plunge together. We had believed in each other.

In December, I was sworn in. I wore a suffragette white dress under a blue blazer, with my grandmother’s brooch pinned to the lapel. My family, my team, were in the audience. I repeated the oath to uphold the constitution and our city’s charter. I bound myself to a duty I’d always vaguely acknowledged, but after a year of fighting against an onslaught of bad choices and straight injustice, those words became sacred.

I’d found my voice, and so did many others.

Organizers rally women for office

Lauren Gambino is in Washington DC to report on developments at the Capitol and on the mall. She reported earlier this week on the question facing the women’s march movement: what next?

“We started 2017 with perpetual outrage and now we are at the moment when we have perpetual outrage, plus a plan in place for 2018,” Linda Sarsour, a co-chair of the Women’s March, told the Guardian.

Sarsour said reclaiming liberal majorities in the House and Senate is the best – and only – way to stop Trump’s agenda. The Women’s March intends to endorse female and progressive candidates in 2018, and to partner with local organizations to register new voters and increase engagement.

“One year ago, we had millions of people marching in the streets of the streets,” she said. “The idea is that we march the same people and their families and their friends to the polls in 2018.”

The group will meet in Las Vegas later this year. In October, thousands of women attended a convention in Detroit, attending trainings sessions for candidates and others on coalition building and countering white supremacy. It also paved the way, organizers believe, for the #MeToo moment, a social upswell in which women have come forward to share experiences of sexual assault and harassment.

Gwen Combs, an elementary school teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, is one of the women hoping to bring a Democratic wave that topples Republicans from their majority in Congress.

Combs spent much of the presidential election biting her tongue. Barred from discussing politics in the classroom, the teacher couldn’t answer her students’ questions about what a Trump presidency might mean for an immigrant parent or a minority classmate.

After the election, she was demoralized and couldn’t stop thinking about her students. “It moved me. It moved me to want to make a safer world for these kids,” she said.

Like hundreds of thousands of other women, Combs stumbled on a Facebook group for a massive march on Washington. She couldn’t afford a flight on short notice, so decided to organize one in Little Rock. She is now running for Arkansas’s second congressional district.

Updated

Hello and welcome to our rolling coverage of the second year of women’s marches to protest Donald Trump and his agenda.

The mass marches, planned all around the US for the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, have coincided with another milestone: the federal government largely shut down after midnight on Saturday, for the first time in four years.

As the expiry clock ticked to midnight, the White House and factions of Democrats and Republicans in the Republican-controlled Congress failed to agree on a funding bill to keep the government open. The result is furlough for hundreds of thousands of government employees; an interruption of medical trials and scientific research; and one million active-duty military personnel who will serve without pay until the shutdown ends.

Republicans are divided between those intent on a short-term funding measure and fiscal conservatives, while Democrats have pressed for deals on continuing a children’s healthcare program and protections for young undocumented immigrants. Just over a week ago, the president squashed a potential bipartisan compromise on immigration during a meeting with senators, to whom he disparaged “shithole countries”.

Trump has indefinitely postponed his planned trip to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, while negotiations in Congress continue.

We’ll be covering the talks and the marches in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

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