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    US food banks rush to stock supplies amid the Snap lapse: ‘We’re going to garner all the resources we can’

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    Waves of hungry Angelenos gathered outside the Community Space food bank’s storefront on a recent afternoon, grabbing dry goods like pastries, bagels, lentils and pasta along with refrigerated salads and frozen bags of brisket.The crowd ebbs and flows all day, said founder Gaines Newborn, but as news spread last week that the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) would cease on Saturday, he braced for the need to dramatically increase.“I’ve gotten more calls than we’ve ever gotten from concerned people saying: ‘My food stamps are getting cut, I need a plan,’” Newborn said. “People are trying to get ahead of food insecurity.”As the federal government shutdown stretches into its second month, the Trump administration announced that Snap, which helps around 42 million people afford food each month, will exhaust its funding at the start of November – something that has never happened before in the program’s half-century history.On Friday, two separate federal judges blocked the government’s attempt to stop paying out the benefits, but the administration could appeal the orders to a higher court. Food banks remain on edge for the possibility of a benefit cut, as they face increased demand driven by federal workers who have gone unpaid during the shutdown, along with people who have struggled to afford rising grocery prices.“The scale of what will happen when 1.8 million New Yorkers don’t get that benefit that they rely on to purchase groceries is sort of hard to wrap my head around, honestly,” said Nicole Hunt, director of public policy and advocacy at Food Bank for NYC, which serves the nation’s most populous city.The organization, which is the largest in New York City, planned to step up its aid during the period when Snap is unavailable, but Hunt said they cannot match the level of assistance the federal program provides.View image in fullscreen“We are going to do what we do, which is to show up with food. We’re going to try to concentrate as much as we can on the neighborhoods that are going to be the hardest hit and garner all the resources that we can, but that’s just not a scale that we’re going to be able to meet, and that’s the reality of how important Snap is and how many people rely on it,” she said.The federal government shut down on the first day of October, after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on legislation that would have continued funding. Around 700,000 federal workers were furloughed, with hundreds of thousands more told to continue working for paychecks that will arrive only after funding is restored.The deadlock has continued as Republicans refuse Democratic demands to couple government funding legislation with an extension of tax credits that have lowered costs for Affordable Care Act health plans. While the Senate’s Republican leaders have tried 13 times to pass a bill to reopen the government, Democrats refuse to budge, and there is no sign of a resolution in sight.Snap benefits continued during previous shutdowns – including those that took place in Donald Trump’s first term – and a Department of Agriculture report outlining their plans for the latest funding lapse indicated they would continue during this one, too.But that report was deleted from the department’s website and replaced by a message that attacks Democratic senators and reads: “Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, said that between money allocated for Snap and funds for other programs that the law allows it to repurpose, the department could keep Snap dollars flowing, if it wanted to.“Clear congressional intent is that this money is available to pay benefits,” Super said at an event organized by the Brookings Institution. “They’re cutting off benefits to put pressure on Senate Democrats, and they put this offensive and dishonest statement on their website trying to blame anyone but themselves for this entirely voluntary termination of Snap benefits.”The program’s lapse will create need beyond the capability of any food bank to fill.View image in fullscreenOn average, Snap provides 95 million meals per month in New York City. In all of last year, Food Bank for NYC distributed 85 million meals, Zac Hall, the senior vice-president of programs, said.“We’re seeing mothers worried about what they’re going to be able to make for dinner for their kids, grandmothers worried about what they’re going to put on the table for Thanksgiving meals,” Hall said.In the Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park, Second Harvest Heartland, the country’s second-largest food bank, is stocking more inventory to be ready for Snap’s end, according to Sarah Moberg, the CEO.“The hunger relief network was not designed to do the work of Snap,” Moberg said. “We are designed to meet someone’s acute hunger need in a moment, and Snap is designed to do that so much more efficiently.”The pain of a cutoff would be particularly acute for the federal workers who are already struggling to get by without their normal salaries.“It’s horrible,” said Christina Dechabert, 52, a Bronx resident who has been working without pay for the Transportation Security Administration at John F Kennedy international airport. “You’re talking about trying to survive with no checks. I’ve had to come to a food bank to get food so our family can survive.”One mother in New York, who did not want to be named, said she was considering taking her two-year-old out of daycare as both she and her husband were federal workers.“We’re in a household with both of us not having paychecks, so that’s the toughest part,” she said. “My son’s under three, so there’s no free daycare, so if this goes on another month or so I might just take him out and have him at home so I don’t have to pay for daycare.”Joshua Cobos, a volunteer at Community Space in Los Angeles, is a Snap recipient himself. He hopes the credit he has earned from his hours at the food bank will see him through the benefit cutoff.“I’m racking up as much as I can around here, and with everything coming up I feel like we’re gonna be busy,” Cobos said.Some cities and states moved to pre-empt the financial hit from the Snap cutoff. Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, on Thursday declared a state of emergency that would free up $65m in state funds for food banks. Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, is sending $4m in state funding to food shelves to manage the Snap gap, but the need is far greater – $73m comes from federal funds to Minnesota for the program.The Atlanta Community food bank, where the monthly need has grown 70% over the past three-and-a-half years, announced Thursday it would draw $5m from its contingency to stock its pantries in anticipation of a surge of demand from unpaid federal workers and Snap beneficiaries. Andre Dickens, the city’s mayor, also announced a temporary eviction and water shutoff moratorium to support residents affected by the lapse in food aid.Super, the Georgetown Law professor, warned the cutoff for Snap bodes ill for the program’s long-term future in Washington.“This has been something that has not been political or ideological up to this point, and it would be tragic if we cross that line and this does become something that’s just part of partisan warfare,” he said. More

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      The ex-CIA scientist brothers perfecting Halloween

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      Crowley Place is a sleepy street in the Waynewood area of south Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb 30 minutes from DC. The unassuming homes are well-tended, and it’s a quick walk to six different churches.But each year at Halloween the police shut down the street as thousands of visitors flock to the area. It’s all due to two ageing brothers who spent 40 years working together in secret at a laboratory in the CIA.For six weeks, no matter what was going on in the world, the Park brothers would take leave from the agency – using vacation, sick days and anything else they could think of – and construct an elaborate front-yard Halloween display, often using CIA-inspired technology.View image in fullscreenThe espionage careers of Jeff and Brian Park spanned the cold war, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan’s war to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf war, and the global “war on terror”.Among the true insiders in the intelligence community, they were something of a legend. Among their specialties in the CIA office of technical services was to help to sabotage Russian systems. It is an obscure discipline even for intelligence services – sabotaging weapons can mean anything from secretly ruining rifle ammunition to hacking the guidance systems for an anti-aircraft missile.Still, their CIA work was just one part of their lives. Their obsession and delight was Halloween.It was three years ago that I first heard of the duo. My sources, veterans of the CIA, just called them the “Park brothers” – and spelled out their unusual expertise, claiming they didn’t remember their first names. It was difficult to track them down because Park was such a common name, but this year I used public records databases, keying in what their ages must be, and scanning through hundreds of names to find adjacent homes, and finally got their address.Outside the two adjacent homes on Crowley last week – the brothers own both – there was an absolute mess of black tents and graveyards, dotted with skeletons, robots, pirates and gory monsters. Lines overhead guide the flying witch and giant spider.Once I showed up on their lawn, the Park brothers were happy to talk.Jeff Park, 78, was pondering a jumble of electronics underneath a witch and near some skulls. He wore a brown T-shirt tucked neatly into tactical grey pants.View image in fullscreen“It takes six weeks to put this together and six weeks to take it apart,” he told me. He said he and his brother Brian, who strolled by lugging some equipment in a handcart, had started their display in 1977, and have been enlarging it ever since.“When I retired in ’14 I was the senior scientist at the CIA,” Jeff said, “so we got to do a lot of cool things. Things that you would go to jail for anywhere else.”Jeff confirmed what sources had said – that they used to sabotage Russian missiles. “We basically specialized in doing in – my brother and I, in our careers – doing in‬ weapon systems. Not just that, lots of other things too. But that was what we did. We did a lot of sabotage on‬ ‭weapon systems to stop the bad guys from doing stuff that we didn’t want them to do.”Brian Park, 75, has longer hair and a big smile. He said getting hired at the office of technical services in the 1970s was “like marrying into an extended Italian family”. Jeff added: “A mafiosa family.”But before talking about the CIA, they wanted to discuss Halloween. Jeff speaks fast, like an enthusiastic professor or Doc Brown of Back to the Future. He pointed out where the displays were going. “There will be Igor, there,” he pointed, “and the Gremlin and Ninja Turtle and ET and Yoda goes over there.” All of them, he says, are animatronic.The hi-tech displays are everywhere – all made by the Parks out of raw materials or discarded electronic devices, rescued parts, or remnants of some CIA experiments. There are elaborate cameras with radar and sonar sensors and a home-engineered 12-channel digital surround sound system threaded through the yard. There’s a giant cauldron – inspired by Disney’s Fantasia – with a computer and a smoke machine inside that emits different colors of smoke. Put your face too close and there’s a sensor to launch a surprise.A couple of graveyards, and one tombstone that flickers with a name changed at will.Jeff collects gargoyle statues; he’s got 210 of them so far. The gargoyles aren’t really part of the Halloween display, however, so they are just piled in the backyard for the winter.The living room of one Park home has what appears to be an old and worn-down La-Z-Boy chair, and the faded wall-to-wall carpet is littered with robots they built for bomb-disposal operations many years ago. On the walls are Christmas ornaments the Parks’ mother used to make.One house has all the electrical engineering supplies, with walls crammed with industrial shelving for resistors and capacitors and electrical connectors. There’s a massive specialized machine for making circuit boards.The other house has a metalworking shop, where the lathe is still littered with brass shavings.View image in fullscreenJeff has been setting up the animatronic gremlin they built. “We wrote software to modify his personality,” Jeff said, “as a function of your body movement. So you have a series of doppler shift radars that measure your body motion and it modifies how he reacts. So if you’re very calm and collected, he will look at you, OK? And then if you get hyper, then he pays no attention to you whatsoever.”Jeff said the exhibit is the most interactive. “Little kids, even four-year-old kids, know there is something special about him. Like, one year we had to cut his head open to repair something and they cried because they thought we were hurting him.”Close by is the alien rocket ship, with blue windows through which the alien is visible. It’s abandoned radio frequency testing equipment. “The throttle is from a B-1 bomber prototype,” Jeff said, pointing inside. It emits huge clouds of smoke for Halloween.In one back shed is a virtual reality device they first engineered in the 1970s for the CIA. Now it’s used to control a handmade, four-legged Star Wars Imperial Walker about five feet tall. “It’s got a 3,000-watt second strobe,” Jeff said. “You can feel it on the back of your neck at 20 feet.”The Parks joined the CIA in 1973. Brian Park was first, part of a fellowship program, and he convinced his bosses to meet with Jeff. Jeff insisted his first CIA interview – just to informally screen him – was at a downtown DC strip club that’s gone out of business.Brian said one early assignment was designing a specialized camera for a now well-known Russian spy for the CIA. “We had to build him a super tiny camera that would digitally store all this stuff so he wouldn’t have to put himself at risk. And so the first technology we used in the camera, the only way you could store digital, non-mechanically, was magnetic bubble memory.”It was the early days of digital memory. “We did something audacious. We shoveled four chips into one coil set and spent millions of dollars.”Whatever they did couldn’t protect the spy, whom the Russians executed in 1985. The story is the subject of a 2015 book and an upcoming movie starring Russell Crowe. And the technology they used – “bubble memory” – soon vanished from memory, obsolete.The CIA stories are never far away. Brian was lugging some Halloween display parts in a cleverly made cart, a one-handed wheelbarrow fashioned to distribute weight laterally.Jeff claimed the cart’s deck, fashioned out of a honeycombed aluminum material, used to reinforce the deck of racing boats he said were sent to the Contras, rigged with machine guns with massive recoil. He pointed at the cart. “That’s what’s left over!”Speedboats were indeed deployed to the region and provided to US proxies. Some speedboats were used in 1984 in CIA efforts to mine Nicaraguan harbors, an operation the international court of justice at The Hague declared illegal. It’s unclear if the specific boats the Park brothers refitted were used for that operation.Most of the year Brian and Jeff also have a railroad track made of aircraft-grade aluminum that encircles their property, over hills and bridges. It is for a miniature working steam engine that they handcrafted, with a seat so kids can ride it. Jeff said they built it using aircraft-grade aluminum. Unprompted, that launched him on a story about working on the track helped him as he engineered an early drone program in 1990, targeting Iraq.View image in fullscreenHe said the agency developed and deployed 25 of the unmanned aerial systems, with 7ft wingspans, prop driven gas engines – for reconnaissance, distributing propaganda leaflets, and finally for kamikaze bombing runs – and he boasted that earned him a promotion to the senior intelligence service level.It’s unusual to find people willing to chat about intelligence technology, even outdated gear. The CIA declined to comment on the Park brothers’ revelations.One of the things they’re proud of – “the coolest thing we ever did” – was an ambitious plan to destroy Scud missiles deployed by Russian client states.Earlier sources had referenced this when explaining the genius of the Park brothers, so hearing the details directly from them was like watching a movie where I’d only seen the trailer.View image in fullscreenBy engineering one key part, the brothers believed that deployed Scud missiles would make a U-turn and hit their own launching sites.“At the time the Soviet Union had come apart and so they were selling off to the black market a lot of the components that are used in Russian missiles,” Jeff said. “And so we basically went out, bought a bunch of them, brought them back to our contractors, modified them with my circuit.”In the end, the operation never moved forward. He said it was canceled because of resistance from the state department, worried about blowblack.Jeff boasted of another invention that he says he designed for US special operations. “It was the thing that probably put my name on the map. I had this crazy, wild-ass idea about how to build an infra-red beacon that you could see 10 miles away with night-vision glasses, and if you were two inches away from it you couldn’t see anything, using light-emitting diodes.”To convince the Navy Seals it worked, the brothers said, they invited the special operations forces to the Halloween festivities, and hid a beacon in a hedge a couple of streets over.After that, “for five years, I personally made all the night-vision beacons for the entire US military, including the Seals, Delta Forces, the Rangers. And that made me world famous.”View image in fullscreenJeff described one of their final plots – sabotaging Russian-made batteries, intercepted by the CIA, that Iran planned to install as an underground power back-up system for a nuclear facility.On this mission, the way he describes it, they went somewhat rogue. “Since it was two days after Christmas, all the bosses were on leave. And so there was just us in there. And so a whole bunch of us got together and we said, ‘Let’s screw the bad guys.’ So I trained a group of 10 people to drill holes randomly in the batteries, the diameter of a sewing machine needle.”The undetectable holes would slowly leak out the hydrogen and oxygen, to raise the internal resistance, and heat, of the battery to an explosive level.The brothers retired before they ever found out if the plan worked.View image in fullscreenCertainly their CIA, the one they talk about, is an agency where the notorious baggage and failures and scandal don’t play a leading role.This version of the CIA is not necessarily troubled by the old enhanced interrogation program, the “salt pit” death in Afghanistan, or “renditions”, or involvement in the mistaken shooting down of a plane carrying an American missionary family.Jeff said about two-thirds of all he did at the CIA never came to fruition, rejected by higher-ups or unsuccessful.But the Park brothers’ huge Halloween spectacle is at least a successful mission for them – where kids can be tricked and still be happy, where covert technology and deception actually work.View image in fullscreen More

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      Jon Stewart on Trump’s taunts of an illegal third term: ‘We know he’s thought about it’

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      Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s taunts about an illegal third presidential term and his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.Jon StewartFrom his Monday night post on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart assessed the threat of Trump attempting to run for a third term as president, which is illegal under the 22nd amendment to the constitution.Asked by reporters for his thoughts on comments by Steve Bannon that he had a plan for such a campaign, Trump answered: “I would love to do it … I have my best numbers ever.”He also claimed, however: “I haven’t really thought about it.”“That’s the tell for whenever he’s asked about something that he is definitely going to do that is dubious legally, ethically or morally,” Stewart noted. “He says he hasn’t thought about it. But of course we know he’s thought about it because he already has the merch,” he added, pointing to “Trump 2028” hats that Trump has displayed in the Oval Office.“What’s interesting about Trump is he’s actually worked through the various scenarios of running for a third term that he has not thought about,” said Stewart, pointing to Trump’s further comments that “I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute.”“Too cute? No, that’s why you don’t go to Build-a-Bear as an adult,” Stewart replied. “Running as the vice-president to skirt the 22nd amendment isn’t cute. But he’s the kinda guy who’s like ‘I respect Americans too much to play games. If I’m going to run again, I’m going to rip off the constitution’s head and shit down its neck.’“Indications are very clear he’s gonna do it,” he continued, “because you don’t move into a house, knock down a wing and build a 90,000-sq-ft ballroom for the next guy.“Trump’s not a house-flipper,” he added. “He’s not Ellen. He’s in it for the long haul.”Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel returned from a weeklong family trip to Ireland with renewed perspective on his home country. “In case you’re wondering what people in other countries think about what’s going on here in our country, I’ll tell you: they’re worried about us,” he said. “They’re very worried. They’re worried about us in the same way you worry about a nephew who you maybe haven’t seen for a few years and he shows up at Thanksgiving missing all of his front teeth? That kind of worry.”People in Ireland, Kimmel reported, had a lot of questions for him about Trump, including: “Why is he knocking down part of the White House?”“I don’t know. Nobody knows,” he answered. “I don’t think he even knows.“Back here at home, the unrest continues to rage out of control. Antifa terrorists are destroying government – oh wait, that’s the White House,” Kimmel joked over a photo of the demolished East Wing. “That’s what Trump did on purpose, without permission, to the White House. I told you we should’ve made him put down a security deposit!”Nevertheless, Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, defended the move on NBC News: “I think this was a judgment call by the president. The president is a master builder. I don’t know, I assume that maybe parts of the East Wing, there could’ve been asbestos, there could’ve been mold.“There could’ve been some old Chinese food, could’ve been ghosts! We don’t know,” Kimmel joked. “All we know is that the only solution was to completely smash the whole place down. I wish the master builder would master-build in private like the rest of us do.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also touched on the Trump 2028 hats seen on his desk during meetings with congressional Democrats.“It’s so weird to make a hat for a thing that can’t happen,” said Meyers. “Wearing a Trump 2028 hat is like wearing a hat that says Super Bowl champion New York Jets.”“So Trump put some hats on the desk during a meeting with Democrats,” he continued, “and the Democrats in attendance definitely thought it was weird.”As the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, told CNN: “it was the strangest thing ever.”“Come on, the strangest thing ever? Don’t you live Brooklyn?” Meyers laughed. “If someone Rollerbladed into a Brooklyn deli wearing a full mermaid costume, the only thing anyone would say is ‘the usual, Jeff?’“It’s not even the strangest thing Trump has done,” he continued. “Not long before that meeting, he wandered on to the roof of the White House.“Think about how insane this is: this was supposed to be a meeting about keeping the government open, making sure troops get paid and families get nutrition assistance and air traffic controllers can do their jobs,” Meyers added. “And instead the president’s main interest was trolling.“Trump can’t help himself,” he concluded. “The Maga movement cares more about trolling libs than making government function, which is why he keeps going on about this unconstitutional third term.”Stephen Colbert“It was a beautiful day here in America because Donald Trump was out of the country,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. To start the week, Trump was on a “field trip” to Asia, where “he’s going to tear down the Great Wall and put up a ballroom,” Colbert quipped.The trip includes stops in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, where Trump danced to a marching band in a way that Colbert could only describe as “shuffling and swinging his wrists like a low-battery Chuck E Cheese robot”.In Japan, the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, reportedly planned to gift Trump a gold golf ball. “It is so sad to see how easy it is to butter up the president of the United States,” Colbert remarked. “OK quick, Trump’s visiting, what are we going to get him this time? Gold burger? Gold TV? Have we tried spray-painting a woman gold?”Colbert also touched on the fourth week of the ongoing government shutdown. “The longer it goes, the more used to having no government we get and then the less likely it is to ever end,” he said.The shutdown is now restricting military pay. But on Friday, an anonymous donor – later identified as Timothy Mellon – gifted $130m to pay troops during the shutdown. “I know that sounds nice, I get it, but I don’t like the idea of the armed forces having a private sponsor,” Colbert said. “I don’t want our next invasion to be code-named ‘Operation Chili’s New El Diablo Triple Dipper Rib Tips: Can You Stand the Heat?’” More

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      Leader of top federal worker union calls for end of US government shutdown

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      The head of America’s largest federal workers union says it is time to end the government shutdown, now the second-longest in US history, as hundreds of thousands of employees miss another round of paychecks.Everett Kelley, who leads the American Federation of Government Employees representing more than 800,000 workers, avoided assigning blame to either party in the Monday morning letter but said lawmakers must stop playing politics and pass a stopgap funding measure to reopen the government, its closure now eclipsing the four-week mark.“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” Kelley wrote in the statement. “Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship.” NBC News first reported the letter.A “clean” continuing resolution is a temporary spending bill that keeps the government running at current funding levels without attaching other political demands. Republicans say they have offered that in their measure, but Democrats argue the bill shortchanges key services and are using their power in the Senate to push for a deal on health insurance subsidies that expire at year’s end.Because of this stalemate, hundreds of thousands of federal and Washington DC government employees are either working without pay or furloughed. The union represents workers across nearly every federal agency, from Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and army nurses to food safety inspectors and veterans affairs staff, many of whom are now lined up at food banks after missing their second paycheck, Kelley said.“These are patriotic Americans – parents, caregivers, and veterans – forced to work without pay while struggling to cover rent, groceries, gas and medicine because of political disagreements in Washington,” Kelley said. “That is unacceptable.”But the crisis extends beyond federal workers: roughly 42 million Americans who receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program face losing their benefits as soon as 1 November if the shutdown continues, after the US agriculture department warned states it would run out of money to pay for the program.Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican-backed continuing resolution 12 times, demanding commitments on extending Affordable Care Act health subsidies. Three Democrats and one independent who caucus with the party have broken ranks to support the measure, but it remains short of the 60 needed to advance. The Republican senator Rand Paul is the sole Republican to defect on the measure.The AFGE is already suing the Trump administration over mass layoffs organized during the shutdown and over partisan emails sent from government accounts without employees’ knowledge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKelley called for three immediate steps: reopening the government under a continuing resolution, ensuring full back pay for all affected workers, and addressing policy disputes through normal legislative debate rather than shutdown tactics.“When the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” he said. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.”The shutdown reaches the one-month mark this week, with no negotiations scheduled between the parties.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told CNN on Sunday that he and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, requested a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the shutdown before he went out of the country but had been rebuffed. The president has said he will only meet with Democrats after they vote to reopen the government.“A strong America requires a functioning government – one that pays its bills, honors its commitments, and treats its workforce with respect by paying them on time,” Kelley wrote. “The government belongs to all of us. Let’s open it back up and keep America moving forward.” More

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      What is the White House East Wing and why has it been torn down in Trump’s renovation plans?

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      It was confirmed on Friday that the East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed, days after construction started on the planned $300m (£225m) ballroom that Donald Trump is adding to the historic building.The demolition marked a reversal of Trump’s earlier promise in July that none of the White House’s existing infrastructure would be torn down during construction of the ballroom.The rapid pace of the project, coupled with images of rubble at the president’s residence has elicited a chorus of disgust among White House alumni and presidential historians, while the Trump administration has dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage”.What is the East Wing?The East Wing was first known as the East Terrace and was built during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Franklin Roosevelt created the East Wing in its current form in 1942 to add working space during the war, but also to conceal an underground bunker that had been constructed for the president and staff.Over time it became the home base for the first lady and her staff. It was also the home of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.View image in fullscreenSitting across East Executive Avenue from the Treasury Department, it represented the social side of the White House and was where tourists and other guests entered for events.In the original plan for the ballroom, it would have remained untouched and, in Trump’s telling, become a space where guests would mingle, sip cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres until they were called into the ballroom for dinner. However, days after ground was broken on the new project, the White House confirmed the entire wing would be torn down and that process appeared to be completed by Friday.What can we expect from the new ballroom?Trump has complained that the White House needs a large entertaining space and that the East Room is too small, with capacity for only about 200 people.The 90,000-square-foot (27,400sqm) ballroom will dwarf the main White House, at nearly double the size, and Trump says it will accommodate 999 people.Renderings released by the White House suggest a strong resemblance to the gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach, Florida. The White House has said the ballroom will be ready for use well before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, an ambitious timeline.View image in fullscreenThe president has been adamant that the ballroom will not come at a cost to taxpayers, because it is being privately funded by “many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly”.Donors for the proposed ballroom include a slew of major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. Defense contractors and communications companies have also pitched in, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, T-Mobile and Comcast.The president began construction despite the lack of signoff from the National Capital Planning Commission, the executive branch agency that has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.What has been the reaction to the bulldozing of the East Wing?The image of broken masonry, rubble and steel wires at America’s most famous address appeared to strike a chord even with people who have become accustomed to shrugging off Trump’s outrageous antics.David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, tweeted: “Something profoundly symbolic about Trump taking a wrecking ball to the White House … paying for the demolition with money from cronies and insiders seeking government favors … and the Republicans in Congress acquiescing as Trump treats public assets as private property.”View image in fullscreenThe National Trust for Historic Preservation on Tuesday asked the Trump administration to pause the demolition until the planning commission review was completed. Its letter expressed concern that the proposed ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself”.Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was quoted by WTOP News as saying: “Maybe it’s just the dislike of change on my part, but it seemed painful, almost like slashing a Rembrandt painting. Or defacing a Michelangelo sculpture.”In an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Trump adviser Stephen Miller defended the unannounced demolition of the entire East Wing, arguing that the extension was not really part of the White House.“It was a cheaply built add-on structure … [it] is badly in need of refurbishment, repair and renovation,” he said.What have other presidents done to change the White House?Presidents have added to the White House since construction began in 1792 for a host of reasons, and Trump aides say his decision to build a ballroom follows that long tradition.Thomas Jefferson added the east and west colonnades.Andrew Jackson built the North Portico on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House, aligning with the South Portico that James Monroe added after the original mansion was rebuilt after the British burned it during the war of 1812.Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing to provide dedicated space for the president and senior staff, while Franklin D Roosevelt added the East Wing.One of the most significant White House renovations happened under Harry Truman, when the mansion was found to be so structurally unsound that he ordered a complete gutting of the interior that lasted from 1948 to 1952. The project, including Truman’s addition of a balcony to the second floor of the South Portico, was highly controversial.Other changes include the creation of the Rose Garden during John F Kennedy’s administration and Richard Nixon’s decision to convert an indoor swimming pool that was built for FDR’s physical therapy into a workspace for the growing White House press corps.With Reuters and the Associated Press More

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      Big? Beautiful? Donald Trump is literally ripping apart the home of US democracy. Is anyone really surprised? | Emma Brockes

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      Occasionally, life gives you scenarios that are so on the money it’s impossible to do anything with them. Boris Johnson getting stuck halfway down a zip wire while waving two union flags, for instance; or Liz Truss getting lost while attempting to leave a room – two images that are so embarrassingly on point it is almost difficult to enjoy them. An audience likes to feel it has done a bit of work before arriving at a punch line, which is why, on Monday, when demolition crews moved into the White House to knock down part of the East Wing at the behest of Donald Trump, it felt once again like we were living in post-satirical times.As far as we can tell from the photos, Trump didn’t actually send in a wrecking ball – although his administration did sharply reprimand government employees working in a neighbouring Treasury building for posting visuals of the demolition online, so at this point who knows? There were, however, diggers, torn-down walls and an awful lot of dust. This was the first stage of a project Trump has advertised as the addition to the White House of a 90,000 sq ft (8,300 sq metres) ballroom, at an estimated cost of $250m (£187m) and a capacity, according to Trump, of “999 people”. And while, granted, it’s not a branch of McDonald’s – one thing about Trump’s range is that, however bad things are, they could always have been worse – architectural and heritage institutes have been expressing concern.Presidents, of course, like to leave their mark on the nation’s furnishings as on its finances. The Obamas planted a kitchen garden at the White House, put in a basketball court and tweaked the lighting, apparently so it was bright enough for their daughters to do their homework. Joe Biden had less time to renovate, but did swap out Trump’s gold drapes in the Oval Office for some sober Clinton-era curtains and a new rug.Trump, meanwhile, paved over the Rose Garden, decked out the Oval Office in gold, and now appears to be wholesale demolishing the East Wing’s 1942 facade to build a giant event space – and you have to wonder if the state banquet he enjoyed at Windsor Castle last month has been a spur to get construction under way. As for what the new space might look like, we must assume that Clark Construction and McCrery Architects, the design and building entities involved, will be led by Trump’s general aesthetic and find a happy medium between the Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago and Saddam Hussein’s palace.Well, you can imagine, there’s been some carping online. The Society of Architectural Historians released a statement expressing “great concern” over the proposed ballroom. The American Institute of Architects put out a stiff note reminding the president that “the historic edifice at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the People’s House, a national treasure and an enduring symbol of our democracy”. And more importantly, that “any modifications to it – especially modifications of this magnitude – should reflect the importance, scale and symbolic weight of the White House itself”. This was, perhaps, a discreet way of pointing out that, given you can barely put up a shelf in a major city on the eastern seaboard without having to get a permit, the DC Department of Buildings might care to look into things.In her commentary online, Hillary Clinton was more direct: “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” For many Americans, the demolition photos were soul-shuddering in a way that has no direct equivalence in the UK. I suppose if they changed the door numbers in Downing Street a lot of people might be upset and disturbed. But the building at No 10, and the living quarters in particular – which for a long time looked like one of those rental ads that go viral for demanding £2,000 a month for a flat in east London that is smaller than the inside of a canal boat – have never been as iconic or emotionally charged as their US counterparts.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, dismissed all the chatter as “fake outrage”, while the president himself posted online, “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc.” As with everything Trump says, it’s the “etc” in this sentence that should cause the most worry. The ballroom will be funded via private donations, setting up yet another race to curry favour with the president. And, as an event space, it will run in competition with the Trump International Hotel, offering the possibility of a very Trumpian future use for the building: the White House as venue for corporate retreat.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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      Construction appears to start on Trump’s $250m White House ballroom

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      Construction crews appear to have started demolishing part of the East Wing of the White House to make way for Donald Trump’s planned ballroom, prompting widespread criticism on social media and beyond.One former lawmaker even called the renovation an “​​utter desecration”.The Washington Post, which obtained and published photos of the demolition activity and cited two eyewitnesses, reported on Monday that demolition is under way and shared an image showing construction in progress and parts of the exterior ripped down.Other images, including ones seen in the New York Post, also show demolition of parts of the East Wing.The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.On his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump said that “ground has been broken on the White House” to build the new ballroom.“I am honored to be the first President to finally get this much-needed project underway — with zero cost to the American Taxpayer! The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly,” he added.Earlier, at a ceremony in Washington DC celebrating the NCAA champion Louisiana State University baseball team on Monday, Trump said his administration plans to build “the most beautiful ballroom in the country”.“I didn’t know I’d be standing here right now because, right on the other side, you have a lot of construction going on, which you might hear periodically,” he said during the White House event.Plans to build an enormous $250m ballroom addition to the White House – one of the largest projects at the White House in more than a century – emerged in July. At the time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the renovated space would span 90,000 sq ft (8,300 sq meters) and seat up to 650 people. Officials said that it would be paid for by Trump and unnamed donors.View image in fullscreenOf the renovation, Trump said in July: “In the White House, for 150 years, they’ve wanted to have a ballroom,” adding that “there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms.“I’m good at building things and we’re going to build quickly and on time” he said. “It’ll be beautiful, top, top of the line.”Reports broke in August that work would begin in September. It’s expected to be completed before the end of Trump’s second term, in January 2029.Trump previously claimed that the new structure would not “interfere with the current building”, according to the Washington Post.View image in fullscreen“It’ll be near it but not touching it – and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said during an executive order signing in July, according to the Post. “It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”Earlier this month, Trump hosted a dinner at the White House for donors funding the ballroom. During the event, he reportedly opened the curtains of the East Room to show where construction on the ballroom had started. He told the guests that the new venue would feature bulletproof glass, accommodate 1,000 people and be capable of hosting a presidential inauguration.Guests at the dinner reportedly included representatives from Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Palantir and Lockheed Martin.Concerns and criticisms over Trump’s renovation plans have cropped up from lawmakers and on social media.Democratic representative Mark Takano of California proposed a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds for any construction or renovation at the White House during a government shutdown, unless the work is directly related to health or safety. Monday marked day 20 of the ongoing government shutdown.Joe Walsh, a former Republican member of Congress, called the renovation an “​​utter desecration”.“If I ran for President in 2028, I’d run on taking a bulldozer to Trump’s ballroom, an utter desecration of the peoples’ house,” Walsh said in a post on X on Monday, reacting to a picture showing part of the White House being demolished.“In fact, I’d invite the American people one weekend to bring their own sledgehammers & crowbars to the White House to help tear that abomination down.”“Wealth & income inequality is at record highs in America, but glad we’re spending $250M on a vanity project,” said human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid. More

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      No Kings protesters on their hopes for resistance movement against Trump: ‘If we lose momentum, we lose the fight’

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      Saturday’s No Kings protests brought millions to the streets across all 50 states in the latest demonstration against Donald Trump’s administration amid a government shutdown. But many protesters are already strategizing about what to do next.Some said continuing protests were a sign of vibrant civil resistance against the administration’s heavy-handed policies, which have challenged legal and constitutional norms in the US. They also discussed economic boycotts and strikes.Others were concerned it would take more Americans feeling direct impact to catalyze change. “I think we have to see the demise before it can turn around, sadly, but we’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Eric Stone, a 35-year-old from Oklahoma who attended the protest in Washington DC.Guardian reporters covered protests in Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago and Los Angeles and asked attendees why they showed up, what they are hoping to see from the resistance movement, and whether the Democratic party was an effective opposition party. Here is what they said:Washington DCMary PhillipsA Native American originally from the Omaha tribe in Nebraska and Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico who now lives in Washington DCView image in fullscreen“I think there are brilliant minds who are here today who know what bad legislation, bad policies, can do to our entire country, and what the future looks like if we continue down, not able to stop what’s happening and proceeding. These are all people from different walks of life, different skills and and levels of masteries in their own disciplines.“I believe the [leaders] who are vocal are definitely making waves and doing what they’re supposed to do, but I think there are others who are still on the fence. [There are] key issues that we need them to be 100% towards democracy, and it feels like they’re not. It feels like they are sticking to the old rules. But we have all set a set of new rules right now and they need to look at what those rules are to make up their decisions in their backrooms. And then speak on the floor what those are, what we are fighting on the streets.“So No Kings, I think, is the pinnacle of what we’re so close to right now, having a king. Once martial law goes into place, we would be under that threat, and we don’t know what the end of it looks like really, other than changing the constitution, which I think is easier done than we thought ever could be. This movement may turn into more than No Kings. It may turn into saving lives, period – saving our life, saving our freedom to be United States citizens because anybody right now can be told you’re not a citizen any more.”Laura BuckwaldNo Kings protesterView image in fullscreen“People are waking up because right now, it’s affecting people immediately in their day-to-day lives. It’s affecting our health insurance. It’s affecting our ability to just live our lives as we choose to live them. The government is trying to tell us how to run our lives, and that’s just not acceptable in the United States. As far as leadership is concerned, we’ve been disappointed on the leaders that we should have, particularly in Congress, and we’re hoping that this gives them the courage to stand up. We’re proud of what they’re doing now right now, not opening up the government until we have proper healthcare covered. But they need to do a lot more doing that, so I hope they do.“Just yesterday, I got a notice from my health insurance company about my premiums going up – they’re almost doubling. They put straight out that they are not going to cover any healthcare that is for transition purposes, so our transgender Americans will not have coverage under the plan that I have. That is totally unacceptable. I teach young people and I’ve encountered trans youth, and they have told me that without this healthcare, it makes some of them want to commit suicide.“I think [what Republicans have done has] been despicable. They have cut so many programs just so that they can give tax breaks to rich people, make billionaires trillionaires … Our taxes aren’t going to go down. We’re not going to see any benefit from it and we’re going to have the same taxes, if not more, and we’re going to have less in benefits that we have paid for. This is a tyrannical regime in office right now and they need to resign. They can’t handle the job. They’re incompetent and they’re mean. They’re cruel to people in the United States and that is anti-American. It is un-Christian and it’s unacceptable.”Mike ReidA former Republican from Maryland who switched parties during Bill Clinton’s administration. He said he hasn’t voted for Trump in any electionsView image in fullscreenReid was holding up a sign of the founding fathers with “No Kings” on it.“It’s actually my wife’s idea, but these were the original No Kings gang and they’re the ones who first had said ‘no kings in America.’ And then on the back we have the original Bill of Rights, which has the part about freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion and the right of people to peaceably assemble. So we and the people here are standing up for what America is supposed to be … We’re the ones who represent what real America is. Those rightwingers and the White House and Congress – they are betraying everything this country was supposed to be about, and that’s why people, common people, have to stand up.“I think that some Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom [in] California and JB Pritzker in Illinois are doing very well. They’re standing up. And I mean, there is a limit to what they can do with the bloc, they’re totally out of power right now. But state government, Democratic state governors, some of them are standing up – not all unfortunately, but some of them.“I grew up in a Republican family. I was Republican up until about 20-some years ago, back when the party was about limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual rights. They have betrayed all of that. And the party that today calls themselves Republicans – they’re not Republicans, they’re fascists, and they’re betraying my great-great-grandfather who served in the Union army in the civil war.”Eric Stone, 35Identifies as an independent and said most of his family are Republican Trump supportersView image in fullscreen“My family is Maga; my family is Trump supporters. I grew up in a small town where they didn’t want a dictatorship. They didn’t want people who were disrespectful to women. They didn’t want people who were racist and all these hateful things. And yet here they are supporting and cheering on this man like they want him to be the second coming of God. And now that I’m out here protesting this, it’s like … everybody in that circle drank the Kool-Aid. “I got people losing their jobs [around me because of the shutdown]. They’re scared that they can’t pay their bills. They’re stressing … and they’re everyday people who work their jobs and work for this country to keep it running. And we’re going to tell them they shouldn’t be paid for, what for? “I support what they stand for. For the most part, you’re not going to agree with everybody on everything. However, I feel like Democrats, they don’t have, for a lack of better terms, the balls – they’re too weak, because we always end up in this situation. The Democrats just want to talk for long hours and go on TV and do these events, which is beautiful … It’s powerful. However, you have access to that building right there. We’re standing right next to the Capitol building. Go do something about it.”Shawn SkellyFormer assistant secretary of defense for readiness in the Biden-Harris administration (only the second-ever out trans person to hold a Senate-confirmed position) and the co-founder of Out in National Security. She was a speaker at the rallyView image in fullscreen“The United States military is made up of people from every background, from every part of the country, to include immigrants and to include LGBTQ people. [Trump officials have] decided that you can’t allow transgender service members to serve. [These members have] been in command of units flying aircraft. They are high-end engineers. They are small unit leaders. None of them have blown up or failed or been drummed out of service because of the fact that they’re transgender. Each and every one of our 2.1 million service members are American heroes in their own way. You can’t have people in that institution while you’re trying to make trans people the enemy and the reason for oppression in that way.“There should never be a shutdown, frankly, and that it’s lasted this long is the fault of the [Republican] party, the political party that has all the levers of power right now … and a very willing supreme court to let them do pretty much what they want to do, pending appeal. This is democracy in action right here. This is our constitution and our civil rights in action. It’s about ‘we the people’. As Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, it’s government of the people, by the people, for the people. This is America at its best.” Los Angeles, CaliforniaGinny Eschbach, 72Turned out on Saturday for her 42nd protest since Trump’s inauguration. She wore a SpongeBob SquarePants costume to be ‘whimsical’View image in fullscreen“I have felt that the movement needed a face for a long time, someone to rally the troops, who we respect and admire. But who is that? I do not know.” She suggested it might possibly be a figure like Barack Obama. “There’s all these groups and these protests all coalesce, but I’m afraid it’s too fragmented. There needs to be one movement.”“This is not a joke,” she said of Republicans’ resistance to negotiate with Democrats over the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. “If they defund people’s health insurance by not continuing the subsidies, it’s gonna be a mess. Even if they got that through, our healthcare is being so eroded by cutting science funding. There’s already reports of rural hospitals closing down. This is just going to spread through the country. It’s going to be a nightmare.”Eschbach said she will definitely continue to protest – sometimes she will attend two to three a weekend. She is currently canvassing to help pass Proposition 50 in California, part of the plan to counter Texas’s gerrymandered maps. “I’ll just carry on,” she said. “I write postcards, I go to protests, I talk to people.  I’ll do whatever I can.”Talia Guppy, 46Social worker in Los AngelesView image in fullscreenGuppy comes from a long tradition of social justice activism – her parents marched with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. “The least I can do is be out here,” she said.Among the leaders stepping forward, Guppy mentioned her state’s governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to run for president in 2028. She credited the governor with going “head to head and toe to toe” with the president. “Sometimes we have to fight fire with fire,” she said. “We can’t always take the easy road.”Guppy said she has many friends who are federal workers and have told her they want Democrats to keep fighting to preserve access to affordable healthcare and to constrain the Trump administration. “I’ve been protesting since the first big raid on June 6,” she said, and vowed to continue. “We’ve been doing as much as we can anytime that we can because it has to continue. If we lose the momentum, then we lose the fight.”Taylor G, 55 No Kings protesterHe said some people have stepped up to try to check Trump – the unions, certain universities and among Los Angeles’s entertainment industry, including Jane Fonda.  But he said he has been disappointed so far by the lack of response from the “dotcom” companies, such as Facebook and other tech giants. “All of those companies just seem to be going along with it because it’s good for their business,” he said. “People have to get way out of their comfort zones,” he added, suggesting the left-leaning movement needed more leaders willing to venture into less friendly territory and try to persuade people who may not be ideologically aligned with Democrats. “Even though we might not agree on everything, we could agree that what’s going on in the country is not good,” he said.  He added that he has friends who have left the country because of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. He approved of the Democrats’ hardball approach to the government shutdown and would absolutely be willing to walk off the job. “I think that we need to do a lot more like what they do in Europe, a general strike, meaning everybody walks out, not just Democrats,” he said. Chicago, IllinoisOscar Gonzalez, 28From the west side of the cityView image in fullscreen“My parents are immigrants. I love them to death. 
I want Chicago to be a safe city. I want America to be a great nation for everybody. No human’s illegal, so I’m here to embody that and show everybody that we have all the power to make change.“We need a Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Martin Luther [King], we need somebody to embody. Fred Hampton, you know, we’re in Chicago.”Abel Mebratu, 43From Rogers Park, a neighborhood in ChicagoView image in fullscreenMebratu was carrying a sign depicting Silverio Villegas-González, who was killed by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) last month. “[I’m here] giving a voice to a voiceless man that has been taken from us – unfairly and unlawfully – and his kids need justice. “I’m originally from Ethiopia and I consider myself a Chicagoan. We have values that we share and when our values are attacked, we come together. We’re led by our values and what we stand for and what we want to pass on for our next generation.” Lindsay Weinberg, 43No Kings protesterView image in fullscreenWeinberg held a sign referencing her great-grandmother, who died in the Holocaust.“It’s really personal to me when I hear people getting grabbed off the streets and taken away … I mean, many, many victims of the Holocaust don’t know what happened to their relatives, but I happen to know that [my great-grandmother’s] bones are in a mass grave … that’s important history for people to remember.“People are getting disappeared. 
People are hiding. People are being murdered. People are being wounded. 
People are experiencing trauma. It’s escalating.”Atlanta, GeorgiaGeoff Sumner, 68A retired military veteran from Stone Mountain, GeorgiaView image in fullscreen“There don’t seem to be any [leaders of the resistance] at the moment, so we’re it. Right now we got nobody. Where are they? [Chuck] Schumer-crats? Hakeem [Jeffries]? We got nobody.”Sumner doesn’t agree with what the Democrats are doing regarding the shutdown. “We don’t need to negotiate with fascists … You want our votes? Stop all this fascism. Stop all this arresting people in the street … It’s a hell of a lot more than healthcare, ain’t it?”“We gotta get the Trump regime out – all of them out. We gotta do it fast before they consolidate whatever they’re doing … How far should we go? That’s up to every individual. But I think people in America are in denial or they don’t know how bad it’s fixing to get.”Jake Riley, 44Project manager from AtlantaView image in fullscreen“I would say AOC, first of all, she would be a leader if I had to pick somebody. She would probably be up there. But as far as the protesters and on-the-ground people? I think it’s better if it’s more of a loose alliance of people. I don’t really think we have a leader structure.“After the rally, we have to get [everyone] running for every office imaginable. There’s lots of contests that go unchallenged.”Joshua Wilson, 22Multimedia producer from Lawrenceville, GeorgiaView image in fullscreen“I work with a lot of government officials at my job as clients. With the shutdown happening, I’ve been getting less work … and less work. Recently my boss politely told me, ‘Hey, you know, if you don’t want to come to work’ … I can just stay home on certain days because of it. I do think Democrats are doing the right thing, but granted it does affect me and affect me in a big way. So I’m willing to risk my paycheck for doing what’s right.“I feel like this [protest] is actually something. We should be joining organisations, reading up, getting educated and knowledgeable about the situation, or at least listening to outlets. You know, at least trying to join the community.” More

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      ‘My vote is my voice’: protesters fight for democracy as Trump casts shadow

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      Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “We won’t Black down”, Wanda Mosley had made the trip from Atlanta. “I had to be here because the Voting Rights Act is on life support,” the 55-year-old explained. “Today the court will synthesise the arguments and decide if they’re going to kill it – or allow it to live.”Mosley was among a few hundred protesters who gathered in warm October sunshine outside the supreme court on Wednesday. Inside the building, whose facade was obscured by scaffolding, justices were weighing arguments in a case involving Louisiana electoral districts and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.From afar, it might seem like a dry debate over an arcane law enacted by Congress half a century ago. But to those gathered at the court steps, most of whom were Black, there was a palpable consciousness that the legacy of civil rights giants such as Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King and John Lewis was on the line.Speakers noted that the Voting Rights Act had been a landmark law intended to prevent racial discrimination in voting. Undercutting it would reverse decades of progress.People held aloft signs that said “Black voters matter”, “Build Black political power”, “Fight for fair maps”, “Fight like hell!”, “It’s about us”, “My vote is my voice”, “Protect people, not power”. One said, “Protect our vote” around a photo of Lewis, the Georgia congressman who died five years ago.Donald Trump cast a shadow. An African American man waved a black-and-white flag that declared: “Fuck Trump and fuck you for voting for him.” A white woman carried a sign with a mocking cartoon image of the president and the slogan: “Trump’s afraid of free and fair elections.”Another held a sign that referenced Marshall, the first African American supreme court justice, and current justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative who is also African American. “Thurgood is watching you, Clarence,” it said. The back of the sign added: “Stop legalizing Trump’s race war.”There were chants of “Power to the people” and “We shall not be moved”. Songs including Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, Common and John Legend’s Glory and Jill Scott’s Golden boomed from loudspeakers.Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, admitted mixed feelings to the crowd: “There’s a part of me that gets sad at the impending death of this thing that has meant so much. I feel that sadness. There’s a part of me that feels weak, that feels small as I stand outside this huge building with so much history.”But Albright also insisted on hope, referencing Lewis’s role in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, where he led peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “When we believe, we got the power to move mountains, we got the power to cross the bridge in a city called Selma and changed the course of history.“We got the power to make good trouble and we’ve got the power to move this court. This court ain’t nothing but another mountain for us to move. We’ve got that kind of power but we’ve got to believe, y’all.”A great cheer went up when Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who had been arguing on behalf of a group of Black voters, emerged from the court building and descended the steps that have witnessed many past triumphs. Two white women in police uniform and sunglasses looked on.Nelson struck an optimistic tone, telling the gathering: “We believe in the future of this multiracial democracy. We believe that, no matter what assaults and attacks we are currently facing, the right to vote is still the lifeblood of our democracy and that it must be protected at all costs.“And we know that the law is on our side. We know that if these justices follow their own words, we will prevail in this case and so that is the argument that we made today.”Speakers framed the legal fight as the latest chapter in a long, generational struggle for civil rights, frequently invoking the movement’s heroes.Terri Sewell, a Democratic congresswoman who represents Alabama’s seventh congressional district, which includes her home town of Selma, said: “I want to remind all of you of what John Lewis said on his very last time on that bridge in Selma.“John’s body was riddled with cancer but he stood up tall and strong at the apex of that bridge and he said with a very strong voice: ‘Never give up. Never give in. Keep the faith and let’s keep our eyes on the prize.’”Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, cited King’s “promissory note” analogy from the March on Washington, stating that “America had defaulted on that promise” and that generations later the question remains: “When will this country make good on what it put down on paper?”As the crowd dispersed, Mosley, the activist from Atlanta, lingered a while and reflected on why she had come. “It’s frustrating because I’m as American as anybody else,” she said. “I’m a descendant of enslaved Africans that literally built this country.“I deserve to have unfettered rights to vote, and I deserve to have representation that lives in my neighborhood, that comes from my community and knows what our community needs. And we’ll fight for those things.” More