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      ‘Rogue president’: growing number of US judges push back against Trump

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      US district and appeals courts are increasingly rebuking Donald Trump’s radical moves on tackling crime, illegal immigration and other actions where administration lawyers or Trump have made sweeping claims of emergencies that judges have bluntly rejected as erroneous and undermining the rule of law in America.Legal scholars and ex-judges note that strong court pushback has come from judges appointed by Republicans, including Trump himself, and Democrats, and signify that the administration’s factual claims and expanding executive powers face stiff challenges that have slowed some extreme policies.Among the toughest rulings were ones this month by Judge Karin Immergut in Oregon and Judge April Perry in Chicago. Both district judges sharply challenged Trump’s plans to deploy national guard troops to deal with minimal violence that Trump had portrayed as akin to “war” zones, spurring the judges to impose temporary restraining orders.Immergut, whom Trump nominated for the court in his first term, rejected Trump’s depiction of Portland as “war-ravaged”, and in need of saving from “Antifa and other domestic terrorists” concluding that the “president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts”. But a court of appeals ruled on 20 October that Trump could send national guard troops to the city.Elsewhere, district judge William Young in Boston issued a scathing 161-page ruling last month calling some of Trump’s deportation policies illegal efforts to deport non-citizen activists at colleges in violation of their first amendment rights “under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of antisemitism”. Young was nominated by Ronald Reagan.Some former appeals court judges say that the district courts and courts of appeals are responding appropriately to a pattern of unlawful conduct by Trump and his top deputies.“The president and attorney general are openly contemptuous of the constitution and laws of the United States and of the federal courts, and the arguments they make to the courts mirror that personal contempt,” said retired court of appeals judge J Michael Luttig. “The federal district courts and the courts of appeals well understand that and they are going to have none of it.”View image in fullscreenRecent court rulings reveal a pattern of strong judicial rebukes to the Trump administration from district and appeals courts on multiple issues since Trump took office again, which the legal news and analysis site Just Security has documented.A Just Security study, which was spearheaded by New York University law professor Ryan Goodman, revealed that courts’ distrust of government information and representations hit over 40 cases as of 15 October versus 35 cases in mid-September. Similarly, it noted that courts’ findings of “arbitrary and capricious” administrative action totaled 58 cases on 15 October versus 52 in mid-September. The study showed courts’ concerns over noncompliance with judicial orders totaled over 20 cases as of 15 October up from 15 cases a month before.But despite the growing number of strong lower court rulings against the administration, some may well get reversed by the supreme court given its 6-3 conservative majority, and its rulings that have markedly expanded presidential powers.Nonetheless, legal scholars and ex-federal judges stress that recent district court rulings against Trump’s radical policies are grounded in fact and reveal profound scepticism about a number of the administration’s sweeping legal claims.“US district judges have the responsibility to determine the relevant facts before applying the law. Accordingly, the credibility of a party and its counsel are immensely important,” said former federal judge John Jones, who is now president of Dickinson College.“Simply put, the president’s reputation for hyperbole that lapses into outright lies precedes him in these cases, and judges are increasingly refusing to take the administration’s rationale for its actions at face value.”For example, Perry called the Department of Homeland Security’s depiction of events in Chicago “simply unreliable” with a “lack of credibility”. She noted that state and local law enforcement contradicted the case for deploying the national guard and Trump’s assertion that it was a “war zone”, and warned that using the guard could fuel “civil unrest”.Days later, the seventh circuit court of appeals upheld Perry’s ruling that denied a White House request to deploy national guard troops on Chicago streets in response to a lawsuit brought by the city of Chicago and Illinois.But on Friday the Trump administration asked the supreme court to pause those rulings and permit Trump to deploy troops in Illinois, boosting efforts to send the national guard into the Chicago area.Elsewhere, on Monday a three-judge appeals court panel ruled 2-1 that the Trump administration can send the national guard to Portland, lifting Immergut’s ruling and allowing some 200 federalized guard troops to be sent to the city to protect federal buildings.Responding to the ruling, Oregon’s attorney general said if the decision is allowed to stand Trump would have “unilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification”.More broadly, scholars and other experts voice strong criticism of the administration’s legal claims.“Trump is abusing the laws that authorize domestic military deployment in a crisis, and the courts are starting to push back,” said Liza Goitein, the Brennan Center’s senior director of liberty and national security.“In the United States, federal armed forces cannot be used to execute the law except when civilian authorities have been completely overwhelmed. As judges in Oregon and Illinois have recognized, the facts on the ground simply don’t justify deployment of the military.“A court could reach the opposite conclusion only by extending a dangerous level of deference to the president, effectively giving him free rein to use the military as a domestic police force. That would be contrary to American principles and traditions, and it would pose a grave threat to democracy and individual liberty.”Not surprisingly, some recent rulings by district judges have outraged Maga world and top Trump officials, who have decried them in incendiary terms. The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called Immergut’s ruling “legal insurrection”, which some analysts worry could incite violence.Trump, too, fired back at Immergut’s ruling. “I wasn’t served well by the people who pick judges,” Trump told reporters soon after the ruling, seemingly forgetting he had nominated her, and then misidentifying her sex. “Portland is burning to the ground … That judge ought to be ashamed of himself.”Trump’s attacks on Immergut and earlier dust-ups with judges who ruled against the administration were advanced this month by El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele, who urged the Trump administration to emulate his policies and impeach “corrupt judges”.“If you don’t impeach the corrupt judges, you CANNOT fix the country,” Bukele tweeted, sparking multi-billionaire and Maga ally Elon Musk to retweet it as “essential”.But legal experts say the ruling by Immergut and other district judges who have pushed back hard against administration policies are fully warranted and reasonable, given extreme moves by Trump on immigration, crime and other fronts they deem unjustified or illegal.“I think the strong district court response in these contexts is striking,” said Columbia law professor Gillian Metzger. “It’s occurring in other Trump contexts as well – for example, the administration’s efforts to deny appropriated funding or target law firms – but immigration enforcement and calling out the national guard are traditional executive areas where you’d expect the president to get deference.”Metzger said: “Judges are perceiving an administration that is asserting power in novel ways and at odds with basic norms and longstanding practices – eg, employing the national guard in a partisan fashion over the objections of state and local leaders, deploying Ice officers in aggressive ways, etc – and at times violating governing statutes.”Other legal scholars go further.“The problem is not rogue judges, but a rogue president. The problem is not what judges are doing but what the president is doing,” said former Massachusetts judge Nancy Gertner, who now teaches law at Harvard.Gertner pointed in particular to Young’s ruling in a deportation case involving efforts by the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to deport pro-Palestinian non-citizen students and professors who protested against Israel’s actions in Gaza.In his ruling, Young wrote that Trump’s conduct violated his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States” and the actions of his administration represented a “full-throated assault on the first amendment”.Gertner noted that the “case involved sending people to countries without due process. We gave due process to people involved with the September 11 attacks. Sending people to countries where they had no relatives, NO TIES, was a flagrant violation of law.“What the Trump administration has been doing is so unprecedented and so far from normal and so illegal it makes sense that judges have issued injunctions stopping them.”Luttig stressed: “The judges of the United States will not be threatened and intimidated by this president and this attorney general. They will continue to honor their oaths to the constitution, which means the president and attorney general can expect loss after loss after loss, at least before the nation’s lower federal courts.” More

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      Senate vote fails again as shutdown becomes one of the longest in US history

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      One of the longest government shutdowns in US history just got longer after the Senate again failed to pass a funding resolution after a majority of Democrats continued their pressure campaign after the No Kings nationwide weekend protests.The Senate vote fell for the 11th time with a vote of 50 to 43, with no new defectors from the Democratic side.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, has for weeks kept the House shuttered on an extended recess, and defended his strategy as necessary to push Senate Democrats into passing the House’s continuing resolution without policy additions. But Democrats have refused to support the measure without provisions addressing healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.Johnson, in a Monday morning press conference flanked by other Republican congressional leaders including Andy Harris, the House freedom caucus chair, said the reason for the shutdown was to appease Democratic voters, particularly putting blame on the No Kings rallies.“It is exactly why Chuck Schumer is pandering, in this whole charade. We’ve explained from the very beginning, the shutdown is about one thing and one thing alone: Chuck Schumer’s political survival,” Johnson said.The stuffed vote also came after a prominent Republican lawmaker, representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Monday morning criticized Johnson’s strategy, calling on the House to return to session immediately.“The House should be in session working,” Greene wrote on X. “We should be finishing appropriations. Our committees should be working. We should be passing bills that make President Trump’s executive orders permanent. I have no respect for the decision to refuse to work.”The criticism from Greene, who is aligned with the right flank of her party, is a noticeable crack in support for Johnson’s hardline approach from the GOP over an extended congressional recess. Since 19 September, when members last cast votes, the chamber has not been conducting legislative business, although members have staged press conferences.The shutdown, which began on 1 October, has become the longest full government shutdown in US history, and the third-longest when including partial shutdowns. If it extends past Tuesday, it will surpass the 21-day shutdown of 1995-96 to claim second place. Only the 35-day partial shutdown during Donald Trump’s first term, from December 2018 to January 2019, has lasted longer.The shutdown’s impact grew more severe on Monday as the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration began furloughing approximately 1,400 federal employees responsible for maintaining and modernizing the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, is scheduled to address the furloughs at a press conference in Las Vegas later on Monday, a spokesperson told the Guardian.Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, speculated on Monday, citing “friends in the Senate”, that the impasse might soon break.“I think the [Senate minority leader Chuck] Schumer shutdown is likely to end some time this week,” Hassett said in a CNBC interview. He reasoned that some Democrats had been reluctant to reopen the government ahead of last Saturday’s No Kings protests against Trump, which drew millions of demonstrators nationwide to rebuke corruption and authoritarianism. More

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      Trump nominee reportedly boasted of ‘Nazi streak’ in group chats

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      A Donald Trump nominee who is scheduled for a confirmation hearing this week told other Republicans he “has a Nazi streak” and that holidays commemorating Black people should be “eviscerated,” according to a report based on a private group chat.Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia to serve as special counsel of the United States, a role charged in part with safeguarding federal whistleblowers from retaliation. His confirmation hearing is set for Thursday.Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told other Republicans in a group chat that the Martin Luther King Jr holiday, which celebrates the civil rights icon, should be ended.“MLK Jr was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Ingrassia wrote in the messages from early 2024, Politico reports. He also wrote that holidays commemorating Black people, such as Black history month or Juneteenth, should all be “eviscerated”, though he used an Italian slur for Black people.His comment about a “Nazi streak” came amid a discussion of a Trump campaign staffer who wasn’t being deferential enough to the founding fathers being white, Politico reported. Another participant said Ingrassia “belongs in the Hitler Youth”, to which Ingrassia responded: “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.”Ingrassia’s attorney, Edward Andrew Paltzik, told the outlet that the texts could have been manipulated or lacking context, though that if they were real, they “clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor making fun of the fact that liberals outlandishly and routinely call Maga supporters ‘Nazis’”.Ingrassia, 30, has had several roles in the second Trump administration. He was a White House liaison to the justice department, then moved to the Department of Homeland Security. He was nominated in May to lead the office of special counsel, but his appointment was postponed. His critics have drawn on his public comments and inexperience for the role, as well as his support of white supremacist Nick Fuentes.Ingrassia was also accused of sexual harassment earlier this year, Politico reported. He has called the report about the alleged harassment a “vexatious political attack” and said it should be retracted.Politico reported last week on a trove of 2,900 pages of leaked chats from a Telegram group with young Republicans, in which the participants made racist comments, praised Hitler and celebrated rape.“If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr,” said Bobby Walker, who was recently made chair of the New York division.The New York Republican state committee suspended the authorization of their young Republicans chapter after its members were implicated in the chat. More

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      The Guardian view on Ukraine peace talks: Europe must ensure Zelenskyy can resist Trump’s bullying | Editorial

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      It wasn’t quite the calamity of February, when Volodymyr Zelenskyy was publicly humiliated in the Oval Office by Donald Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance. But the Ukrainian president’s latest visit to the White House on Friday was, by all accounts, a disquieting experience. Mr Trump’s public musings before the meeting suggested that his stance had hardened towards Vladimir Putin, to the strategically significant extent of being willing to sell long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv. But by the time Mr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington, the US president had changed his mind, instead lecturing his guest on the need to make territorial concessions to Russia.So far, so familiar. Since being re-elected, Mr Trump has repeatedly resiled from following up tough talk on Russia with meaningful action. Faux deadlines for Mr Putin to make substantive steps towards peace have come and gone, treated with indifference by the Kremlin. Last week, the US secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, stated that Washington was ready to “impose costs” if Russia continued the conflict. But a two-hour phone call at Mr Putin’s request was enough to defuse that threat, and for Mr Trump to once again position himself as a neutral arbitrator between two warring parties.The return of that insidious and amoral framing signifies a moment of diplomatic peril for Mr Zelenskyy. In language that is more suitable for describing a contested real-estate deal than an illegal invasion costing hundreds of thousands of lives, Mr Trump told Fox News that Mr Putin was “going to take something … he’s won certain property”. Should a planned meeting in Budapest take place between the US and Russian presidents – to be hosted by Hungary’s Putin-friendly leader, Viktor Orbán – discussion of a potential carve-up will dominate the agenda, as it did in the failed Alaska head-to-head.That prospect should concentrate minds ahead of a EU leaders’ summit later this week in Brussels. In the wake of the signing of the Gaza peace agreement – in relation to which Mr Putin was careful to offer fulsome congratulations – Mr Trump has taken to describing himself as “the mediator president”. In grimly paradoxical fashion, there is every possibility that he will try to bully Mr Zelenskyy into an unacceptable deal that rewards Russia’s aggression, in order to burnish his supposed credentials as a supreme peacemaker.It is critical that Europe provides Ukraine with the resources and staying power which allow it to resist such pressure. Progress is reportedly being made on proposals backed by the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, which would use frozen Russian assets to secure an interest-free £122bn loan to Kyiv. Such money, however it is sourced, will be fundamental to supporting Ukraine’s defence effort into next year. At a more symbolic level, there are also signs of a new determination to find ways to circumvent Mr Orbán’s opposition to advancing Ukraine’s bid for EU membership.As Mr Trump pursues his mercurial path, guided only by vanity, mercantilism and admiration for the exercise of brute force, EU leaders will need to be creative and determined in ensuring that Ukraine’s interests are adequately defended in the weeks and months to come. Mr Putin is playing the US president again, exploiting the absence of a moral compass in Washington. More than ever, a robust counterweight is required on the other side of the Atlantic. More

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      Trump says China ‘doesn’t want’ to invade Taiwan and reaffirms trust in Xi

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      Donald Trump has expressed doubt on Monday that China would invade Taiwan as he voiced confidence in his relationship with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, whom he will meet later this month.Trump was asked about an earlier Pentagon assessment that Xi could in the next six years attempt to seize Taiwan, a self-governing democracy claimed by China.“I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that,” Trump told reporters as he met the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese.Speaking of Xi’s designs on Taiwan, Trump said: “Now that doesn’t mean it’s not the apple of his eye, because probably it is, but I don’t see anything happening.”Without explicitly saying he would authorize force to defend Taiwan, Trump said that China knows that the United States “is the strongest military power in the world by far”.“We have the best of everything, and nobody’s going to mess with that. And I don’t see that at all with President Xi,” Trump said.“I think we’re going to get along very well as it pertains to Taiwan and others,” he said.Trump will hold his first meeting with Xi of his second term when the leaders of the world’s two largest economies visit South Korea later this month for an Asia-Pacific summit.Trump said his priority was reaching a “fair” trade deal with China. He declined to answer a question on whether he would sacrifice US support for Taiwan as part of an agreement with Xi.“I want to be good to China. I love my relationship with President Xi. We have a great relationship,” Trump said.The United States recognizes only Beijing and not Taiwan, where the Chinese mainland’s defeated nationalists fled in 1949 after losing the civil war to the communists and which has since turned into a flourishing democracy and technology hub.Under US law, the United States is required to provide Taiwan weapons for its self-defense but Washington has been deliberately ambiguous on whether it would use force to defend Taiwan.Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden repeatedly suggested he would order the US military to intervene if China moved on Taiwan. More

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      The massive No Kings protests may mark a new American political posture | Moira Donegan

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      Over the past week or so, it seemed as if some Republican leaders were hoping that Saturday’s No Kings demonstrations – the marches and rallies hosted by a coalition of liberal groups across the country and worldwide – would turn violent. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, called them “Hate America” rallies, a moniker that was quickly picked up by other Republicans, and described the No Kings protests as a crucible of potential riots, representing “all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people”. “You’re gonna bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat party,” he said. Tom Emmer, a representative for Minnesota, described the rallies as a product of the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic party. And Roger Marshall, a senator from Kansas, fantasized that the protests would require action by the national guard. Others, such as the attorney general, Pam Bondi, mused about who might be paying the protesters to show up – an idea that seemed to dismiss the notion that anyone might oppose Donald Trump’s agenda for principled, rather than cynical, reasons.At times they sounded almost wistful. Republicans, the president himself chief among them, have been fervently endeavoring to cast those who oppose their authoritarian consolidation of power as enemies – contemptible un-Americans who lack virtue, common values, or the protection of the law. In a world where it was once considered the height of inappropriate partisanship for Hillary Clinton to refer to a “basket of deplorables” among Trump voters or Barack Obama to mourn the conservatives who “cling to guns or religion”, it barely registered as news on Thursday when the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News: “The Democrat party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”But no matter how fervently and how deeply the Trump regime appears to hate the American people, the No Kings protests that brought millions to the streets on Saturday suggests that the American people hate them even more. In the densely packed streets of cities from New York to Austin to Oakland to St Augustine, Florida, the massive protests took on a tone of jubilant contempt, with Trump and his various lackeys derided on signs and in effigies, with jokes that ranged from the high-minded to the vulgar. At a protest in San Francisco, I saw one man holding a sign that quoted Walt Whitman, walking near a woman making a vulgar reference to Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. A number of people donned inflatable character costumes – I saw a starfish, a teddy bear, two unicorns, a rooster and a pickle. They originated from Portland’s protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and national guard deployments as cheeky ways to mock the Trump administration’s claims that the city was “war-torn” and in need of armed invasion. If the anti-Trump resistance movements of his first administration were characterized by a kind of self-serious righteousness, those of the No Kings era have devolved into irreverence and humor. At times I was reminded of a peculiar feeling I have sometimes had, in the desperate hours after funerals or bad breakups, when I have been crying for so long that I find I’ve started laughing.The No Kings protests have been criticized for their capaciousness and indefinite agenda, and it is true that the demonstrations are the product of several large liberal groups and bring together people whose politics and inclinations would not ordinarily mix. At San Francisco’s protest, I saw the signature red rose of the democratic socialists, the Aztec eagle of the United Farm Workers, and a gold lamé sign held aloft by a largely unclothed man who declared himself a libertarian – in addition to a motley mix of men wearing the powdered wigs and tricorn hats of the founding fathers, women with white feathered sleeves and hoods posing as bald eagles, and a staggering number of people who wrapped themselves in the American flag.The hodgepodge of symbolism might reflect the chaotic and disorganized nature of the anti-Trump coalition – which, containing as it does the majority of the US’s 340 million people, is rife with contradictions. This has long been a problem for the Democrats: the party fears that their tent is too big, their base is too far from swing voters, and the coalitions of Obama and Joe Biden are too fractured and fragile to ever be maintained. But Trump has perhaps created a new kind of glue that can hold together a different kind of political movement: something that vast swaths of the American people hate even more than they hate each other.Amid the density of references and imagery, No Kings might also indicate a new political posture being born: a left-liberal popular front that mixes principle with irreverence. The aspiration of No Kings, in a way, is to abolish itself – to rebuild, perhaps a little sturdier and more honest this time, the kind of constitutional system in which law and persuasion replace Trump’s model of violence and domination. To put it another way: the people at the No Kings rallies all agree that they want to restore the kinds of liberal-democratic conditions that will enable them to disagree with one another.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt any rate, the violence that the Trump regime seemed to long for did not materialize. In San Francisco, an organizer speaking into a megaphone urged attenders to ignore any pro-Trump agitators they might encounter, and to not engage with any federal agents. “If you see uniformed feds outside a building,” he warned the crowd, “it’s bait.” Before the marches, some seemed frightened of what might happen – whether Trump-aligned federal forces might crack down with mass arrests, or whether pro-Trump militias might instigate a fight. But the demonstrations seem to have been remarkably peaceful, even cheerful, avoiding provocations and meeting virtually no violence from Trump-aligned forces. In New York, an estimated 100,000 marchers participated in No Kings events across the five boroughs, and an official Twitter account associated with the New York police department reported that there had been no arrests of protesters.Trump appeared disappointed. On Saturday evening, after the marches had largely disbanded and the millions who had turned out to oppose him went home, he took to Truth Social, his proprietary social media platform, to post an AI-generated video of himself. In the cartoon, Trump – wearing a crown – flies a fighter jet over the No Kings protests, and dumps feces on the protesting citizens. It was a peevish, petulant little display of contempt – the kind of behavior that you would punish in a child but which has become bog standard for the president of the United States. He evidently wanted Americans to know that he hates them. The feeling is mutual.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist 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