WASHINGTON: Thousands of people have gathered in Washington as a plan of protest against President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan 20th.
Activists for women’s rights, racial justice and other causes rallied against incoming policies they say will threaten their constitutional rights during the Republican’s second term.
Some in the crowd wore the pink hats that marked the much-larger protest against Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. They wound through downtown amid a light rain, past the White House and toward the Lincoln Memorial along the National Mall for the “People’s March.”
Protests against Trump’s inauguration are smaller this time, in part because the U.S. women’s rights movement seems more fractured to many activists after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Organizers predicted 50,000 would attend, while local police expected about 25,000. More than 300 other marches were planned nationwide.
Reproductive rights groups joined activists for civil rights, the environment and other causes in organizing the march against Trump. He is preparing to take office on Monday, having lost his first reelection bid in 2020 to President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
In both of his victories, Trump defeated candidates who each would have been the first female U.S. president: Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Harris last year. This time, Trump won all seven battleground states to secure the Electoral College needed for the presidency, and carried the popular vote in a first for Republicans in two decades.
Trump has vowed to make sweeping changes on day one, from immigration raids to dismantling parts of the federal government.–Reuters
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