Crowds of protestors gathered in cities and towns across the nation on Saturday to protest against President Trump. And there is no sign of a breakthrough to end the government shutdown.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Ho, ho. Donald Trump has got to go. Hey, hey. Ho, ho.
DON GONYEA, HOST:
Protesters in cities and towns across the nation took to the streets yesterday to challenge the Trump administration. One of those attending a No Kings rally here in Washington, D.C., was Jane Campos (ph).
JANE CAMPOS: Well, I think we are at risk of losing our democracy, and we really need to stand up and say enough is enough.
GONYEA: But Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson slammed the demonstrations as a hate America rally. Joining us now to discuss the protests and much more is NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Good morning, Danielle.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Don.
GONYEA: So how do you assess the significance of these demonstrations?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, they’re definitely significant. I mean, first of all, they were huge. You saw these full city blocks just densely packed with people in New York, D.C., Chicago. You saw some big protests worldwide and still sizable protests in smaller cities, suburbs and small towns.
But also, I just keep thinking back to covering protests right after Trump was first inaugurated in 2017. You immediately had the Women’s March. You had those demonstrations at airports about immigration, pro-science demonstrations. But they were all separate.
This has been a slower build, but it’s like you’re seeing all of that energy rolled into kind of one big protest movement. And furthermore, as Trump has gone further and faster with his agenda this time, these protests feel existential. They’re not about issues. As the protesters keep saying, this is about democracy itself.
GONYEA: And the president, meanwhile, continues to make foreign policy a top priority. He talked on the phone to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin last week before hosting Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House. That was on Friday. What would you say is the state of play when it comes to those relations?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, it’s really striking to me how big events keep happening in this whole saga, and yet we haven’t seen President Trump make a lot of headway. There was that disastrous Oval Office meeting earlier this year where Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice President Vance came to a near-shouting match. There was that meeting in Alaska with the Russian president on U.S. soil. That was momentous. And there were several foreign leaders coming to the White House to talk about peace this year. And then this week, this two-hour phone call with Putin and Zelenskyy visiting the White House. And yet for all of that sounded fury, there just hasn’t been a lot of movement.
GONYEA: Anything come out of these latest talks?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, one big topic was these long-range Tomahawk missiles. Prior to that Thursday Putin call, Trump had signaled he might supply those missiles to Ukraine. But after that call, talking to Zelenskyy, he seemed to have softened on it, saying he hopes to end the war without those missiles. But we do now have some more big meetings to come. Trump says he will meet Putin soon in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss an end to the war. And in addition, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he will hold talks with the Russian foreign minister before all of that. But as we’ve seen, none of that means progress.
GONYEA: And then finally, Danielle, it is Day 19 of the government shutdown. Any glimpse of a deal?
KURTZLEBEN: No, in a word.
GONYEA: OK.
KURTZLEBEN: On Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats alike are dug in, and Trump doesn’t seem himself to be in a hurry to fix things. He’s using the shutdown to pick winners and losers within the government. He has said he’s trying to hurt what he calls Democrat programs. And meanwhile, while some workers are starting to go unpaid, he says he’s going to make sure that some – military, FBI, ICE – that they will get paid.
Now, one more development. The administration has been trying to do layoffs across government during the shutdown. They said they had planned around 4,000 at one point. A U.S. district court judge issued a temporary restraining order halting some of those layoffs. What happened was some unions representing government employees argued, look, you can’t just shut down programs because funding runs out, and the judge agreed with them.
But that restraining order only protects some employees. And so the Trump administration, as of Friday, had only paused work on a small share of the firings. Now, meanwhile, White House Budget Director Russ Vought – he said layoffs eventually could total more than 10,000. So this fight just is not going to go away.
GONYEA: That’s NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Danielle, thank you, as always.
KURTZLEBEN: Thank you, Don.
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