Another round of anti-Trump protests hits US cities

NEW YORK (AFP): Thousands of protesters rallied Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the United States for a second major round of demonstrations against Donald Trump and his hard-line policies.

In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans like “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.”

Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting “No ICE, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” a reference to the role of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in rounding up migrants.

In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process.

The administration is carrying out “a direct assault on the idea of the rule of law and the idea that the government should be restrained from abusing the people who live here in the United States,” Benjamin Douglas, 41, told AFP outside the White House.

Wearing a keffiyeh and carrying a sign calling for the freeing of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian student protester arrested last month, Douglas said individuals were being singled out as “test cases to rile up xenophobia and erode long-standing legal protections.”

“We are in a great danger,” said 73-year-old New York protester Kathy Valy, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, adding that their stories of how Nazi leader Adolf Hitler rose to power “are what’s happening here.”

“The one thing is that Trump is a lot more stupid than Hitler or than the other fascists,” she said. “He’s being played… and his own team is divided.”