House and Senate Democrats gather outside the Supreme Court to hold a press conference on Jan 30 to reject President Donald Trump's executive order banning refugees from select Muslim nations. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Democrats rally against Trump's immigration order

House and Senate Democrats — joined by thousands of protesters — took to the streets Monday night, braving freezing temperatures to rally at the foot of the Supreme Court against President Donald Trump’s travel ban in one of the most vocal denouncements of the controversial order yet.

The rally mirrored similar protests over the weekend and was backed by the party's top elected officials — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who stood with other Democrats and shoulder-to-shoulder with demonstrators as they led chants and held up signs condemning Trump’s plan.


“We will fight it with everything we have and we will win this fight,” said Schumer, who added the order would “make us unsafe.”

But Schumer, Pelosi and other Democrats who addressed the crowd could hardly be heard beyond their cocoon at the base of the Supreme Court steps. More than a thousand demonstrators surrounded the lawmakers and even filled the street between the Supreme Court and the Capitol, at one point ripping down caution tape meant to pen in the protesters and keep them off the road.

“No Bannon, no wall,” the crowd chanted, targeting Trump’s senior adviser Steve Bannon before breaking into a rendition of “This Land is Your Land” when Democrats were having technical difficulties with their microphones. Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) also led several lawmakers in a verse of the iconic Woody Guthrie song as they entered the rally.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were particularly popular speakers, with isolated cries of "Warren-Booker 2020" also singling out Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a decorated disabled veteran of the Iraq War, drew gratitude from the rallygoers and her own separate pleas to challenge Trump in 2020.

The demonstrators chanted "do your job" at the Democrats on several occasions and turned their ire toward the House speaker at another point, leading a chant of “Paul Ryan sucks” that spread through the crowd.

The rally capped a day of Democratic resistance to Trump’s new immigration restrictions as the party intensified its pushback to the president’s move.

Shortly before the rally, Senate Democrats launched a bid to force a vote on repealing the executive order. Senate Republicans rejected the demand for a vote on overturning Trump's immigration executive order, underscoring the limits of the minority's power to force substantive changes to the policy that sparked massive protests over the weekend.

A separate Democratic push to postpone a vote on secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson also fell to a GOP objection — but Democrats forced the postponement of a committee vote on confirming Treasury secretary pick Steven Mnuchin and other panel meetings, as the party moves to slow down the Senate's procedural machinery in an effort to draw attention to Trump's immigration order.

"President Trump's Muslim ban is unnecessary, it's unconstitutional, and it's un-American," California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who led 26 fellow Democrats on the bill overturning Trump's order, said in a floor speech.

Schumer followed by pressing Tillerson to clarify where he stands on the immigration restrictions, which include an indefinite halt to the acceptance of Syrian refugees, before the full Senate votes to confirm him. The former ExxonMobil CEO "appeared to reject" the prospect of such broad curbs on immigration during his confirmation, Schumer said on the floor.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton objected on behalf of Republicans, echoing Trump in a jab at Schumer's tearful weekend condemnation of the immigration order. "Where were those tears the last eight years when President Obama's foreign policy created all these refugees?" Cotton asked.

Heading into their evening rally on the steps of the Supreme Court, Democrats were realistic about their chances of getting the executive order overturned in Congress, admitting it was more about keeping up the resistance than forcing Republican cooperation to help roll back the refugee ban.

Similarly, Tillerson and Mnuchin remain on track for eventual confirmation, despite Democrats' plans to vote against them. They control only 48 seats, and a Cabinet nominee just needs a simple majority of senators to advance, so a unified Republican Party can easily approve the president's nominees.

“There probably aren’t enough [Republicans] to actually move legislation forward that would overturn the executive order, which the president could veto anyway,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) told POLITICO. “But I don’t think there’s any chance [the ban] gets turned into law and codified by the Congress. I just can’t imagine Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy wanting to waste the weeks of effort it would take to get a bill to pass Congress.”

Beyer was one of more than 50 Democrats who camped out at airports across the country this weekend to help foreign travelers being detained by customs agents.

Now those lawmakers — several of whom say they were prevented by airport security from talking to customs officials — are firing off letters to the Department of Homeland Security, asking for clarification about why they were denied access during the weekend chaos. Several top House Democrats have also demanded an “emergency” meeting with DHS Secretary John Kelly this week.

In the meantime, Democrats say they’re looking to the judicial branch to provide relief for refugees and travelers from the seven banned majority-Muslim countries. A handful of federal judges blocked parts of Trump’s ban over the weekend but its unclear how long those legal orders will last as the executive action continues to be implemented.

“We don’t have enough votes, at least enough Democratic votes in the House to flip this back. So the court’s going to be our best short-term bet,” Beyer said. The rally is "not on the Capitol steps but on the Supreme Court steps because the court is our best recourse.”

Patty Murray of Washington and Kamala Harris of California led 30 fellow Democratic senators on a late Monday call for Trump to roll back the order, referencing "our outrage" over the travel ban that the group called "fundamentally un-American, discriminatory and an unconscionable violation of our values."