Thousands of protesters from across the country — including some of the biggest names in the anti-vaccination movement — gathered Sunday for a rally against vaccine mandates in the nation’s capital.
Almost two years into a pandemic that has killed more than 860,000 Americans, the gathering on the Mall was a jarring spectacle: A crowd of demonstrators, many unmasked, decrying vaccine mandates in the middle of a city that has adopted mask and vaccine mandates to reduce sickness and death from the surge of the virus’s omicron variant, which has battered D.C. for weeks.
Organizers had estimated that 20,000 people would attend the rally, marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, according to a permit issued by the National Park Service. A smaller crowd of several thousand had arrived on the Mall by early Sunday afternoon.
Some were white-haired; others were being pushed in strollers. Most were White and many wore gear with slogans supporting former president Donald Trump. A group of men in front of a cart with a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag started a chant of “Let’s go Brandon” and “F--- Joe Biden” at around 10:30 a.m. to cheers. The few who wore masks risked the tirades of a man screaming “Take those masks off!” and “It’s all a lie!”
Later about 10 men wearing the insignia of the Proud Boys, an extremist group involved in the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, lingered on the Lincoln side of the Reflecting Pool.
The marchers carried posters and flags that...
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