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White nationalist groups marched with torches through the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on Aug. 11. (Mykal McEldowney/The Indianapolis Star via AP, File)
Richard Spencer, who in August led white nationalists and white supremacists in a torchlight march across the University of Virginia campus that touched off a weekend of deadly clashes, returned Saturday night to Charlottesville.
Spencer, a white nationalist, posted video on social media of followers carrying torches to the statue of Robert E. Lee, which the city has sought to remove.
The march coincided with the university’s celebration of its bicentennial.
“It was a planned flash mob,” Spencer said in an interview Saturday night. “It was a great success. We’ve been planning this for a long time.”
“We wanted to prove that we came in peace in May, we came in peace in August, and we come again in peace,” he said.
Their message, he said, is that, “Our identity matters. We are not going to stand by and allow people to tear down these symbols of our history and our people – and we’re going to do this again.”
Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer sent a tweet denouncing the march: “Another despicable visit by neo-Nazi cowards. You’re not welcome here! Go home! Meantime we’re looking at all our legal options. Stay tuned.”
Wes Gobar, the leader of the U-Va. Black Student Alliance, who was trying to finish a paper for class when he learned of the rally, said it was difficult balancing studies while bracing for the next burst of hatred that might seize Charlottesville. On Saturday, some members of his group knelt in protest during the National Anthem and the school’s “Good Old Song.”
Spencer, a U-Va. graduate, said he was unaware that the school was marking its bicentennial. They have been planning this “for a long time.”
WVIR-TV reported that Spencer and his group arrived at Emancipation Park, which is not on the university campus, about 7:45 p.m., and departed 15 minutes later.
The video Spencer posted show him and his crowd chanting, “You will not replace us.”
They promised to keep returning to Charlottesville, which they argued had become symbolic of their right to speak and also had come to symbolize the tearing down of symbols of the nation’s history.
“You will not erase us.”
“We are about our heritage. Not just us Virginians. Not just as Southerners. But as white people . . . we’ll take a stand.
“You’ll have to get used to us.
“We’re going to come back again and again and again.”
Then they began singing about Dixie.
They also chanted: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.”
Officials with the Charlottesville police department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday night.
Spokesmen for the University of Virginia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The August march at U-Va. — with people chanting “Jews will not replace us!” — touched off violence between demonstrators and counterprotesters the next day. A man drove into a crowd, killing one woman and injuring others, and two police officers who were monitoring the protests died when their helicopter crashed.
In the days that followed, several public universities denied Spencer a platform.
Last week, the University of Florida reluctantly agreed to allow Spencer to speak later this month, saying it had no choice because as a state institution, it must all expression of all viewpoints.
The university, in Gainesville, Fla., is charging the National Policy Institute, which Spencer leads, $10,000 to rent a campus facility and to provide security inside the university’s performing arts center.
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In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Schumer said: “The president wanted to make another run at repeal and replace, and I told the president that’s off the table. If he wants to work together to improve the existing health care system, we Democrats are open to his suggestions. A good place to start might be the Alexander-Murray negotiations that would stabilize the system and lower costs.”
Senators Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, have held on-again, off-again talks about a bipartisan plan to stabilize the insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, which have been roiled, in part, by the persistent uncertainty over the fate of the law.
Their negotiations were revived after the latest Republican repeal-and-replace bill, sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, collapsed because of a lack of votes.
An aide to Mr. Schumer said the timing of Mr. Trump’s call was particularly awkward, given that the administration had just announced rules to expand the right of employers to deny women coverage for contraception on religious grounds — a move widely condemned by Democrats.
The Trump administration, the aide said, needed to stop sabotaging the law before bipartisan negotiations could begin.
Mr. Trump has established an easy rapport with “Chuck and Nancy,” as he likes to call Mr. Schumer, a fellow New Yorker, and Ms. Pelosi, of California. The three bonded last month over a dinner of honey sesame crispy beef in the White House, and their discussions have gone beyond the fiscal deal and how to protect young immigrants brought to this country illegally from being deported.
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They have prodded Mr. Trump to put aside the Republican credo of “repeal and replace” in favor of more modest tweaks to the existing law. They have urged him to preserve subsidies, known as cost-sharing reductions, paid to insurers under the health law to help low-income consumers pay for out-of-pocket health expenses like co-payments and deductibles.
But Mr. Schumer’s quick rebuff of Mr. Trump on Friday shows the limits of the partnership. The senator has said that much will depend on whether the president keeps his promise to protect the young undocumented immigrants who are beneficiaries of the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
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“Whether he pivots or not will be one of the most fundamental questions of this administration,” Mr. Schumer said recently. “It’s the $64,000 question. The only way it can happen is if we have a successful negotiation on DACA, and secondly whether we get health care.”
The president’s call is sure to further rankle Republicans, with whom Mr. Trump has had increasingly tense relations over their failure to knock down a key pillar of Mr. Obama’s legacy.
Mr. Trump’s latest move comes at a sensitive moment. The White House is working with Republicans on an ambitious plan to rewrite the tax code, perhaps the party’s last chance for a major legislative victory this year.
The president is also widely expected to decline to recertify the Iran nuclear agreement, a decision that would kick the matter to Congress, which would have to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran and potentially blow up the deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump’s tweet about his call to Mr. Schumer came during another busy weekend morning on social media for him. He railed against late-night talk show hosts and NBC News for what he said was their persistently negative and inaccurate coverage of him.
But he also praised The Washington Post — a frequent target of his “fake news” rants — for an article about how Mr. Trump’s fund-raising appeals to his political base have swelled the coffers of the Republican Party.
And in what has become an almost weekly ritual, Mr. Trump promised residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida that the federal government was mustering resources to deal with the next approaching hurricane, Nate. “Please listen to your local authorities be safe!” he wrote.
For Mr. Trump, it was a relatively rare weekend in Washington. On Saturday evening, however, he was scheduled to fly to Greensboro, N.C., to attend a roundtable discussion and dinner with Republican donors.
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