“Let the black women lead,” organizers shouted as hundreds of demonstrators marched up Pennsylvania Avenue. “If you are not a black woman, you should not be at the front.”
As two marches converged in the District on Saturday, protesters streaming past the Capitol toward the Justice Department sought to highlight racial injustices and the disadvantages faced by black women in particular. The March for Racial Justice and the March for Black Women held independent rallies in the morning, then met in the Capitol Hill neighborhood to march together, eventually ending on the Mall.
Farah Tanis, one of the organizers of the March for Black Women, said the timing of the simultaneous events was intentional — she heard about the March for Racial Justice and wanted to host a separate march to focus on struggles black women face. Tanis, who came to the District from Brooklyn, said she appreciated the recognition black women were given on Saturday.
“That didn’t happen in the civil rights movement, or in the women’s rights movement,” Tanis said as she marched, a quartet of drums playing in the background. “It shows we are going in the right direction.”
The March for Black Women began at 9 a.m. in Seward Park, where activists spoke for nearly three hours about subjects including domestic violence, the wage gap and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rolling back Title IX protections.
The March for Racial Justice began at 10 a.m. in Lincoln Park, half a mile away, where speakers focused on police brutality and encouraged those gathered to engage in grass-roots activism rather than showing their support via social media.
“In order for things to start changing, you can’t just take a knee,” said activist and Rev. Stephen Douglass. “You’ve got to take a global stand.”
The marches were at least 1,000 strong by the time they merged at Lincoln Park. As they marched toward the Capitol, residents emerged from their rowhouses on East Capitol Street, offering water and high-fives of support.
The diverse crowd, which included toddlers, college students and veterans of the civil rights movement, chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to go.”
At points, police urged demonstrators spilling onto the roads to stay on the sidewalks.
“I pay taxes for these streets,” activist Ana Rondon retorted. “You can’t tell me to get out of the street.”
In front of the Capitol, tourists on a double-decker sightseeing bus peered down as the marchers in colorful T-shirts, carrying “Rise and Resist” signs and waving a “Love Trumps Hate” flag, passed below.
The marches fell on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, which organizers said they had not realized was Sept. 30 when they applied for permits. Organizers for the March for Racial Justice apologized and said in a statement that their “mistake highlights the need for our communities to form stronger relationships.”
But Betsy Teutsch, a 65-year-old Jewish writer, said she did not mind marching on the holiday and wanted to show her support as a white ally to the black community.
“I find marching is a very sacred experience,” said Teutsch, of Philadelphia. “You’re with a large collective. This is a chance to express Yom Kippur in a different way.”
Teutsch, like many of the marchers, said President Trump’s election underscored for her the need to get out and protest, and to address the racism that for too long has not been acknowledged in society.
“I’ve protested more in the last year then I have in the rest of my life,” she said, laughing.
To Pamela Muir, a graduate of the University of Virginia, the deadly unrest in Charlottesville this summer following a white supremacist rally felt like a “sucker-punch in the gut” that made her all the more aware about racial tensions in the United States.
“If we are silent, then we are complicit,” said Muir, a 54-year-old substitute teacher from Fairfax County. “I used to think that being a good citizen just meant voting. Now if my representatives don’t hear from me for a week, they’re surprised.”
To protest the policies of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has rolled back Obama-era efforts to ease penalties for some nonviolent drug offenders, black women turned their backs and raised their fists in front of the Justice Department. Other marchers knelt.
In front of the Trump International Hotel, some demonstrators paused to hold a “die-in” where they lay down to honor those killed by police.
Tessa Brewer, who is white, said growing up with two black brothers meant she has long been aware that police were likely to treat her differently from her brothers, which made her aware of racial injustice from a young age.
“Most people have hobbies, like athletics and art,” said Brewer, 20. “This is what I focus on.”
She had the names of 47 black victims of police brutality written in black marker on herself. Brewer said she researched the stories behind each of the names.
“I’m wearing 47 names, but there are hundreds more,” she had written on a yellow sign.
Mr. Trump berated Mr. Price in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon for about two hours before heading out to meet with reporters, according to people informed about the meeting. All cabinet travel requests now must be cleared by the White House, they said.
The White House’s announcement of Mr. Price’s departure was sparse, with none of the customary thanks for his service; it said simply that he had “offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted.”
In his resignation letter to Mr. Trump, Mr. Price said: “I have spent 40 years both as a doctor and public servant putting people first. I regret that the recent events have created a distraction from these important objectives. Success on these issues is more important than any one person. In order for you to move forward without further disruption, I am officially tendering my resignation.”
Mr. Trump tapped Don J. Wright, a deputy assistant secretary for health and the director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, to serve as acting secretary. Possible candidates for a successor include Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Mr. Price’s job was on the line since the first of a string of reports by Politico, on Sept. 19, about his extensive use of chartered aircraft. The president has fumed privately and publicly about Mr. Price’s actions. Hoping to assuage Mr. Trump, the secretary offered on Thursday to reimburse the government $51,887 — which he said represented the cost of his seat on the trips — of the at least $400,000 spent. But it was not enough to save his job.
Mr. Price, a physician and a former Republican congressman from Georgia who had long opposed Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, served as a point man on Mr. Trump’s drive to scrap the law. In July, Mr. Trump said he would fire Mr. Price if he did not get the votes for the legislation.
“He better get them,” Mr. Trump told an audience with Mr. Price at his side. “Otherwise, I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’”
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He said it in a jocular fashion, and his audience took it as a jest, but in fact the president has been privately simmering about Mr. Price over the unsuccessful efforts to pass health care legislation in the Senate. While a bill passed the House, the latest effort collapsed this week when enough Senate Republicans defected to deprive Mr. Trump of a majority.
Mr. Price had been under fire from the start. During his confirmation hearing in January, Senate Democrats pressed him on the more than $100,000 in pharmaceutical and medical stocks he owned. Democrats said that Mr. Price had understated the value of his 400,613 shares in an Australian company, Innate Immunotherapeutics. He defended himself, saying, “Everything that I did was ethical, above board, legal and transparent.”
In just eight months since taking office, Mr. Trump has fired or lost a chief of staff, a chief strategist, a national security adviser, a press secretary, two communications directors, a deputy chief of staff, a deputy national security adviser, the F.B.I. director and numerous other aides and advisers.
Mr. Price may not be the only senior official to face anger over travel bills. In recent days, a slew of reports about the fast-lane habits of the cabinet have resulted in a mounting public relations headache for the Trump administration, which is stocked by billionaires accustomed to using private jets.
Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, used a chartered airplane for several flights, including a $12,000 trip to deliver a speech celebrating a new professional hockey team in Las Vegas. Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has spent more than $58,000 on chartered and military flights, and David Shulkin, the veterans affairs secretary, took his wife on a 10-day trip to Europe that mixed business meetings and sightseeing, according to The Washington Post.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asked about using a $25,000-an-hour military plane for his European honeymoon and later used a government jet to fly to Fort Knox in Kentucky in August, a trip that offered him a clear view of a solar eclipse, although he later disclaimed any interest.
Other cabinet members issued statements explaining their travel practices. The Small Business Administration said its chief, Linda McMahon, had used private air services and that “on the rare occasion” she had, she “covered the entire cost out of her own pocket.” Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, travels on personally owned aircraft “at zero cost to U.S. taxpayers” because she “neither seeks, nor accepts, any reimbursement,” the department said.
The sensitivity about the situation within the cabinet was clear on Friday when Mr. Zinke delivered an energy policy address to the Heritage Foundation. He opened his speech by lashing out at what he called “a little B.S.” on chartered flights.
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“I fly coach,” he said, adding that he uses chartered or military flights only when necessary. “Every time I travel, I submit the travel plans to the ethics department,” he added. “I will always be honest and up front about my travel.”
Current and former West Wing officials said oversight of Mr. Trump’s cabinet was so lax in the past that Stephen K. Bannon, then the president’s chief strategist, requested meetings once every 60 days to review each member’s agenda and travel itinerary. The secretaries did not flag the questionable flights, the officials said.
John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff who has tried to impose a military discipline on a chaotic West Wing with mixed success, has ordered the president’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, to revamp the review process for flights and set limits on prices that cabinet members can pay for transportation, according to two people briefed on the plans.
At a recent meeting with legislative affairs aides for cabinet agencies, Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, warned that they should be prepared for additional reports on cabinet secretaries’ expenses, according to a person who attended. Mr. Short said that agencies should assume everything will be made public eventually — and urged the aides to come clean with the president’s staff first.
Additionally, Rick Dearborn, a deputy White House chief of staff tasked with overseeing the cabinet, has been in the president’s cross hairs, according to an aide familiar with the situation. Mr. Dearborn accompanied Mr. Trump on his visit to Alabama last week to support Senator Luther Strange, who lost to Mr. Moore in the state’s Republican primary. On the flight back to Washington, the president lashed out at Mr. Dearborn and White House political director Bill Stepien because he was left supporting a candidate who seemed likely to lose, said the aide who was not authorized to be named.
Two people on the plane insisted the president never chastised his aides. Another adviser said Mr. Dearborn and Mr. Stepien had both cautioned against the trip, but caught Mr. Trump’s wrath once it went badly.
Critics were unmollified by Mr. Price’s departure. “While his resignation ends his time in the government, it does not end the private jet scandal that others in the Trump administration, including Mnuchin, Pruitt and Zinke, find themselves in,” Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a progressive watchdog group, said in a statement.
“This administration,” he added, “seems to believe that the government and the taxpayers serve them rather than the other way around.”
Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said the episode demonstrated a lack of judgment in the administration.
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“President Trump talked a big game about draining the swamp, yet he continues to surround himself with staff and administration officials who behave as though a separate set of rules apply to them,” he said. “That must end.”
Correction: September 29, 2017
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the events leading up to Secretary Price’s resignation. It was President Trump, not former President Barack Obama, who threatened to fire Mr. Price.
