“I can’t feel my toes anymore,” one woman said as she jumped up and down.

“My fingers are numb,” a college student told her friends, extending her hand toward them.

But they kept going – down the steps, into the street, past the Washington Monument and, eventually, into Lafayette Square across from the White House – along with thousands of others who gathered for the fourth annual Women’s March on Washington.

Women across the country sent a final rebuke to President Donald Trump before the 2020 presidential election. Though organizers have for weeks tried to put three main issues at the center of the march – climate change, immigration and reproductive rights – Saturday’s protest remained very much about the man in the White House.

But many women said this year’s march took on a new tone. Instead of feeling angry, fearful or devastated by Trump’s ascent to the presidency, demonstrators said they felt something new: hope.

“I remember being at the first Women’s March and I started crying while we were chanting,” said Emily Anderson, 24, a District of Columbia resident who brought her dog, Yogi. “But today feels really different. It’s more hopeful. I think that tells you a lot about how far we’ve come.”

The Women’s March burst into the national consciousness in 2017, when it inspired millions to take to the streets in Washington and across the globe. On Saturday, the annual feminist demonstration drew thousands to the nation’s capital, as well as to hundreds of cities around the country, including New York, Los Angeles and Denver in demonstrations that organizers said was the beginning of the group’s 2020 efforts.

More than 70 buses from states such as Alabama, Nebraska and Pennsylvania brought activists to the rally, Women’s March officials said. Many said the upcoming election compelled them to come to Washington this year by to the upcoming election.

“This is the last Women’s March we’re going to need because Trump is going to be gone by this time next year,” said Joann Edmunds, 69, a Roanoke, Virginia, resident who attended the march with three friends. “Once he’s out of office, there won’t be the same need for it.”

Despite organizers insisting Saturday’s rally would feature neither speakers nor a stage, the march kicked off with both.

As flakes of snow began to fall and temperatures hovered near 30 degrees, Martin Luther King III took the stage to introduce his wife, humanitarian and activist Arndrea Waters King. She reminded the crowd that 2020 marks 100 years since women earned the right to vote. And this weekend is one that also honors the legacy of her late father-in-law and civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Remembering is not enough,” she said. “We must see this march as a time of rededication and renewal. . . . This can be the decade that ushers in new freedom.”

Throngs carried signs that read “Ratify the ERA now” or “See you at the voting booth,” while others held up images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The right to vote was top of mind for many in the crowd who honored the centennial anniversary of women’s suffrage with signs, suffragist costumes and sashes.

“It’s been 100 years and we’re still fighting – we don’t have equal rights,” said Nancy Railey, 59, of Garrett County, Maryland, who dressed as a suffragist for the occasion and carried a sign that read “Another 100 years?”

A pair of sisters, Paula Beaty, 55, and Elizabeth Beaty, 61, of Arizona and North Carolina, respectively, said they spent two hours Friday standing in front of the White House in suffragist regalia as men shouted questions at them.

“They asked us why we were out there and said things like ‘women here have it better than anywhere else in the world, be grateful,’ ” Elizabeth Beaty said. “It made me think how the women who fought for the right to vote stood out there for two years – we did it for two hours and that was tough.”

Waves of women from Virginia cheered lawmakers’ vote earlier in the week to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

“It’s really cool to be able to come here and say, ‘Look, we’re making progress; we got this done,’ ” said Theresa Quitto-Dickerson, 37, who attended the march with her wife of 16 years, Gin-I Dickerson, 43. The couple, from Loudoun County (Virginia), helped to lobby for the ERA.

Other issues, including environmental protection, international conflict and transgender rights, were on display at rallies around the country.

In New York, pink hats dotted Columbus Circle as marchers carried signs with pro-woman and anti-Trump slogans.

The demonstrations, though smaller in some cities than in previous years, brought together longtime marchers and new demonstrators, including student activists who said the upcoming election inspired them to participate.

Linda Salzer, 56, of Cambridge, New York, traveled more than two hours to New York City to participate.

“The movement that started in 2017 got me riled up,” she said, adding that she had since joined the League of Women Voters and other women’s activist groups.

In Los Angeles, thousands of women demonstrated at Pershing Square and Grand Park. Organizers, who coined the theme “Women Rising,” for years have sought to separate themselves from the national Women’s March organization, but collaborated on Saturday.

Hundreds of participants carried wire hangers wrapped in pink paper with the #noban hashtag on one side and “Warning: this is a surgical instrument” on the other.

Graphic designer Robin McCarthy said she felt motivated to design the hangers after antiabortion “heartbeat bills” were passed around the country. She and two friends brought thousands to hand to demonstrators.

“They’re an awful but visceral reminder,” she said, “and that’s what we want.”

At rallies in the District and New York, small groups of antiabortion activists lined the march route and shouted at demonstrators. Protesters blocked them with their signs and chanted, “My body, my choice.”

Activists said one of the march’s most powerful moments came outside the White House, as Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis led a performance of “Un violador en tu camino” (“A rapist in your path”), a feminist protest anthem that excoriates patriarchal rule, rape culture and violence against women.

Chanting in English and Spanish, the women pumped their fists and tapped their feet as they moved to the beat of drums. Many wore blindfolds, a symbol used by feminist movements around the globe.

“I just yelled at the top of my lungs in front of the White House,” shouted Yara Travieso, 33. “In Spanish!”

Trump, however, wasn’t in Washington to hear the protesters. The president departed Friday for his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he spent the weekend.

Protesters marched past Freedom Plaza, their scheduled dispersal point, and toward the Trump International Hotel, where the group broke into another round of the feminist chant.

Though the group had thinned, an all-female drum line at the front of the march kept those present dancing through the street.

The decision to have drummers – instead of celebrities or board members – lead the march was one of several changes made to rebuild relationships with disaffected activists.

Some Jewish women remained weary of the organization because of delays in removing former board members accused of anti-Semitism. But others said they felt compelled to give the group another chance.

Outside the Trump International Hotel, marchers broke into song and dance, beating drums and clapping hands to the beat of the Chilean protest chant. The rain had lifted, and the snow had stopped.

As police cars blocked traffic, the group said in unison: “It’s the cops, it’s the judges, it’s the system, it’s the president.”

The crowd bust into cheers, women pointing at Trump’s gold-plated name as they shouted together, “The rapist is you.”

They will also repay millions spent on renovating their mansion, as the couple step back from their royal duties and begin to split their time between Britain and Canada.

The announcement of a new deal for Harry and Meghan both giveth and taketh away.

The couple win their freedom from a palace-centric life of duty serving the queen as “senior working royals,” which they found suffocating – especially the intense, often harsh media coverage.

But in exchange, they give up the “HRH.”

This means that Harry and Meghan’s titles will be pruned back. Harry’s official title was “His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex” and Meghan’s was “Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex.” The statement confirms that they have lost the “HRH” part.

When Princess Diana and Sarah, the Duchess of York, divorced their royal husbands, they, too, lost their royal highness titles.

It seemed clear that Harry and Meghan wanted to keep at least some part of their titles – and hardly surprising given that they use “SussexRoyal” on their Instagram, website, and are reportedly trying to register that as part of a global trademark.

On their new website, SussexRoyal.com, Harry and Meghan included a question-and-answer on titles in the “funding” section of their site.

They ask: “Do any other members of the Royal Family hold a title and earn an income?” and answer: “yes, there is precedent for this structure and applies to other current members of the Royal Family who support the monarch and also have full time jobs external to their commitment to the monarchy.”

They may have been referring to people like Harry’s cousin Beatrice, or “Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice of York,” who works in finance.

Harry and Meghan announced they will repay $3 million in British taxpayer funds that was used to refurbish their home near Windsor Castle, a five-bedroom, former fixer-upper known as “Frogmore Cottage.”

Polls have shown that the majority of Britons are in favor of the couple giving up their life as full-time royals, but they did not want the taxpayer picking up the tab.

They will also give up the salaries they received to perform as senior working royals.

The loss of top titles was expected.

Harry will continue on as prince and the couple will still be known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, titles awarded to the couple by the queen on the occasion of their wedding.

Plenty of questions remain unanswered, including what Harry and Meghan’s immigration, work and tax status will be in Britain and Canada. It is also unknown where they will live in Canada and who will pay for their security.

Buckingham Palace said it does not comment on the details of security arrangements. “There are well established independent processes to determine the need for publicly-funded security,” it said in a statement.

Megan returned to the Vancouver area, where the couple spent the Christmas and New Year holidays. She is with the couple’s 8-month-old baby, Archie. Harry is expected to rejoin them shortly. The British media reported that the couple expect to spend the majority of their time in North America.

In a statement, the queen said, “I am pleased that together we have found a constructive and supportive way forward for my grandson and his family. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved members of my family.”

Elizabeth II continued: “I recognize the challenges they have experienced as a result of intense scrutiny over the last two years and support their wish for a more independent life.”

The queen reached out to her grandson’s wife, thanking the couple for “all their dedicated work,” and adding, “I am particularly proud of how Meghan has so quickly become one of the family.”

In a parallel statement, Buckingham Palace announced: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are grateful to Her Majesty and the Royal Family for their ongoing support as they embark on the next chapter of their lives.”

This new arrangement means “they understand that they are required to step back from Royal duties, including official military appointments. They will no longer receive public funds for Royal duties,” the statement added.

Harry, who did two tours in Afghanistan, also has several military titles he will now be relinquishing, including Captain General of the Royal Marines, an appointment handed over by his grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh.

The changes will go into effect in spring this year, the palace said.

The palace said, “With The Queen’s blessing, the Sussexes will continue to maintain their private patronages and associations. While they can no longer formally represent The Queen, the Sussexes have made clear that everything they do will continue to uphold the values of Her Majesty.”

The couple may not mind that their titles are slimmed down. They opted not to give their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, a courtesy title. He wasn’t entitled to be a prince, but he could have been Earl of Dumbarton.

And Meghan has revealed she likes to shorten names. In a documentary aired last fall she said that she simply calls her husband “H.”

For the past two years, Soltan, a U.S. citizen, had been held in Egypt on charges that he had backed an Islamist protest. He was sentenced to life in prison, and for several hundred days, he had staged a hunger strike in a bid to secure his freedom – ultimately losing more than 100 pounds.

In prison, he met Mustafa Kassem, a fellow Egyptian American who had been swept up in mass arrests while visiting family in Cairo. But when Soltan was freed, Kassem was not released alongside him. On Monday, after Kassem staged his own hunger strike that lasted more than a year, the New York taxi driver and father of two young children died in Egypt of apparent heart failure.

Kassem was held for five years in pretrial detention and then sentenced in 2018 to 15 years behind bars on charges that he took part in protests against the Egyptian government.

“It’s very devastating, and honestly it was tragic for me,” said Soltan, who after his release founded an advocacy group for other prisoners in Egypt. “It was a call I’ve been dreading for a couple of years now.”

Egyptian prisons hold tens of thousands of political prisoners. At least six U.S. citizens and two U.S. permanent residents are in Egyptian detention.

Some 300 prisoners are believed to be on hunger strikes, and how long they can survive depends largely on their willpower, fasting methods and body type.

During Soltan’s hunger strike, he only drank water with some vitamins and electrolytes, he said in a phone call this week. Even after he went in and out of a coma and suffered a pulmonary embolism, he continued the strike, only supplementing milk and yogurt products toward the end of his detention.

“They first take away your freedom, then they try to take your dignity and your willpower,” Soltan said, referring to prison authorities. “The idea of the hunger strike is to reverse that process, use whatever is left out of your willpower, ability to eat or not eat, to regain your dignity and hopefully regain your freedom.”

Hunger strikes have long been used as a form of political and personal protest. In apartheid-era South Africa, hundreds of black prisoners staged hunger strikes to call for their release. Mohandas Gandhi famously staged lengthy hunger strikes to protest British rule over India. Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have gone on hunger strikes to demand better living conditions – in 2017, more than 1,000 went on strike at once. Many men held in the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay refused food, which led to controversy over whether U.S. authorities were justified in force feeding them.

Soltan said that before beginning his strike in Egypt, he drew inspiration in part from the persistence of Irish hunger strikers.

A century ago, Terence MacSwiney, a member of Parliament and lord mayor of Cork, staged a hunger strike to demand his release from prison after he was sentenced to two years on sedition charges. Ireland was under British control at the time, and British authorities feared MacSwiney’s death could boost the Irish cause for independence. Still, they refused to release him, and MacSwiney died 74 days later.

“There was astonishment at the time that somebody could last for that long because there wasn’t much awareness of how the human body could deal with hunger striking,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a history professor at University College Dublin. “It captured international attention because it was a powerful image of the Irish republic against the British Empire. It generated enormous emotion.”

Decades later, during the violent period of unrest in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, hunger strikers drew inspiration from earlier strikers such as MacSwiney, and some managed to achieve their demands. Dolours and Marian Price, sisters who were arrested for their involvement in bombings in London, staged hunger strikes and fought back against their force-feeders. They were ultimately transferred from prison in London back to Northern Ireland.

Others succumbed to starvation. Bobby Sands, an Irish Republican, was elected to Parliament while leading a group of prisoners on a hunger strike. He died after 66 days.

The strikes drew attention to the Irish Republicans’ political cause. But British authorities proved that even the threat of an elected member of Parliament dying wasn’t enough to force their capitulation.

Still, Ferriter said, “for some people internationally, the Irish have provided some kind of illustration of what might be achieved by a successful hunger strike.”

But in Egypt, Soltan said, he fears hunger strikers have little leverage compared with that of some more successful movements.

“I can’t imagine what . . . the 300 hunger striking and 60,000 political prisoners went to sleep feeling when they found out that Mustafa died,” Soltan said.

If an American with powerful government officials advocating on his behalf can die in Egyptian custody, he said, it does not bode well for other prisoners.

The original policy did allow for some exceptions, and in 2015, China relented somewhat, shifting to a two-child rule.

But as the latest figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics show, the change has not produced more babies. The country’s birthrate in 2019 was the lowest in the seven decades since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

China is not alone. Many other countries, including Cuba, Germany, Hungary and Japan, face declining birthrates. Each of these five countries, though, is taking a different approach to the challenges this trend poses.

CHINA

China’s birthrate has been falling for years, and in 2019 it hit 10.48 per thousand, the lowest since 1949, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Despite the low number of new babies, the country’s overall population grew, because of a simultaneous decline in death rates.

Still, China’s government is worried and looking to slow the trend it intentionally set in motion. The country’s share of aging people is growing fast, while the number of young people, the core of the workforce, continues to decline.

The problem, experts say, is that just because people can legally have another child now does not mean they will. A host of calculations goes into the decision to procreate, including affordability. There have not, for example, been additional overhauls of child-care and paternity-leave policies to make a second child more feasible.

CUBA

Birthrates in much of Latin America are declining – but Cuba stands out. The country’s low birth and fertility rates, coupled with steady emigration, means the population has long been shrinking. At the same time, Cuba has the oldest population in Latin America, putting further pressure on working-age people.

“Developed countries have low infant mortality, birth and fertility rates, but their populations don’t drop, because they receive immigrants,” Antonio Aja Díaz, with the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, told the Miami Herald. “But that’s not the case of Cuba.”

Part of the problem is that for years the government pushed political opponents – and anyone seeking a different kind of life – to emigrate. For now, Cuba’s demographic factors do not appear to be changing.

GERMANY

Germany and China both have declining birthrates coupled with population growth, but for very different reasons.

While birthrates in Germany are steadily low, the country’s overall population size has continued to grow because of the recent influx of more than 1 million migrants and asylum seekers. These new demographics have also been a boost for Europe’s largest economy: Without this new generation, Germany would have been beset by an aging workforce and not enough people to maintain it.

Germany’s population reached a record 83.2 million in 2019, though the rate of growth was the lowest since 2012. The country has also been reducing its openness to new migrants, in a possible harbinger of changes to come.

HUNGARY

In the face of population decline, Hungary’s government has decided that fertility clinics could be the answer.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a staunch nationalist vehemently opposed to immigration. So he is turning to government-run fertility clinics, one of a number of top-down policies he has instituted aimed at reversing Hungary’s falling birthrate and labor shortages without having to let anyone new, and not ethnically Hungarian, into the country.

In December, Orban’s government announced the purchase of six private clinics with in vitro fertilization as a specialty. Facing a matter of “national strategic importance,” the government said it was taking control of the IVF facilities and exempting them from anti-competition restrictions. As of 2020, the state now offers free fertility-treatment drugs in these clinics. Orban has also established tax benefits and loans beneficial for families in his effort to kick-start more reproduction.

JAPAN

Reproduction in Japan was never state-controlled as in China, but birthrates have been on a steady decline. While many economically developed countries are facing similar drops, the numbers in Japan are stark: The population is expected to decline from 127 million in 2018 to 88 million by 2065. Every year, 500 schools close because there are not enough students to fill them. Japan needs more babies or an influx of new people to keep the economy growing.

Yet discussions around population rates in Japan continue to skirt a politically charged word: “immigration.” In 2018, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government proposed a controversial (by Japan’s standards) proposal to bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. The bill sparked outrage among some lawmakers, who decried it as a back door to starting an immigration process.

This strategy also faced criticism among those who favored a more open approach to immigration.

“The problem is that Japan’s unwillingness to acknowledge that it is accepting immigrants means no government funds are allocated for integration efforts, and there is no law against hate speech or discrimination against foreigners,” The Washington Post’s Simon Denyer reported.

It begins with marching and, they hope, ends with President Donald Trump being voted out of office.

“Trump and his administration are bent on silencing us. If it were up to him, there would be no Women’s March,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, chief operating officer of the national Women’s March organization. “This year’s march is more crucial than ever. . . . We won’t allow anyone to divide us or keep us from being the women who make Trump a one-term president.”

The protest, one of hundreds planned Saturday nationwide, is expected to be the smallest Women’s March since the organization burst into the national consciousness in 2017 and inspired millions to take to the streets in Washington and across the globe.

National Park Service estimates indicate the group is expecting between 3,000 and 10,000 attendees in Washington. O’Leary Carmona said the group received 26,000 virtual RSVPs through its website.

More than 70 buses from states like Alabama, Nebraska and Pennsylvania were expected to bring activists to the rally, officials said.

But as of Friday afternoon, fewer than 6,000 people had indicated on Facebook they planned to attend. Weather – a cold and nasty mix of rain and sleet – also could depress turnout.

Washington’s chapter of Black Lives Matter, which is planning events around the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, asked its supporters to boycott Saturday’s march due to an ongoing conflict with the Women’s March organization. Experts who study protest movements said burnout, fatigue and disillusionment threaten to keep many at home.

The event is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in Freedom Plaza with a short rally at 11 a.m., featuring a video of the organization’s newly minted board members reading the articles of impeachment against Trump that will take center stage in a Senate trial next week.

Protesters will march around the Ellipse and up 17th Street NW toward the White House, where they will sing, chant and dance to the song, “Un violador en tu camino,” a protest anthem penned by Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis.

But Trump won’t hear them. The president departed Friday for his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend the weekend.

Saturday’s march is the culmination of a week of activities meant to foster a stronger grass-roots movement and support local organizers around the country working on three main issues the Women’s March will focus on this year: climate change, immigration and reproductive rights.

By moving the event’s focus to issues, rather than putting on a show featuring celebrities and politicians, officials hope to rebuild relationships with disaffected activists and groups that in recent years have cut ties with the organization.

Jewish women – weary of an organization that for nearly two years refused to remove former board members accused of aligning themselves with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam and longtime leader Louis Farrakhan – have shown little interest in returning to the fold, religious leaders have said.

Issues of financial mismanagement and a reputation for being unwilling to aid local groups also have followed the group for years.

O’Leary Carmona pointed to the group’s effort to engage Washington-based artists and organizations this year as proof of change. The organization gave grants to three groups, including Reclaim Rent Control, an organization that aims to broaden renter protections in the District.

But Black Lives Matter D.C. condemned the group this week. Organizers said it failed to make good on promises of inclusion and were critical of march organizers for scheduling the event on the holiday weekend.

“D.C. is more than Congress and the White House. It is more than the DOJ and the National Mall,” Black Lives Matter D.C. wrote in a statement. “For large mobilizations that come into the District, this means holding the reality as D.C. as both the nation’s capital, the center of empire, a necessary place for national protests, and home to real life human beings with important local issues.”

O’Leary Carmona said Friday that the Women’s March has “tried to do better” but failed to meet Black Lives Matters’s needs.

“We’ve been interested in having – and we still are interested in having – a working relationship with them,” she said. “We fell short this year.”

D.C. police will close streets around the White House, the Ellipse and Lafayette Square beginning about 9:30 a.m. Saturday until roughly 4 p.m., officials said.

Roads inside the perimeter of 14th to 18th streets and I Street and Constitution Avenue in Northwest Washington will be closed to vehicles. The closures down 17th Street NW and 15th Street NW will extend to Independence Avenue SW and Madison Drive NW, respectively.

Parking access will be suspended in that area and along Pennsylvania Avenue NW, from the White House to 12th Street, on 13th Street NW between Pennsylvania Avenue and E Street, and on E Street NW between 14th and 13th streets.

The march will begin its procession toward the White House about 11:30 a.m., according to the group’s Park Service permit.

In cities around the country, women in pink hats will assemble under the Women’s March banner for various kinds of activism.

In Los Angeles, organizers expect thousands of women to demonstrate around Pershing Square, where a large rally will feature boldfaced names and activists. The group, which coined the theme “Women Rising,” has for years sought to separate itself from the national organization.

In New York, where two competing rallies have butted heads in years past, organizers have choreographed a symbolic coming together of the two protests, one of which will take place in Columbus Circle and the other in Foley Square. The rallies are being put on by the Women’s March NYC chapter and an unaffiliated group called Women’s March Alliance.