Anger was rising in the Democratic ranks Saturday after the party's top U.S. senator led a band of lawmakers in reluctant support of a Republican measure that prevented a government shutdown.

Congressional passage of the controversial spending bill was being seen as a setback for Democratic backbenchers — and the latest illustration of party leaders' political impotence in their opposition to President Donald Trump as he takes a wrecking ball to the U.S. federal bureaucracy.

In New York, more than a thousand people protested against Trump's layoffs, and their anger was no longer directed only at Trump and his chief waste hunter, Elon Musk.