WASHINGTON: Anger was rising in the Democratic ranks on Saturday after the party`s top US 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 US federal bureaucracy.

In New York, more than a thousand people protested against Trump`s layoffs, and their anger was no longer directedonly at Trump and his chief waste hunter, Elon Musk. Michelle Vaughan, a 53-year-old artist, carried a sign that read `Elon out! You too, Chuck! referring to House Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who supported the bill along with several colleagues.

`The budget was our only leverage,` Vaughan said at the protest in Manhattan. `It was a way to show the base of Democrats and the world that there`s a resistance to this authoritarian takeover.` The measure slashes billions of dollars from public spending at a time government agencies are already reeling from the dismissal of thousands of civil servants by Trump and Musk.-AFP