WASHINGTON -- With flags, air horns and chants of "Four more years," thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump returned to Washington on Saturday for rallies to back his efforts to reverse the election he lost to Joe Biden.
They cheered as Trump flew overhead in the Marine One helicopter on his way out of town for the Army-Navy football game in West Point, N.Y. "There he is! There is our guy!" a woman exclaimed, reaching toward the sky.
The gatherings of mostly unmasked Trump loyalists were intended as a show of force just two days before the Electoral College meets to elect Biden as the 46th president. Trump, whose term will end Jan. 20, has refused to concede, clinging to claims of fraud that have been rejected by state and federal courts, and on Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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In courtrooms Saturday, Trump lost a federal lawsuit while his attorney was arguing his case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in another suit that liberal justices said "smacks of racism" and would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters only in the state's most diverse counties.
By midday Saturday, groups were spread out across Washington. The crowds, mostly white, ranged from gray-haired men and women in red hats to children in wagons, one of whom chanted "100 more years!"
Trump tweeted his apparent surprise at the rallies: "Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn't know about this, but I'll be seeing them! #MAGA"
As Trump left the White House for his trip to the U.S. Military Academy and Marine One passed over a rally on the National Mall, Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser recently pardoned by Trump, was speaking from the stage.
"That's pretty cool. Imagine just being able to jump in a helicopter and just go for a joy ride around Washington," said Flynn, whose pardon wiped away his conviction for lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation.
"Don't get bent out of shape" about the election, Flynn told the crowd. "There are still avenues ... We're fighting with faith, and we're fighting with courage."
POLICE HOLD LINES
Police took steps to keep apart Trump loyalists and activists of other opinions, closing a wide area of downtown to traffic and sealing off Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House.
The rallies, including one on Freedom Plaza downtown, drew a large contingent of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group known to incite street violence. Some wore bullet-resistant vests as they marched through town.
After the rallies ended, downtown Washington quickly devolved into crowds of hundreds of Proud Boys and combined forces of antifa and Black activists -- both sides seeking a confrontation in an area flooded with police officers. As dusk fell, they faced off on opposite sides of a street, with lines of city police and federal Park Police, some in riot gear, keeping them separated.
One Proud Boy member yelled out, "You cops can't be everywhere!" The group later dispersed.
Antifa activists also were more organized this time, with their own bicycle corps to form bike walls to match those of the police.
Earlier in the day, about 50 men in the Proud Boys' black and yellow circled the perimeter of Black Lives Matter Plaza, where about 200 anti-Trump activists were rallying.
They chanted vulgar slogans and at one point started singing "Jingle Bells." They were apparently under orders not to engage with hecklers. One man who was talking back to people was yelled at and told "Don't interact!"
The assembly on the National Mall, called the "Jericho March," was billed as a "prayer rally," with speakers "praying for the walls of corruption and election fraud to fall down."
The rally on Freedom Plaza also featured speakers pushing debunked claims of election fraud to a receptive audience.
Sylvia Huff, a demonstrator from Gloucester, Va., said the legal defeats hadn't shaken her belief that Trump won the election.
"I believe the courts were on the take, too," she said. The Supreme Court, where three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump, "was just afraid of a political backlash," she said.
Among the speakers was Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump adviser, who urged demonstrators not to give up even after Friday's Supreme Court decision. He said he wanted to send Trump a video and held up his phone, cuing the flag-waving crowd to chant "Stop the Steal."
The organizers of this rally seemed intent on avoiding confrontations, telling demonstrators ahead of time to avoid certain hotels and marking off large chunks of downtown Washington as a "no-go zone."
'THAT IS SO UN-AMERICAN'
In Wisconsin, U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig, a Trump appointee, dismissed the president's federal lawsuit asking the court to order the Republican-controlled Legislature to name Trump the winner over Biden. The judge said Trump's arguments "fail as a matter of law and fact."
The ruling was handed down as Trump attorney Jim Troupis faced a barrage of questions about his claims from both liberal and conservative justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Troupis asked the court to toss more than 221,000 absentee ballots, saying they were cast fraudulently based on incorrect interpretations of the law by election officials.
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"What you want is for us to overturn this election so that your king can stay in power," said liberal Justice Jill Karofsky. "That is so un-American."
Conservative justices appeared sympathetic to some issues raised by Trump, but also questioned how they could fairly disqualify ballots only in the two counties where he sought a recount and not others where the same procedures were followed.
Biden attorney John Devaney said tossing any ballots in just those two counties would be a violation of the Constitution's equal-protection clause.
Trump is challenging ballots only in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state's most liberal counties with the largest nonwhite populations. He is not challenging any votes in more conservative counties where he won.
"This lawsuit, Mr. Troupis, smacks of racism," Karofsky said. "I do not know how you can come before this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in U.S. history. ... It is not normal."
Justice Rebecca Dallet, another liberal justice, questioned why Trump didn't raise the same concerns about the absentee-ballot process in the 2016 election that he won in Wisconsin. Troupis said Trump was not an aggrieved party that year.
Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, a conservative, voiced concerns with ballots that the city of Madison collected over two weekends at parks, saying that appeared to be the same as early voting, which had not started yet.
Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley also implied that the court must not allow for ballots to be counted if they were cast contrary to the law. But she questioned how the court could fairly disqualify more than 28,000 ballots cast by people who said they were indefinitely confined, given that some were.
The court said in March that it was up to individual voters to determine whether they were "indefinitely confined," a designation that allowed them to cast absentee ballots without showing a valid photo ID.
Other conservative justices raised concerns with allowing election officials to fill in missing information on envelopes containing absentee ballots.
Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,600 votes, a margin of 0.6% that withstood a Trump-requested recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties.
Biden's attorney asked the court to rule before Monday, when Wisconsin's 10 Electoral College votes are scheduled to be cast for Biden. Trump asked for a ruling before Jan. 6, the day Congress counts the Electoral College votes.
HARSH WORDS FOR BARR
Also Saturday, Trump excoriated Attorney General William Barr, castigating him on Twitter for not violating Justice Department policy to publicly reveal an investigation into Biden's son.
Barr has largely been a close confidant to the president since he was appointed two years ago. But their relationship has come under strain this year, with the two speaking infrequently.
In the weeks after the election, Barr refused to rebut Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud. But this month, after Trump raised the prospect that the Justice Department and FBI may have been involved in tipping the election to Biden, Barr broke his silence. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said he saw no examples of widespread voter fraud that could have meaningfully affected the election.
In three tweets Saturday, Trump called the attorney general a "big disappointment" and denounced him for not disclosing the existence of an investigation into Hunter Biden for possible tax evasion, which he said would have given Republicans an edge in the election.
Doing so would have violated department guidelines about publicly discussing ongoing cases. Trump benefited from that policy himself in 2016, when officials kept quiet about the inquiry into possible conspiracy between his campaign and Russian officials.
"Why didn't Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public, before the Election, about Hunter Biden. Joe was lying on the debate stage that nothing was wrong, or going on -- Press confirmed. Big disadvantage for Republicans at the polls!" Trump wrote.
The president has told aides he would like to see Barr appoint a special counsel to investigate the younger Biden, according to people briefed on the discussions. He has not expressed that desire directly to Barr, according to a person familiar with the conversations, but has instead let the issue become public in the hope of creating a pressure campaign.
Barr is unlikely to appoint such a prosecutor, according to people familiar with his thinking. The question remains whether Trump will succeed in forcing him to resign or will fire him so he can appoint someone willing to do his bidding.
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A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the president's tweets.
Information for this article was contributed by Ashraf Khalil and Scott Bauer of The Associated Press; by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times; and by Clarence Williams, Emily Davies, Justin Wm. Moyer, Jessica Contrera, Marissa J. Lang, Rachel Weiner, Meagan Flynn, Joe Heim and Peter Hermann of The Washington Post.
