Veteran and "tea party" groups protested over the government shutdown in Washington, taking down barricades around the second world war memorial on the National Mall before marching to the gates of the White House.
Police officers, some in riot gear, pushed back against the crowd when it got too close to the White House fence on Sunday, creating a brief flashpoint of anger in an otherwise peaceful demonstration. The White House protest, which involved hundreds of people, quickly broke up.
Don Armstrong, a veteran who served in Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan from 1993 to 2006, said he drove to the protest from his home in West Virginia because he was worried that the government shutdown would soon affect the benefits and disability payments he relied on to feed his family.
"In a war, there's strategies," Armstrong said. "What they're doing is playing roulette with people's lives."
Sunday's rally started on the National Mall, which is home to US war memorials and has been mainly closed to tourists since October 1, when Congress failed to agree to continue funding the federal government, closing down services which were deemed "non-essential".