More than 200 people marched through Washington, D.C., over the weekend to hold a dance party outside the home of Ivanka Trump. But they weren’t celebrating. They were protesting executive orders issued by her father, President Donald Trump, the latest sign that the First Daughter will be facing pressure from liberal groups to be their rare voice in the White House.
Holding signs like “c’mon Ivanka let’s get natural,” “protect our common ground” and “we are the queer resistance,” participants marched Saturday to the Kalorama neighborhood where Trump shares a home with her husband and fellow White House official Jared Kushner. There, they danced on top of cars outside her house while music by Madonna, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake played in the background. The event, organized by the same groups that held a dance party outside Vice President Mike Pence’s home in January, was largely a reaction to the executive order Trump signed late last month to roll back Obama-era policies combatting climate change.
“The entire Trump Administration has shown a blatant disregard for our planet and it’s inhabitants,” the description on the group’s Facebook group said. “Get ready to shake what your Mamma Earth gave ya and WERK it for climate justice!”
Ivanka Trump wasn’t actually a part of the Trump Administration, at least not formally, when her father signed the executive order on March 28. It only emerged later that day that she was officially becoming a federal employee. Still, organizers of the event said they came to her private home as the location for their event because they wanted to get her attention.
“We wanted to do it in her area rather than some fenced in area on the Washington mall where she would not see it,” said Carla Aronsohn, an organizer with Queer Resistance, a group that helped organize the event.
The decision to focus protests on Ivanka Trump, rather than a close aide like chief strategist Steve Bannon or Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, is not only an indication of her influence with the President, but also reflects how she could become a prime target for those protesting Trump’s agenda — if for no other reason than that they still have a faint hope she can protect their ideals in the White House.
“We felt like this is someone who maybe we can sway, maybe we can stand up for the communities she said she will stand up for,” Aronsohn said.
Neither the White House nor a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump immediately commented to Fortune.
In December, Trump met with former Vice President Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, two leading figures in the effort to combat climate change. “It’s no secret that Ivanka Trump is very committed to having a climate policy that makes sense for our country and for our world, and that was certainly evident in the conversation I had with her,” Gore said at the time. “I appreciate the fact that she is concerned about this.”
And in February, Politico reported that Ivanka Trump and Kushner worked to kill an executive order that would have rolled back Obama-era workplace protections for LGBT employees.
But that optimism is also tinged with resentment that she did not speak out against Trump’s executive order on climate change.
“Ivanka Trump has presented herself as a friend of the gays and a climate czar and she was completely radio silent this past week,” said Firas Nasr, a founding member of “Werk For Peace,” another group that helped organize the event on Saturday. “We’re not going to blindly accept her claims in being support of the climate and LGBTQ communities. If she does support us, she needs to speak out for us while we are under attack.”
“She has presented herself as a more progressive visionary of the administration and now she’s taking an actual role in the administration,” Nasr added. “So we feel it is important to send a message that we are watching and we are looking for action, not just words.”
