A state of emergency was declared in Virginia as racially charged protests in the city of Charlottesville turned violent and ugly.
Protesters from several groups, including white supremacists, clashed Saturday morning. Local and state police forced people out of the park where the protests began, and around noon a state of emergency was declared.
White supremacists descended on the town and marched through the campus of the University of Virginia Friday night while chanting "white lives matter" and carrying torches.
On Saturday, counter-protesters clashed with the alt-right group. Videos appearing on cable news and posted to Twitter showed people throwing punches at each other and wielding crude weapons such as baseball bats and long poles.
Many of the protesters on both sides were wearing helmets and some even carried shields and donned bulletproof vests, an indication that they were prepared for a potentially violent struggle.
The white supremacists were marching to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park.
Local and state police declared the protest an unlawful assembly Saturday morning, which dictated that people vacate Emancipation Park.
"This type of inflammatory rhetoric has no place because it does not serve our society well," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said on CNN.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan took to Twitter calling the situation in Charlottesville "repugnant."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, tweeted overnight that the white supremacist protesters have ill intentions.
David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, was spotted at the protest and could be seen talking with people at the scene:
Other reactions to the racially charged violence:
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio wrote a series of tweets writing there was "nothing patriotic" about the Unite the Right protesters.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted the protests did not "reflect American values."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called upon Trump to condemn the actions by the alt-right protesters.