During the war, many women demonstrated their loyalty to the patriot cause by shouldering the burdens of absent husbands. They managed farms and businesses. First in Philadelphia, and then in other cities, women went from door to door collecting money for the Continental Army. Some accompanied husbands to the battlefront, where they tended to the material needs of soldiers. A very few disguised themselves as men and joined the army, exposing as a lie the notion that only men had the capacity to sacrifice their lives for the good of the country. Loyalist women continued to express their political views, even though doing so brought them little more than physical suffering and emotional pain. African American women took advantage of wartime chaos to run away from their masters and forge new, independent lives for themselves.

After the war, women marched in parades, lobbied and petitioned legislators, attended sessions of Congress, and participated in political rallies—lending their support to particular candidates or factions. Elite women published novels, poems, and plays. Some hosted salons where men and women gathered to discuss political issues. In New Jersey, single property-owning women voted.

Mike Pence and Franklin Graham at the 2017 World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians. AP Photo / Cliff Owen

Well before special counsel Robert Mueller started investigating possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, American evangelicals had formed an odd alliance of their own with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. American evangelicals are led to make common cause with Russian Orthodoxy—and with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin—because of a deep and shared suspicion of Western liberal elites.

One of the two models now says she's ashamed that her name was ever connected to his brand. Both women say the agency asked them to lie about their profession and to concoct stories to avoid alerting Customs and Border Protection agents to their intention to work in the US without authorization.

Their account of what it's like to work as a model in New York — including that they were not paid adequate wages and were housed in cramped, dorm-like apartments — could be said about much of the industry and do not apply only to foreign models. But President Trump has made an anti-immigration campaign an early hallmark of his presidency. He is focused on those who are working illegally in the US and foreign workers who could be displacing Americans. The women Business Insider spoke with fit both descriptions.

U.S. immigration authorities planned to release 500 migrants in El Paso by Wednesday evening, which would be the highest single-day figure in the city.

The release of migrants to shelters is common in El Paso, but advocates fear that the government may be dumping large numbers of immigrants on the streets to relieve overcrowding in the wake of the deaths of two children who were in Border Patrol custody.

Ruben Garcia, executive director of Annunciation House, an El Paso immigrant shelter that coordinates local assistance efforts for migrants, said immigrants would not be released to the streets on Wednesday, but instead will be placed directly into 11 temporary and permanent migrant shelters.

But earlier this week, ICE released hundreds of men, women and children at the Greyhound bus station in Downtown El Paso, leaving Garcia and others scrambling to find shelter for about 600 migrants beginning Sunday night and continuing through Christmas Day.