Tourists who came to Washington, D.C., last week—tromping from one Smithsonian collection to another, eating ice cream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—witnessed a bit of history that they surely had not anticipated: the beginning of President Trump’s takeover of the District. At a press conference that Monday, Trump had vowed to bring order to a place that he said was beset by “total lawlessness,” and by “bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor.” Within days, D.C.’s police force had been federalized, the National Guard had been mobilized, and hundreds of troops had shown up, many in drab-colored Humvees.
Few tourists, and fewer locals, would recognize the nightmarish place in Trump’s depiction. D.C., like virtually every American city, has crime and homelessness; in 2023, it experienced a notable spike in carjackings. But its problems are long-simmering, not acute. According to Metropolitan Police Department statistics, violent crime is down twenty-six per cent since the same time last year.
In any case, Trump’s display of federal muscle was concentrated not in the neighborhoods where crime is most prevalent but in the iconic, touristic spots near the White House. Perhaps he envisioned a sort of sequel to the military parade that he staged in June, with made-for-Fox-News visuals: National Guardsmen clustered around the Washington Monument, D.E.A. agents standing outside an upscale bakery in Georgetown. On Fourteenth Street, a lively night-life corridor with a diverse population, men wearing ICE and Homeland Security vests operated a checkpoint at which agents, several with faces covered, pulled over drivers and questioned them. (According to the Washington Post, at least two were detained.) People walking their dogs or heading out on dates stopped to heckle. “Oh, I feel so much safer,” a young woman scoffed. “Fascists, go home!” a guy on a bike shouted.
Trump’s show of force is an imposition on a citizenry already aware that its democratic self-governance is tenuous. As advocates for D.C. statehood like to point out, the District has some seven hundred thousand residents—more than Wyoming or Vermont—but no right to elect a representative who can vote on legislation in Congress. Until the Home Rule Act of 1973 gave the city limited autonomy, it had no mayor or city council of its own. Even now, laws that the council approves after deliberation and public comment can be tossed out by Congress. This has happened many times over the years, usually with the aim of nullifying progressive legislation. In the eighties and nineties, Congress rejected a law to decriminalize gay sex and blocked the use of public funds for abortion services. This June, the House voted to repeal laws that allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections and that barred the police union from negotiating on disciplinary measures against officers. Two Republican congressmen recently introduced a bill that would revoke home rule altogether, in the interest of having Congress “manage the nation’s capital.”
An effective plan to improve the lives of D.C. citizens would require detailed policy and a prolonged investment of time and funds—the sorts of things that Trump has zero interest in. What he wants is a redecoration reveal for D.C., as in his paving of the Rose Garden: a makeover heavy on ball gowns and bulletproof vests, light on poor people. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.” Advocates for the homeless say that it’s unclear where people will be sent; the city does not have enough beds in local shelters.
As the week went on, Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to usurp the authority of the police chief, Pamela Smith, by appointing the head of the D.E.A. as “emergency police commissioner.” The District pushed back, suing the Administration and arguing that its actions were “unnecessary and unlawful.” Americans have long been wary of using the military in local law enforcement, and for good reason. Soldiers generally don’t live in the places they’re dropped into; they don’t know the communities and are less answerable to them. They’re also usually not trained in law enforcement or empowered to make arrests, so using them to fight crime means relying heavily on the power of intimidation. Militarized patrols in city streets are uniquely chilling to the exercise of assembly and free speech.
An 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatus Act generally restrains the use of the military for such purposes. (Trump’s recent deployment of the National Guard during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles has been challenged in court.) But the District’s peculiar status makes it easy to use it as a laboratory. In D.C., the President is allowed to send in the National Guard without officially federalizing it. And the Home Rule Act authorizes him to take over the Metropolitan Police in case of “emergency.” Though these Presidential powers do not apply elsewhere, Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, worries that Trump’s recent use of the National Guard will be “desensitizing.”
At the press conference where Trump announced his plans for D.C., he suggested that other cities could be next. “You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is,” he said. “New York has a problem.” (Baltimore and Oakland he dismissed as too “far gone.”) Days later, James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, dutifully said that Trump’s “experiment” in D.C. ought to be replicated in “a lot of the Democrat-run cities in America.” There are ways around the Posse Comitatus Act, and Trump seems likely to test them. At a rally in L.A. where Governor Gavin Newsom was speaking last week, a force of Border Patrol agents, some armed with rifles, showed up uninvited. The Washington Post reported that the Administration was considering the creation of a “Domestic Civil Service Quick Disturbance Reaction Force”—hundreds of National Guard troops that could be deployed to cities to quell protests.
At the checkpoint on Fourteenth Street last week, D.C. police officers at least felt compelled to answer residents when they asked what was going on. (“Traffic-safety check,” one said, unconvincingly.) The federal agents just turned their backs. Trump had said at the press conference that his law-and-order enforcers could do “whatever the hell they want.” That’s not true—but it’s truer than it used to be. ♦
