Trump orders federal takeover of Washington DC
Another major city is now in the grip of American authoritarianism. Trump distracts from Epstein with a red-meat show-of-force.
Looks like I might have to head to DC as Trump deploys troops and takes over law enforcement there. Your support would really help to fund my coverage of whatever is about to go down in DC. If you want to help, please consider a paid subscription to American Doom or throw a few bucks my way at the Doom Coffee Fund.
Donald Trump announced this morning that he’ll deploy 1,000 National Guard troops to Washington DC, put the city under an emergency curfew, and take over the Washington DC Metropolitan Police. Federal law enforcement is already patrolling the streets.
Why? Because crime is out of control there, Trump says (it is not). The real reason he’s doing this is because this is just what he does and who he is: he’s an authoritarian, and Republicans and the American right largely support these efforts. Another reason is that Trump saw some homeless people en route to a golf course in Virginia over the weekend and got fired up over it. Finally, a federal judge refused to unseal grand jury documents related to the government’s prosecution of Jeffery Epstein — a development that everyone, including Trump’s Justice Department, knew was coming.
Trump will have police — with help from the National Guard and federal law enforcement — round up homeless people and put them in camps, as foreshadowed in one of the president’s many troubling executive orders. The National Guard members being deployed to DC won’t have arrest powers, so they’ll mostly just be a focal point of forthcoming protests, I’m guessing.
Of course, crime is not rising in Washington DC. In fact, it’s falling, just like it’s falling across the country — and in record-breaking fashion. Last year saw the biggest one-year drop in violent and property crime in the nation’s history. This year is on track to set another record.
This means that all forms of crime have returned to their pre-pandemic levels, with many of the worst violent crimes — murder, rape, and assault — at the lowest levels since the 1960s.
This record-setting drop in both violent and property crime looks to be continuing so far this year. While the drops in violent and property crime haven’t been quite as substantial in DC, crime is down overall there. Still, according to data released by Washington DC Metro Police (DC Metro), violent crime in the district in 2024 was at its lowest level since 1966.
But Trump and Republicans don’t care about things like facts and data. It’s all about their feelings. Right now, they apparently feel that crime is really bad in DC and other Democratic cities. And when Trump sees homeless people in DC, or hears about the DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine getting carjacked, that’s enough for him to send in the troops. That’s because Trump views the entirety of the federal government, every cop in every American city, and really all of the nation as his personal plaything — all of us are just tools to be used to get him what he wants.
So, National Guard troops are being deployed to DC federal law enforcement is already patrolling the city. Some folks have speculated that this is a “test” of sorts to see what Trump can get away with. The thing is, he doesn’t think that far ahead. But, yes, in a way, this is a test case to see how our institutions will hold up in the face of further authoritarian incursion into daily American life.
The Trump administration has already gotten away with this, more or less, in Los Angeles. There, Trump’s masked immigration agents continue to racially profile random immigrants and detain or arrest them — despite a judge’s orders not to do so. Government attorneys are lying in court about the actions of protesters as part of the administration’s efforts to stifle dissent. Local cops, meanwhile, are lending a helping hand by beating up protesters and journalists.
There’s a few things that can happen now. If the deployment of the Guard in DC is met with protests, local and federal law enforcement could crack down on protests like they did in DC. This is all obviously very troubling. It really does seem like a test to see how much Trump can push his authoritarian police-state on the nation’s big cities, which are overwhelmingly Democratic.
As I’ve written before, at some point, local elected officials have to — at a minimum — tell their cops to stand down in the event of large-scale protests against the deployment of troops on American streets. Of course, this runs the risk of violence from those troops, but at this point that’s a risk that we’re just going to have to take.
The White House must understand that Americans will not tolerate more armed soldiers on their streets for made-up reasons like rising crime or an immigrant “invasion.” It only starts with this. It ends with martial law, political prosecutions against anyone the regime deems an opponent, detainment, arrests, and outright fascism.
In his comments on Monday morning, Trump helpfully noted that this is just the beginning.
“We’re starting very strongly with DC, and we’re going to clean it up very quickly,” he said.
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