Trump's Assault on Washington, D.C

Trump is now pursuing his fever dream of a federalized police state in the nation's capital. We cannot remain silent.

Protestors in Washington, D.C. responding to Donald Trump’s federal takeover of their city today. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)

We shouldn’t be surprised. This is the demagogue who lied that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in order to stoke fear and hate. This is the bigot who spent years demonizing migrants and inflaming his cult with warnings of dangerous caravans filled with violent criminals. This is the fascist who promised to be a dictator on Day One. This is the self-confessed sexual abuser and adjudicated rapist who would do anything to cover up his crimes. This is the sadist who despises our Constitution and tried during his first term to convince his Defense secretary to shoot legally assembled protestors. This is the pathological liar who incited a deadly insurrection in an effort to subvert an election and stay in power.

This was all knowable.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that Donald Trump announced his fascistic plan today to implement a police state in Washington, D.C.—to put D.C. police under federal control and deploy 800 National Guard troops—by lying through his teeth. Surrounded by a collection of his sycophantic “leadership” team who were handed power by a spineless, immoral Republican Senate—including the ignominious Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel—he not only fantasized a bloody, out-of-control picture of violent crime that has overrun America’s Capitol city and requires the military to confront this pretend emergency. He also threatened to do the same in other leading cities, all of which are led by Democrats.

This is the expansion of America as a police state, a nation once defined by a system of justice and the rule of law now ruled by a lawless madman who’d be happy to watch escalating violence triggered by him. It is ugly, anti-democratic, the fever dream that Trump has longed for all of his adult life and now gets to make real. This thanks to near-total immunity delivered by John Roberts and the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority; a feckless, craven and degraded Republican Congress; a depraved collection of unfit miscreants whose stain on presidential cabinets will never wash away; over 77 million voters who either wanted this fiasco or were too uninformed to imagine this ugly trajectory; and over 89 million Americans who abdicated their duty as citizens and didn’t vote.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump lied. “And we’re not going to let it happen anymore. We’re not going to take it.”

Calling Washington “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world,” he presented himself as the savior who could “rescue” the city from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse. This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our capital back.”

Trump’s seizing control means the armed National guard troops will possess the ability to conduct arrests with federal law enforcement roaming city streets and youths as young as 14 to be charged as adults. This from a White House occupant and convicted felon who proudly hangs his framed mugshot just outside the Oval Office and incited a violent Capitol attack that injured some 140 police officers.

And while Trump spun his bloodthirsty tale, the actual data portrays a different picture. Violent crime in D.C. was down 35 percent in 2024 from the previous year, its lowest level in over 30 years. The crime report released in January by the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s office noted that D.C.’s decrease in violent crime included a 32 percent decline in homicides, a 39 percent decline in robberies, a 53 percent decline in armed carjackings and a 27 department decline in assaults with a dangerous weapon, compared to 2023.

It would be wrong to suggest that these improvements are sufficient or that the continuing reality of violent crime doesn’t represent a source of fear and suffering for D.C. residents. But clearly local law enforcement is making progress, aided by a strategy of—as U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves put it—focusing on “the drivers of violence.” That includes targeting gangs in certain neighborhoods “who are dealing drugs, protecting turf, committing carjackings and other robberies, all while armed.”

But the Demagogue-in-Chief wasn’t listening to any of that progress. Not when he wanted to push a narrative of unrelenting doom, create a spectacle of federal force, change the subject from his mounting failures and threaten that there will be more to come.

He justified this effort by declaring that the D.C. crime “directly impacts the functioning of the federal government and it’s a threat to America, really.” He went on: “There are other cities that are bad, very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore they’re so far gone.” Notice no mention of cities in red states that suffer some of the nation’s highest homicide rates, such as Memphis, St. Louis and Birmingham.

Trump’s action follows his invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which allows him to federalize D.C.’s Metropolitan police force. He’s claiming a public safety emergency with Attorney General Pam Bondi controlling the force.

And just in case you wondered whether following the law matters to Trump, he declared that the police should “do whatever the hell they want” if they are provoked. “That’s the only language they [alleged criminals] understand. They like to spit in the face of the police. You spit, and we hit, and they get hit real hard.”

Here’s the response from members of the D.C. City Council. “This is a manufactured intrusion on local authority…there is no Federal emergency,” they said in a joint statement. “It is our police officers who should be leading the efforts to keep our communities safe—not the National Guard.”

It’s hard to find a silver lining here, but the act only permits a president to exercise this federal control for 30 days without Congress passing a law to extend it. And while we should expect protestors to push back, just as they did in Los Angeles, don’t doubt that Trump is hoping for violence so he can intensify his crackdown.

This is a grave day for America, but let’s be clear that we should not and must not remain silent about this dangerous and unnecessary escalation. This is a time for solidarity among Americans who oppose this disgraceful abuse of power.

One other note: I will be hosting a Substack Live on Wednesday at 12:30 ET with Harry Dunn, a former police officer who served in the United States Capitol Police and bravely confronted violent insurrectionists on January 6. I hope you’ll check out our conversation.

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