Trump’s occupation of DC is a rehearsal for autocracy

Washington, DC, younker activistic Afeni Evans has go the astir caller awesome of US President Donald Trump’s national takeover of the city’s police.

On August 15, Metro Transit Police officers pepper-sprayed and forced the 28-year-old Evans to the crushed astatine the Navy Yard subway halt for allegedly committing fare evasion. Evans and different Harriet’s Wildest Dreams volunteers were astatine the presumption connected “cop watch” to guarantee the national takeover would not pb to harassment of Black youth. Yet, it happened to 3 Black youths anyway, prompting Evans to intervene, which led to her arrest.

After nationalist protests successful DC and connected societal media, she was released to cheering crowds extracurricular the court, and the charges against her were dropped the adjacent day.

Like with truthful galore different issues related to Trump and his attempts astatine autocracy, his usage of the National Guard and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stifle assemblage ecosystems particularly impacts Washington’s Black, Brown and Queer residents. This effort to squash imaginable dissent is much than a distraction from the Epstein files contention oregon America’s economical troubles.

Locally, it is simply a partial extremity to the District of Columbia’s half-century of location rule, which different makes the metropolis autarkic of nonstop national oversight. Nationally, it is an unfastened question astir whether DC tin stay a tract of protest, a spot wherever marches and different gatherings tin effect alteration oregon adjacent hap astatine each successful the existent autocratic climate.

Trump’s enforcement bid announcing his takeover of DC’s constabulary unit connected August 11 should not person travel arsenic a surprise, particularly fixed his attempts to bring the national government’s powerfulness to carnivore successful California backmost successful June. “Crime is retired of power successful the District of Columbia”, the bid reads, stating that the “increase successful convulsive transgression successful the bosom of our Republic… poses intolerable risks to the captious national functions that instrumentality spot successful the District of Columbia”.

But the information is, Trump’s enforcement bid manufactured a situation retired of far-right fantasies. Six days earlier Trump’s announcement, 2 teenagers carjacked Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old erstwhile staffer astatine the Department of Government Efficiency, successful DC’s Logan Circle. “We’re going to bash thing astir it. That includes bringing successful the National Guard,” Trump said successful the aftermath of the incident.

However, the 2 alleged carjackers successful constabulary custody were from Hyattsville, Maryland, successful Prince George’s County, and not DC.

Trump’s moves besides alert successful the look of different truth: Crime is nary bigger an contented successful DC than it is anyplace other successful the United States. At the opening of the year, a associated study from the US Attorney’s Office successful DC and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) showed that the city’s convulsive transgression complaint had dropped by 35 percent successful 2024, reaching its lowest complaint since the mid-1990s. “Armed carjackings are down 53%,” according to the report.

Washington, DC, is simply a large signifier for beta-testing however consenting the remainder of the US is to spell to execute Trump’s imagination of autocratic rule. DC remains a majority-minority city, with Black Washingtonians making up a plurality (43 percent) of the population, contempt 30 years of middle-class (mostly white) gentrification – achromatic Washingtonians marque up 39 percent of DC’s population.

So, it is not that astonishing Trump would effort specified heavy-handed tactics successful a brushed concern of DC, peculiarly successful a metropolis that was erstwhile famously nicknamed “Chocolate City”. In a superior wherever much than 90 percent of voters chose erstwhile Vice President Kamala Harris implicit Trump successful the 2024 statesmanlike election, Trump is besides sending the unvarnished and racist connection that Black folk, and particularly Black youth, are criminals.

Imposing a heightened constabulary beingness and hundreds of National Guard soldiers connected a multiracial metropolis is thing but a wannabe strongman’s effort to look beardown to his anti-Black supporters.

DC is besides known arsenic a spot that holds value for Queer Americans. One retired of each 7 adults successful the nation’s superior identifies arsenic LGBTQIA+, astir 80,000 Washingtonians successful all. Northwest DC, peculiarly communities similar Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Adams Morgan, and parts of Shaw and Columbia Heights, became a comparatively harmless abstraction successful the 1960s and 1970s for Queer civilization and businesses to thrive. The inaugural National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights began successful DC successful 1979.

It should not daze anyone that an anti-Queer Trump medication would besides people DC’s Queer and migrant spaces. The federalised constabulary beingness successful DC has been particularly noticeable on the 14th Street and U Street corridors, including the installation of not-so-random checkpoints implicit the past mates of weeks. Inevitably – betwixt the National Guard, national instrumentality enforcement and anti-immigrant agencies similar Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), successful conjunction with the MPD – they person made dozens of arrests, and smothered nightlife and concern postulation successful these communities.

Trump, successful his ain ham-fisted way, is besides attempting to erase DC’s past arsenic 1 of protestation and resistance. As the US evolved into a superpower, and DC transformed into the planetary community’s superpower metropolis during and aft World War II, the metropolis besides became a spot for protest, peculiarly for radical justness and civilian rights. Examples see the March connected Washington connected August 28, 1963, arsenic good arsenic a bid of antiwar protests against Vietnam betwixt 1965 and 1971. Marches and protests for the Equal Rights Amendment, for a Gay Rights Bill, for Chicano rights, Indigenous rights, and migrant and exile rights came alongside civilian rights marches and protests passim the 1960s and 1970s. Massive protests similar the 2017 Women’s March, the George Floyd protests successful 2020 and the Free Palestine protests past twelvemonth person made DC a people ripe for authorities overreach.

But what Trump is doing to DC successful 2025 is not rather unprecedented – not for him, and not for the national government. In 2018, during Trump’s archetypal word arsenic president, the US National Park Service (NPS) sought to shrink the disposable sidewalk abstraction astir the White House for protests “by 80 percent”, and to complaint demonstrators licence fees “to let the NPS to retrieve immoderate of the costs” of nationalist information provisions. On June 1, 2020, the National Guard and the US Park Police tear-gassed, lobbed concussion grenades and violently arrested George Floyd protesters astatine Lafayette Square, crossed the thoroughfare from the White House – each truthful that Trump could bash a photo-op adjacent connected the steps of St John’s Church, calling himself “your president of instrumentality and order” on the way.

Trump has followed successful the footsteps of different “law and order” president, Richard Nixon. In May 1971, Nixon unleashed the National Guard and section constabulary against thousands of antiwar demonstrators successful DC, successful what became known arsenic the Mayday protests, starring to much than 12,000 arrests implicit a three-day period.

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover authorised the usage of subject unit against a ragtag radical of 20,000 unemployed and unhoused World War I veterans known arsenic the Bonus Army. At the tallness of the Great Depression and looking for the bonus wealth Congress owed them, the subject responded with state grenades, bayonets, flamethrowers and tanks, destroying their shantytowns on the National Mall and Anacostia River. Two veterans died, portion the Army injured thousands of others. The resulting teardrop state unreality implicit the metropolis besides led to the decease of an infant.

Trump and his tiny service of occupiers are trying to marque an illustration retired of the nation’s capital, to destruct the DC of the past century, its vibrancy and resistance. The irony, of course, is that 1 of Trump’s archetypal acts successful his 2nd word was to pardon much than 1,500 insurrectionists who had been portion of the January 6, 2021, onslaught connected the US Capitol, a deadly and treasonous event.

Now, Trump wants to cower Washingtonians into accepting autocracy.

DC’s bequest arsenic the nationalist spot of power, arsenic an planetary city, and arsenic the centre of the alleged Free World, is successful peril. But its astir susceptible and marginalised residents proceed to resist, contempt the dangers of Trump arsenic a despot.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.