President Donald Trump is federalizing control of the local police and deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., to further his authoritarian and anti-democratic agenda.
As autocrats commonly do, Trump is seeking control over the national capital in order to intimidate and squelch dissent. Like despots around the world and throughout history, Trump is also relying on the pretextual deployment of military force to intimidate and project power, to suppress protest and undercut democracy.
Across the nation, Americans should protest this move and what it means for our democracy. They should worry that Trump will misuse claims of national emergency to block peaceful protest and that he will deploy troops to deter demonstrators, or worse.
This is a move of dubious legality and no necessity. The Home Rule Act governing the District of Columbia gives the president authority to take control of the metropolitan police force when there are “special conditions of an emergency nature.” There are no special conditions and there is no emergency. Like everyone, Washingtonians want to be secure in their person, but everyday street crime does not constitute an emergency—especially when the Justice Department’s own statistics show the violent crime rate in the District is at its lowest point in decades.
There is a major crime problem in Washington, D.C., but it’s not the one Trump is talking about—and it’s one the administration is making that far worse. Corporate crime and wrongdoing—pollution, dangerous products, financial fraud and scams, unsafe workplaces, and more—inflicts far more damage on people than street crime, whether measured by dollars, injuries, or lives.
But Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi are epically weak on corporate crime enforcement—probably the weakest in American history. They are ending investigations and prosecutions into corporations, announcing no-prosecute policies against whole areas of corporate wrongdoing, and redirecting law enforcement resources away from corporate crime and toward its mass deportation agenda.
Trump is also complaining about homelessness in D.C. There is, in fact, a significant housing problem in Washington, D.C., like there is throughout the nation. But on this score, Trump is doing nothing to help—and actively making things worse.
Telling people without housing that they have to “move out” of the District, as Trump has done, does nothing to actually address that problem. Investing more in housing would help, but there were no such investments in Trump’s tax and budget reconciliation bill—he was too busy conferring giant tax breaks on the super rich and corporations and stripping health care coverage from everyday Americans. Those health care cuts will significantly worsen homelessness—both because health care is key to help people without housing and because Medicaid is often used for supportive housing. Providing support to people with addiction issues would also help address the homelessness challenge; instead, the administration is considering withholding already appropriated funding for responding to fentanyl overdoses.
Trump’s actions have nothing to do with anything happening in Washington, D.C. Trump is motivated instead to advance his authoritarian agenda and to distract from his political weakness. This aligns perfectly with his other despotic tendencies, for example his enemies lists, his mantra of “loyalists only”—particularly those who support his election denialism—to key appointments, and Pam Biondi’s recent move to deputize Ed Martin to investigate perceived opponents like Adam Schiff and Tish James.
Washington, D.C. does not need National Guard members—who signed up to address genuine national security threats and actual emergencies, not to be political pawns—on our streets. Instead, what we in D.C. need is representation in Congress and more federal funding to mitigate the restrictions on the District’s power of taxation.
But this is an issue of import that goes far beyond the interests of the people of Washington, D.C.—and not just because D.C. is our nation’s capital. Trump is now broadcasting that he hopes to militarize law enforcement in cities across the country. Whether the nation tolerates—or rises up to oppose—Trump’s actions in Washington will very meaningfully impact whether the country goes down a democratic or authoritarian path.
Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert are Public Citizen co-presidents.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
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