Washington is just the beginning of the Trump administration’s broader plan to occupy American cities.
Vice President JD Vance casually revealed Thursday that the White House “hopes” that cities across the country will follow the capital’s lead—that is to say, hand over the reins of their local law enforcement and welcome the National Guard into their city limits.
“Do you see the administration putting soldiers in the city of Atlanta?” asked a reporter from WABE radio in Atlanta.
“Well look, what we’ve done is we have focused on Washington, D.C., because it’s a federal city under our jurisdiction,” Vance said. “But we certainly hope that whether it’s Atlanta or anywhere else, people are going to look around and say, ‘We don’t have to live like this.’”
The vice president then framed the nation’s capital as a city overrun by violent crime, projecting an image of America in which authorities would effectively be allowed to snatch “bad guys” off the streets without protest. In actuality, many of the undocumented targets of the Trump administration have not been criminals, and have been forced into deportation proceedings without systemic consideration of their constitutional rights.
On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the administration had made nearly 400 arrests in Washington since the beginning of the operation. At least 160 of those arrests were undocumented immigrants, reported ABC News.
“We hope the people see what we’re doing in Washington, D.C., and follow our example all across the country,” Vance added.
The Ohio-born politico then boasted about Washington’s supposedly new low crime rate, disregarding the fact that violent crime in the nation’s capital has been on a downward trend since 2024. Confusingly, FBI Director Kash Patel used the accurate data to pat the Trump administration on the back during a press conference last week, claiming that the “plummeting” homicide numbers were thanks to the president’s policies.
Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country.
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