By Malik Miah
In a long rant of over 70 minutes in a news conference on August 10, President Trump claimed that the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C. “has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people. And we are not going to take it anymore.”
His claims are lies, as the violent crime rate is at a 30-year low, down 26%.
Trump then ordered an extraordinary exertion of federal power over an American city.
He ordered the deployment of 800 federalized National Guard troops to the capital, put the city police under federal control, and also deployed 500 federal law enforcement officials, including 120 FBI agents, 50 deputy U.S. marshals, as well as agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among other agencies.
Some of those agents will be on patrol duty and others will be visible in “high crime” or high traffic areas.
The first night they picked up 23 residents.
One Washington D.C. protester near the White House held a sign saying: “No Trump GESTAPO.”
Trump announced this action in his long rant, using racist tropes. Everyone knows that when he singles out “wild youth” he means Black youth. By “high crime areas” he means the Black community.
Under federal law, this action can only last 30 days without Congress approval. Trump said that if Congress does not extend it, he will declare a national emergency to extend military occupation
Trump described the deployment as part of a broader effort to “liberate” the city and make it “great again.”
Besides crime Trump said he will remake all the streets, to make the city “beautiful” again.
Trump said he will drive out all the homeless far away from the city, but doesn’t say where that will be.
He also said this will be the first of many uses of troops and the other steps he has taken in other cities. He specifically mentioned Chicago, New York, Baltimore and Oakland, California.
Every city Trump attacked not surprisingly has an elected Black mayor and a large African American community. He seeks to eliminate Black elected officials. His gerrymander plan for Texas is also aimed primarily at Black elected officials.
Run by Black politicians for decades, once known as “Chocolate City,” African Americans are the largest racial group in Washington with a population of 290,772. In the city, 43% are Black or African American, 39% are white, 4% are Asian, 0.3% are American Indian and Alaska Native, and the rest are Native Hawaiian and others.
The D.C. Mayor, Muriel Bowser, and other local officials hadn’t been told of the takeover until they watched Trump on television. It’s led to confusion over who now leads the police, how their policing policies will change, and in what ways federal agents, who are not trained for community policing, are going to interact with local officers.
Speaking during a live town hall on social media, Mayor Bowser urged community members to “protect our city, to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule and get to the other side of this guy and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push”.
“We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks,” she added. “We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We must be clear about our story, who we are and what we want for our city.”
During a separate news conference after Trump’s, she said she was trying to set up a meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom Trump said would be overseeing the implementation of his order. She also maintained that Chief of Police Pamela Smith would still run the department and report to Bowser up through the deputy mayor.
“Nothing about our organizational chart has changed,” Bowser said. “And nothing in the executive order would indicate otherwise.”
This is the first time a president has ever used Section 740 of the Home Rule Act – DC is not a state – to federalize the metro police,” said Dr. Heidi Bonner, chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at East Carolina University.
Although DC residents elect their own politicians, raise their own money, Congress still has power over the city’s policies, which it has used in the past. This would be harder for Trump to do if DC was a state. The people of DC have a non-voting representative in the House and no voice in the Senate.
Democratic mayors across the country have warned Trump against expanding his law-and-order power grab in other major cities.
Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor said in a statement, “Sending in the national guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.”
Brandon Scott, the mayor of Baltimore, shot back, “When it comes to public safety in Baltimore, he should turn off the rightwing propaganda and look at the facts. Baltimore is the safest it’s been in over 50 years.”
Barbara Lee, the former longtime African American Congresswoman and newly-elected mayor of Oakland, wrote on X : “President Trump’s characterization of Oakland is wrong and based in fear mongering in an attempt to score cheap political points.”
Stephen Miller, an influential White House deputy chief of staff, a well-known white supremacist, stepped up the rhetoric on April 11, tweeting without evidence: “Crime stats in big blue cities are fake. The real rates of crime, chaos & dysfunction are higher orders of magnitude. “Everyone who lives in these areas knows this. They program their entire lives around it. Democrats are trying to unravel civilization. President Trump will save it.”
What next?
Critics call Trump’s move a “brazen power grab,” especially since D.C. crime is declining.
Legal scholars are debating whether Trump’s actions violate the Posse Comitatus Act, adopted in 1878. It restricts military involvement in civilian law enforcement.
Trump has federalized D.C.’s police and overrode local control. He is now functioning as chief of the city despite what local leaders say.
In Los Angeles, Governor Newsom challenged Trump’s deployment of troops last June, arguing it violated the Tenth Amendment and federal law. A San Francisco Federal court is now hearing the case.
Courts have begun weighing whether such deployments exceed presidential authority, especially when local and officials oppose them.
The D.C. situation is unique because the city lacks statehood, making it more vulnerable to federal intervention.
So far Trump has attacked judges and says the executive branch has the right to do anything the president wants, on national security grounds.
This growing pattern of federal override could permanently reshape the balance of power between the presidency, Congress and the courts. Trump’s executive act sets a dangerous precedent for federal control of local law enforcement.
It is another step toward authoritarianism.
It will embolden future presidents to bypass local governance in other cities and states as he did in California.
Trump is a white supremacist racist and nationalist. He seeks a return to a White Republic where Blacks and other oppressed national minorities and women are subordinate with fewer rights. That’s his meaning of Make America Great Again.
Trump’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion is aimed at wiping out all representations of Blacks and other racial minorities as citizens and peoples of the country. When he says the country must go back to 1776 — that’s when Indians were slaughtered, Blacks were slaves and other nonwhites seen as less than humans. Trump today portends no positive mention of these groups in schools, universities, or museums.
Grassroots organizing
Mayor Bower notwithstanding, the way to fight back is not by relying on the Democratic Party.
Organized nonviolent mass protest, including use of civil disobedience, must be planned. In Los Angeles after Trump sent in the National Guard, community groups led by immigrant rights activists, started to organize a fight back and continue to do so.
They are using varied tactics including confronting masked ICE immigration cops, videoing them and having lawyers help immigrants and supporters arrested or taken to detention jails. They are not relying on the Democratic Party establishment or elected officials.
African Americans understand how to do this better than any other segment of the population. It took a mass civil rights movement years of protests to win the right to vote.
The Los Angeles example must be followed everywhere.
