What’s going on in D.C.?
Photo via Mass 50501 Volunteer
What’s happening in D.C.?
Expanding upon the occupation of Los Angeles, Trump has ordered a federal takeover of the Washington, D.C., police and deployment of the National Guard to D.C. The Trump administration claims that this occupation is in response to a “crime emergency,” despite the Department of Justice’s own evidence that violent crime in Washington, D.C., is at a 30-year low.
D.C. residents are seeing a ramping up of federal policing activity over the course of this week: As the federal campaign has continued, the Associated Press reported on Thursday that Washington, D.C., police would be increasing their cooperation with ICE and that 45 people had been arrested as a result of the operation by Wednesday night. D.C. residents have resisted the militarization of policing in their city, including directing drivers away from checkpoints where passersby were being detained. D.C. police will be extending a preexisting juvenile curfew this weekend to include the Navy Yard and to begin earlier in the evening, and the White House reports that law enforcement operations will occur around the clock instead of being limited to nighttime hours.
What’s the administration’s real motivation for doing this?
Donald Trump is not having a good time. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the Justice Department for its files related to the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, hindering Trump’s efforts to distance himself from his association with Epstein. Layoffs have surged, leading to the highest number of unemployed Americans since late 2021 and undercutting Trump’s narrative that his administration is good for job creation and working-class Americans.
Trump and his allies have tried to obfuscate his connections to these ongoing fiascos. Speaker Johnson sent House members home early last month to avoid voting on the release of the Epstein Files. Trump fired the leader of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), accusing her of rigging a jobs report that showed his administration’s ineptitude at job creation, and has nominated a new BLS head who has suggested ending release of monthly jobs reports, conveniently removing a source of embarrassment for the administration. Where hiding associations doesn’t work to bury them, the administration is not above resorting to distractions, whether by walking on White House roof or promoting a conspiracy theory from three presidential elections ago.
The administration can also turn attention away from items in the news that they’d rather sweep under the rug through calculated escalation of their classic authoritarian tactics. We see this in D.C., where they’ve progressed from bluster to domestic military occupation. Escalating their tactics in this way serves a dual purpose: they can get people to stop talking about the Epstein files, the tariffs, and the jobs reports in favor of talking about the situation in D.C., and they can also see what level of intrusion Americans will accept. As the administration faces dissension in the ranks of Republican politicians over the release of the Epstein files, deploying troops is especially relevant in redirecting the attention of his most devoted supporters, who tend to view our nation’s cities as crime-ridden war zones regardless of their actual level of safety.
How likely is this to happen here in Massachusetts?
D.C. has a uniquely precarious position, specifically in regard to the ability for the federal government to exercise control over the city. Because it doesn’t belong to a state, it doesn’t have the protections against federal overreach that states do; here in Massachusetts, our National Guard answers first to the governor, and only to the president in times of emergency. This isn’t to say that the administration couldn’t send military forces into the streets of Boston (as they did in LA), but it would take more legal justification, and probably more time than it took in D.C. With full statehood also comes additional avenues to push back on federal militarization—including the potential for a legal challenge from the governor and pushback from our state legislature and federal representatives.
The federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles is a closer analog for us to look at when determining our risk here in Massachusetts. Courts are currently adjudicating the legality of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in LA, so we should keep our eye on the outcome of that case.
Despite Trump’s bravado, our military does not have the capacity or widespread willingness to occupy our cities. Servicemembers who enlisted to protect the American people have been widely upset when called upon to patrol our streets as occupiers. Opposition to domestic military occupation is part of our national heritage, with our origin in a Declaration of Independence from an authoritarian ruler who “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”
Though it’s unlikely that the federal takeover in D.C. will make it any easier, administratively, for Trump to bring the military into the streets of other U.S. cities, we should still consider it a meaningful escalation of tactics and treat it as a substantive threat—and voice our opposition accordingly.
So what can we do to help, from here in Massachusetts?
The administration frequently seeks to amass power by “flooding the zone” with a multitude of authoritarian measures in the hope of overwhelming those of us who stand together for liberty, and diverting attention from its own vulnerabilities. As we endeavor to protect the liberty of our communities without withdrawing attention from full accountability for all who are implicated in Epstein’s notorious crimes, regardless of their proximity to the Oval Office, our first priority is following the lead of communities directly affected by the administration’s attempted authoritarian takeover.
We can call our Congressional representatives on behalf of D.C. residents. Despite having a population of 700,000, D.C. doesn’t have a single voting member of Congress; they’re not part of a state, so they don’t have equal representation. We need to lobby our Congresspeople on their behalf—it’s the only way they can be heard in Congress.
We can channel aid toward organizations helping D.C. residents on the ground. The people being most affected by this new piece of executive overreach are the residents of D.C., who have had their home turned into a battleground overnight. Local 50501 members on the ground recommend donations to the organizations in the linked Instagram post, which are organizing resistance efforts and support for homeless populations in the city.
Beyond this direct support, we can push back against the narratives that the administration is using to justify attempted takeovers of our cities. We can speak out to highlight that Washington, D.C., is the safest that it’s been in decades, as well as the success of cities like Baltimore in reducing crime by treating it as a public health crisis, rather than a war zone. Our cities belong to their residents, not a wannabe monarch lashing out from fear, and we can stand together with our fellow Americans in this attack on our liberties and any future attacks that this administration may attempt in the future.
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