As local residents push back against his unprovoked invasion of their neighborhoods, Trump threatens to expand his militarization to other cities governed by his perceived political enemies
Chanting slogans including “Fight The Trump Takeover” and “Free D.C.,” hundreds of angered but peaceful residents of Washington, D.C. took to the streets over the weekend to protest the administration’s unjustified deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents into the district, which has since resulted in the harassment of community members. “Trump’s agents in D.C. caught on video randomly harassing people,” read one headline from The New Republic.
Demonstrations began in DuPont Circle before moving to the White House, where protesters condemned what Trump’s own political allies have explicitly stated is a “power grab.” Since Trump’s unwarranted takeover of the district, federal agents have brutally arrested food delivery workers just trying to make a living and callously displaced homeless individuals as Attorney General Pam Bondi has attempted to oust the Metropolitan Police Department’s duly-appointed chief.
“I know a lot of people are scared,” one demonstrator told NBC Washington. “We’ve got the FBI patrolling the streets. We’ve got National Guard set up as a show of force. What’s scarier is if we allow this.”
Protest outside DC MPD over Trump's DC police takeover.Woman from Free DC, a campaign to protect DC's Home Rule, notes police checkpoints aren't happening in rich areas like Georgetown."If that's bit racist, I dunno what that is," she says to claps. "Tell me if y'all see a checkpoint up there."
— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) 2025-08-15T16:53:33.893Z
"Make noise," says the @freedcproject.bsky.social woman. "For just 5 minutes. Making noise is resistance…. every night until they get out of our streets. Loud cheers."DC is ours," someone says in the crowd.
— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) 2025-08-15T16:59:20.461Z
Today: Anti-Trump protesters marched in Washington, all the way to the White House—peaceful, defiant, rejecting his occupation of D.C.
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2025-08-16T21:09:41.890Z
Trump has claimed his invasion is due to alleged rampant crime in the district, but he might actually be thinking of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which has been a hotbed of unlawful activity. And, recall that it was only last year that Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records. Two other federal criminal cases against Trump were also dropped by special counsel prosecutors following the election, not due to the merits of the case, but because of Justice Department policy claiming a sitting president can’t be prosecuted. How convenient. But when it comes to Washington, D.C, the federal government’s own data show that violent crime in the area is at the lowest level in three decades.
“Friday’s protest included a diverse mix of residents furious about what Trump is doing to the city,” HuffPost noted. “Families were there, along with retirees and young people. Some people were from other states, too, having driven in to protest what’s happening in D.C., in part because they fear Trump doing the same thing in cities in their states.” And, Trump is already on the record as pledging to do just that.
During a press conference last week, Trump “warned that if he and his officials decide they ‘need to,’ he will deploy military forces” to other cities governed by his perceived political enemies, Rolling Stone reported. “The president named a few, including Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore.” During an interview with her former network, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said the administration was just getting started. “Make no mistake, this is just the beginning,” said the former FOX News host.
“This is just the beginning” — US Attorney Pirro
And, as The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reported, a leaked memo shows Trump’s use of the U.S. military within our nation’s borders is set to get worse.
“The memo lays out the need to persuade top Pentagon officials to get much more serious about using the military to combat illegal immigration—and not just at the border,” the report said. “It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed ‘for years to come.’” But the warning signs have always been right there in the open.
Last year, Trump used the white nationalist “invasion” lie to endorse GOP-led states deploying their National Guard troops to take part in Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s wasteful border stunt, which began in 2023 and remains ongoing. And while Trump and JD Vance refused to provide the ugly details of their mass deportation agenda during the campaign, Stephen Miller gleefully boasted of “plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military,” to aid in mass deportations.
This bogus – and deadly – assertion that immigrants simply seeking new lives here constitute a literal invasion was the trial balloon to rationalize deploying the military on American streets to ultimately infringe on the rights of all Americans, America’s Voice Research Associate Yuna Oh said last year.
“While under the pretext of going after immigrants, Trump has been quite clear that his designs for directing the military against the American people are much more expansive,” she wrote. “In a rally in Iowa early last year, he already promised to use the military to ‘get crime out of our cities’ and ‘replace local law enforcement in Democratic cities to squelch protests’ …The mass deportation agenda is also providing the pretext for using the power of the purse or even the prosecution of political opponents.”
Just look at the outrageous arrest of New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver for simply trying to exercise oversight authority at ICE detention facilities. And, this week, bodycam footage reportedly revealed that Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was detained alongside Rep. McIver, was detained at the request of Todd Blanche, the personal Trump attorney who is now the second-ranking official at the Justice Department.
“There is a much bigger ploy the right is aiming toward,” Oh continued. “Mass deportation is a vehicle used to bring authoritarian power and process to the US, turning the power of the federal government to the challenge of ethnic purges.” And for all the incessant repetition by the administration and its allies that the National Guard and federal officers are being deployed because of safety concerns, why is it that red states with higher instances of violent crime are deploying troops to D.C.? Why isn’t Trump deploying those troops to cities governed by members of his political party? Oh, we know why.
Jackson, Mississippi, has the nation's highest homicide rate, more than 3 times the rate in DC
— Yonah Freemark (@yonahfreemark.com) 2025-08-18T18:23:33.494Z
We shouldn’t lose sight here of the fact that a big priority from the administration seems to be that we all become numb to the chaos that’s now being forced on American communities daily. Trump officials “note that it is a priority of the president’s that these kinds of military deployments — in L.A., and now D.C., in times of relative calm — become normalized in American political culture,” Rolling Stone continued. “Trump has long believed he should be able to wield the might of military forces on American soil in ways more commonly associated with authoritarian states. He now has a government stacked full of loyalists who want to help him realize this goal.”
While laws like the Posse Comitatus Act generally prevent the use of the U.S. military against the general American populace, “other dusty and obscure laws provide exceptions to that rule,” Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, wrote last year.
Trump has made it perfectly clear he will not shy away from trying to get what he wants, including his threats to use the Insurrection Act against protesters. It should be remembered that Trump’s first national emergency during his first term was widely opposed by the American people, with thousands taking to the streets to oppose the move. The policies of his second administration are even more unpopular and drawing even bigger protests. As that anger continues and daily life only becomes more difficult for struggling families, he’ll only be more prone to lashing out against the populace. It’s a moment that requires vigilance from all of us and holding those in power accountable.
