Trump’s militarization of D.C. is blatant dictatorship

Washington, D.C. has always stood for freedom. For our nation, it has been the physical embodiment of liberty, from the awe-inspiring dome of the U.S. Capitol building to the marble splendor of the Lincoln Memorial. Each monument is more than stone, steel, and sculpture.

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They are living threads, stitched through 249 years of struggle, sacrifice, and progress, binding together generations who believed in the promise of America and its vaunted democracy.

The Capitol, where laws are debated and shaped to expand freedom. The White House, home to some of the impressive leaders in history who were entrusted to protect those freedoms. The Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. declared his dream for racial justice. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where the names of the fallen call us to honor service and cherish peace, and, again, our freedoms.

Together, they form an unbroken chain of freedoms, which until Donald Trump, have been unbroken. Yes, frayed at times perhaps, but never broken until this authoritarian bully cut this chain with an Elon Musk-like chainsaw.

For me, D.C. holds an even more personal meaning. When I moved here at 23 to work on Capitol Hill, I felt my first small breath of personal freedom. It was the beginning of my coming out of the closet and being myself.

When I took runs through the streets of Washington, through those famous streets, past those famous buildings and monuments, I was always in awe. Always. I never took for granted the history behind all I was running past, and how that history preserved freedom.

That’s why Trump’s militarization of D.C. today is not just a policy move. It's a personal gut punch. It’s a deadly assault, that is not hyperbole, on what this city has always represented, and on what it has meant for me and countless others who saw its surroundings as a promise, not a threat.

Related: What the heck is happening in D.C.? Nothing, until Trump deployed the National Guard

We’ve seen this disgusting display before. It was during the George Floyd protests when Trump ordered military and police forces to violently clear peaceful demonstrators outside the White House. It was an appalling abuse of power.

The bloodthirsty Trump turned the instruments of the state against citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Then came January 6, when Trump unleashed his MAGA extremists on that soaring Capitol itself. Trump and his equally thuggish foot soldiers desecrated the very halls where our freedoms are safeguarded, and where I worked. They, and Trump, let’s be real, assaulted the officers sworn to protect them, and carried the Confederate flag into the beating heart of democracy. In my opinion, it was the most horrific moment of destruction of freedom in our history.

Now, once again, Trump has turned the power of the state against its own people by unleashing the U.S. military on the streets of D.C., and putting the inept Attorney General Pam Bondi as the new head of D.C. police, one of the most ridiculous, useless moves ever by a U.S. president.

It was also the most blatant display of dictatorship in our country’s history. And to be frank, he’s making a mountain out of a mole with the D.C. “crime” as a way to deflect from Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump claims D.C. is spiraling into chaos. It’s not. Crime in the nation’s capital has sharply declined, violent crime down 26 percent, homicides down 12 percent, and robberies down 28 percent. They are at their lowest levels in decades.

By the way, when he was president during his first term and Washington, D.C. was really under attack on Jan 6, why didn’t he call in the National Guard then?

Local police already work with federal agencies where necessary, and under the Constitution, public safety in D.C. is a matter for local leadership, not presidential aspirations for dictatorship. But they should never, ever, ever come under the direct control of the president of the United States and his minions.

This deployment of National Guard, FBI agents, and other federal forces is not about public safety. It is authoritarianism tinged with racial provocation — just as he did in Los Angeles earlier this year, another city with declining crime.

Trump is fabricating a crisis to justify military action and a takeover. And just as it was with George Floyd protestors and the racial hate on January 6, there is no subtext. This is unmistakably making targets of Black and brown communities.

History validates Trump’s takeover of D.C. as a brazen act of brutalness. Dictators use their militaries not just to protect borders, and themselves, but to police their own people, round them up, and kill them. Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Maduro in Venezuela, Erdoğan in Turkey, and Putin in Russia.

Each of these murderers, who Trump adores, relied, or relies, on military force to control urban centers, silence dissent, and consolidate power. Trump is now doing the same thing in our capital city, so when he meets with Putin later this week, he can say to his hero, “Look at me. Look at me.”

This morning at a press conference masquerading as a despotic demonstration, Trump wrongly and ominously claims this is not just a “D.C. problem.” It’s a national one, naming Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, New York City, and Los Angeles as next on his list. He called these places “slums” that must be “liberated.” You don’t think this language is steeped in racist contempt?

We know what he means. We’ve seen his history, from housing discrimination lawsuits in the 1970s to his ongoing vilification of immigrant and minority communities.

And his assurances that troops “won’t be involved in law enforcement”? That is a dangerous joke. We’re seeing him weaponize ICE against immigrants and innocent people who are following the rules about making sure they are in good standing with their citizenship status. He said ICE wouldn’t raid farms, but that was short-lived.

Trump claimed “complete and total lawlessness” in D.C. He said it was worse than Baghdad. How? He promised to “hit hard” and “take the streets back.”

Again, from whom, he didn’t say. But his meaning was clear. He even veered into absurd, hateful asides about “radical leftists” and transgender athletes, as if the existence of LGBTQ+ Americans were somehow a threat to public order.

It was classic, hateful Trump: mixing fear, lies, and prejudice to justify exerting brutal power..

Militarization in a democracy is not something to shrug at. It’s the clearest signal that democracy is slipping away. And, based on her response, it seems to me that D.C. Mayor Muriel Browser is shrugging.

This is a dictatorship. This is real. And we all should be thinking about how we are going to fight this.

If Trump can flood the streets of Washington with troops despite falling crime, he can send them anywhere. And when the targets are primarily communities of color, the message is unmistakable that dissent will be met with force, freedom is disappearing, and equality is being erased.

Washington, D.C., once represented the best of America to me. It’s the place where my personal freedom first took root, and our nation’s too.

Today, under Trump’s orders, something darker happened. It was the moment when America’s capital became an undeniable first step to authoritarian control. If there were any doubts before today, there should be none now.

The United States is under a dictatorship, and there might be no turning back. What are you going to do about it?

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