Early on in Donald Trump’s second term, I predicted that he would deploy the military and federal law enforcement in our nation’s largest cities. Trump specializes in harassing and intimidating immigrants, minorities and Democrats. Militarizing cities allows him to do all three.
Trump also has a broader plan. He’s stationing the military and other federal law enforcement in blue areas so — when the time comes — he can pivot their mission to suppressing voting rights and undermining free and fair elections. Absent a significant opposition movement, I fear he will be able to achieve this.
So far, that opposition movement has not materialized in sufficient numbers and seriousness to combat the threat being posed.
Even as this weekend saw a shocking escalation in Trump’s attacks on home rule in the District of Columbia, too many people — including some Democrats — seemed unconcerned. Videos posted online showed disturbing scenes of masked agents manhandling, handcuffing and taking people away in unmarked vehicles.
In one instance, agents can be seen violently throwing a man to the ground. When a bystander shouts that the agents are “ruining this country,” one of them responds, “Liberals already ruined it.”
In another incident, well-known lawyer and democracy activist Benjamin Wittes was threatened with arrest by the Secret Service for pouring chalk on the street in the image of the Ukrainian flag. As Wittes notes, such an interpretation of D.C. law would make the children’s game hopscotch illegal. More importantly, this suggests that the Secret Service is now enforcing local ordinances — something those tasked with guarding the president have not done in the past.
Trump’s attacks on Washington, D.C., are escalating in other ways. On Thursday, the U.S. Army assured the public that the National Guard members on patrol “will not be armed, nor will they have weapons in their vehicles.” This weekend, that assurance was reversed, as those being deployed were told to expect to carry weapons.
Meanwhile, Republican governors in Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia authorized the deployment of their National Guards to Washington, D.C. This will nearly double the number of Guard members in the city from 800 to 1,550.
Expect more red-state governors to follow suit — and the numbers to grow.
Given its legal status as a federal enclave, Washington, D.C., may be the easiest city for Trump to target, but it will certainly not be the last. Indeed, it is not even the first. That distinction belongs to Los Angeles, where the National Guard and active-duty military were deployed in July and remain today.
The writing is on the wall. How long will it be before Trump takes these same tactics to New York, Detroit and Chicago? After that, will anyone still notice — or care — when they spread to Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland and Portland, all blue cities in critical battleground states for control of the U.S. Senate?
This threat will not subside on its own. Those who make excuses or suggest that crime in Washington, D.C., justifies the takeover are doing Trump’s bidding. Yes, we will need the courts to rein this in, but public and political pressure are equally important.
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