President Donald Trump’s D.C. takeover is now well into its second week. Washingtonians are in agreement: they’re officially sick of it.
Wednesday dawned in the nation’s capital with news of more chaos in the District of Columbia, this time indisputably caused by Trump’s executive order — which the administration is increasingly finding it hard to prove is not a publicity stunt. More and more National Guard troops pour into the city from around the country, though arrests aren’t going up, and most of the troops appear to be standing around snapping photos with tourists.
In the early morning hours, an armored, mine-resistant tactical vehicle slammed into the side of a civilian vehicle, sending one person to the hospital. The crash occurred downtown, where federal agents and National Guard troops are increasingly piling up in high-traffic tourist areas.
A morning report from Fox 5 quoted residents in the higher-crime area of Anacostia, in the city’s southeast, saying that law enforcement resources weren’t reaching them. Meanwhile, video after video shows bored federal agents patrolling luxury shopping and dining areas, or tourist destinations like the Washington Monument.
As Vice President J.D. Vance and Trump adviser Stephen Miller arrived at a Shake Shack at Union Station — one of those low-crime areas where Guard troops have milled around aimlessly — for a meet-and-greet with a few visiting troops on Wednesday, the pair were loudly heckled by locals.
Then they bizarrely accused the hecklers of having come from out of town to mock them.
Around the city, graffiti appeared honoring a resident arrested after angrily tossing a Subway sandwich at federal law enforcement agents, a since-fired DOJ employee who has become a folk hero around town.
“I’ll tell you, a couple of years ago, when I brought my kids here, they were being screamed at by violent vagrants, and it was scaring the hell out of my kids,” Vance said. He denied the validity of a comment from a reporter referring to the area as low crime, and again cited those “vagrants” as evidence during his Q&A.
Union Station is a major arrival point for many tourists in the capital and for many years has struggled with the attraction that the spacious transit center and shopping mall’s public facilities provided for homeless D.C. residents. An encampment once existed a few steps from the station’s front doors, and inside the station benches and other public amenities were removed in order to dissuade loitering.
The Covid pandemic, which accelerated housing insecurity, also led to closures of Union Station businesses which traded reasons for their misfortune including a rise in homeless activity around the station.
But vagrancy by itself is not a crime, and Vance’s comments, combined with the increase in encampment sweeps around the city the past few days, suggest that Trump’s crime-fighting campaign is actually a beautification campaign meant to push an aesthetic that isn’t necessarily felt by D.C. residents with roots in the city.
Polling shows that Americans who call the city home agree. A resounding eight in 10 D.C. residents told Washington Post pollsters in a survey released Wednesday that they opposed the federal takeover of the city, which is now being fought in the courts as city leaders try to retain control of the Metropolitan Police Department.
A similar share, 78 percent, said that they felt extremely or somewhat safe in their own neighborhoods.
While arrests aren’t surging and city residents don’t say they feel safer, it’s very clear which community is being impacted the most. U.S. Park Police officials told the New York Post on Wednesday that the agency has cleared 75 homeless encampments around the city in just the short period since Trump announced his takeover.
Washington social media channels remain alight with reports of activity from ICE and other federal agencies. Checkpoints have repeatedly been swarmed by hundreds of residents, shouting angrily, until law enforcement agencies pack up and leave. Week two of the takeover also coincided with DC’s annual summer Restaurant Week, though dining spots around the city report that the presence of the Guard and federal agents are hurting business as reservations plunged year-over-year.
While city leaders are largely paralyzed as they await decisions in the courts, there are already clear signs that this episode could backfire for the president.
News channels and social media platforms continue to spread images and video depicting an occupied American city clearly in conflict with its new guests.
The unpopularity of Trump’s takeover could quickly become an issue in the Virginia governor’s race, where a conservative diehard is running against a centrist Democrat with strong DC ties.
It’s also energized the progressive left, long dormant in city politics thanks to the populations of federal workers and transplants who have elected center-left leadership for years. On Tuesday evening, several hundred people attended the campaign launch of a democratic socialist candidate running for city council, Aparna Raj.
In the end, Donald Trump may accomplish little more than juicing up the American left’s will to fight back.
