Youth activist Afeni Evans, who was recently appointed the most recent symbol of US President Donald Trump’s federal control of the city’s police, has become a fixture in Washington, DC.
At the Navy Yard subway station on August 15, Metro Transit Police pepper-sprayed and forced the 28-year-old Evans to the ground because they were allegedly evading fare at the time. On “cop watch,” Evans and other Harriet’s Wildest Dreams volunteers were present to make sure that Black youth would not be harassed by the federal government. However, it still happened to three Black youths, prompting Evans’ intervention, which led to her arrest.
She was freed after organizing public demonstrations in Washington, DC, and on social media, and her charges were dropped the following day.
His use of the National Guard and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stifle community ecosystems, in particular, has an impact on Washington’s Black, Brown, and Queer residents, like with so many other issues relating to Trump and his attempts at autocracy. More than a distraction from the controversy surrounding the Epstein files or America’s economic problems, this effort is aimed at averting potential opposition.
Locally, it puts an end to the District of Columbia’s 50-year home rule, which otherwise leaves the city unaffected by direct federal control. In the current autocratic climate, is it still up for debate whether Washington can remain a site of protest, a place where marches and other gatherings can cause change or even occur at all?
Given his unsuccessful attempts to re-use the authority of the federal government in California in June, Trump’s executive order announcing his takeover of DC’s police force on August 11 should not have come as a surprise. The order states that the “increase in violent crime in the heart of our Republic… poses intolerable risks to the vital federal functions that take place in the District of Columbia. “Crime is out of control in the District of Columbia,” according to the order.
The truth is that far-right fantasies were the catalyst for the crisis in Trump’s executive order. Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former Department of Government Efficiency employee, was attacked by two teenagers in DC’s Logan Circle six days before Trump’s announcement. We’re going to take action to address it. In the wake of the incident, Trump said, “That includes bringing in the National Guard.”
However, the two alleged carjackers in police custody were not from DC but Hyattsville, Maryland, in Prince George’s County.
Trump’s actions also contradict one other fact: Crime is no greater an issue in DC than it is anywhere else in the country. A joint report from the Metropolitan Police Department and the US Attorney’s Office in Washington revealed that the city’s violent crime rate had fallen by 35 percent in 2024, reaching its lowest level since the middle of the 1990s. According to the report, “armed carjackings are down 53%.”
Washington, DC, serves as a great example of how eager the rest of the US is to implement Trump’s ideal form of autocracy. Despite 30 years of middle-class (mostly white) gentrification, White Washingtonians make up 39% of the population in DC, a predominantly minority city, with Black Washingtonians accounting for 43% of the population.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Trump would use such harsh language in a soft occupation of Washington, particularly in a once-famous city known as “Chocolate City.” Trump is also sending the unvarnished and racist message that Black people, especially Black youth, are criminals in a city where more than 90% of voters chose former vice president Kamala Harris over Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
A wannabe strongman’s attempt to appear powerful against his anti-Black supporters is nothing more than the addition of hundreds of National Guard soldiers and a heightened police presence in a multiracial city.
DC is also regarded as a place of significance for Queer Americans. Approximately 80, 000 people in Washington identify as LGBTQIA+, out of every seven adults in the nation’s capital. In the 1960s and 1970s, northwest DC became a relatively safe haven for Queer culture and businesses, particularly communities like Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Adams Morgan, and parts of Shaw and Columbia Heights. In 1979, DC hosted the first National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
Anyone who opposes a Trump administration shouldn’t be surprised that it also targets the LGBTQ and immigrant spaces in Washington. Along the 14th and U Street corridors, where there have been not-so-random checkpoint installations over the past few weeks, has been a particular highlight of the federalized police presence in Washington. In addition to the MPD, the National Guard, federal law enforcement, and anti-immigrant organizations like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have unavoidably smothered these communities’ nightlife and business traffic, all in tandem with the National Guard.
Trump is also making an attempt to resurrect DC’s history as a place of protest and resistance in his own ham-fisted way. DC became the world’s superpower during and after World War II as the US’s superpower grew and became the world’s capital of protest, particularly for racial justice and civil rights. Examples include the 1963 antiwar protests against Vietnam and the March on Washington on August 28, respectively. Civil rights marches and protests continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s alongside marches and protests for the Equal Rights Amendment, a Gay Rights Bill, and for the rights of Chicano and Indigenous people. DC is now a target for government overreach due to massive protests like the 2017 Women’s March and the George Floyd protests from last year.
Trump’s actions toward DC in 2025 are not unprecedented for either him or the federal government. The US National Park Service (NPS) proposed charging demonstrators permit fees in order to allow the NPS to “recover some of the costs” of public safety provisions in 2018, during Trump’s first term as president. In order for Trump to stage a photo-op nearby on St. John’s Church steps and proclaim himself “your president of law and order” along the way, the National Guard and US Park Police tear-gassed, lobbed concussion grenades, and violently detained George Floyd protesters at Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, on June 1, 2020.
Trump ascended from Richard Nixon, a previous “law and order” leader. In what became known as the Mayday protests, which culminated in more than 12, 000 arrests over the course of three days, Nixon unleashed the National Guard and local police against thousands of antiwar demonstrators in Washington.
The Bonus Army, a ragtag group of 20 000 unemployed and unhoused World War I veterans, was established by President Herbert Hoover in 1932. The military retaliated with gas grenades, bayonets, flamethrowers, and tanks to obliterate their shantytowns along the National Mall and Anacostia River at the height of the Great Depression, seeking the money Congress owed them. The Army injured tens of thousands of people while two veterans passed away. An infant was also killed as a result of the cloud of tear gas over the city.
Trump and his small army of occupiers are attempting to sabotage the DC of the past century, its vibrancy and resistance, by acting as an example in the capital of the country. Ironically, one of Trump’s first acts in his second term was to pardon more than 1,500 insurrectionists who had participated in the deadly and treasonous attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump wants to coerce Washingtonians into embracing autocracy right now.
DC’s standing as the center of the so-called Free World, as a national center of power, and as a global city is in danger. Despite Trump’s potential as a despot, its most disadvantaged and vulnerable residents continue to resist.
