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President Trump is escalating an authoritarian-style takeover of Washington, D.C. He has deployed National Guard troops to patrol civilian neighborhoods, seized control of the Metropolitan Police Department and urged state governors to lend their own troops, all to fight a “crisis” that simply does not exist.
This is not public safety. It is a dangerous power play. And if Trump can get away with doing it in Washington, D.C., he might try it in your hometown.
Consider just how far he has been willing to go. Trump took the unprecedented step of declaring an emergency and seizing control of the D.C. police force, even pulling 120 FBI agents off their critical missions — counterterrorism, cybercrime, and public corruption — and redirecting them to patrol tourist areas like Georgetown and the National Mall. This comes after violent crime in D.C. reached a historic 30-year low last year and is down another 26 percent so far this year, facts that will certainly factor into any legal challenges to Trump’s emergency declaration.
In doing this, Trump revealed that he is willing to override local authority and ignore facts to bend federal law enforcement to his political will.
Trump has also enlisted political allies to further this agenda, weaponizing state resources for his own benefit. The Republican governors of Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, West Virginia and South Carolina have pledged to send their states’ National Guard troops to Washington. These governors are siding with Trump instead of their own constituents. They’re more focused on Trump’s authoritarian power grab than the needs of their own state or respecting the Constitution.
That choice carries dangerous implications. If governors are willing to dispatch troops against civilians in the nation’s capital today, what is to stop them from deploying those same troops against their own constituents tomorrow?
And Trump has made no secret of where he wants this to lead. His request to Congress for “long-term” control of D.C.’s police makes the ambition unmistakable. This was never about keeping people safe — it was about establishing precedent for federalizing local policing and normalizing military crackdowns nationwide.
Trump may think this manufactured crisis hides his policy failures, but it only amplifies them. He is diverting taxpayer-funded National Guard troops and federal law enforcement to stage a spectacle in D.C., while Americans struggle with higher prices caused by his reckless tariffs. Groceries, household goods and small business supplies all cost more because of his policies. At the same time, he signed the largest cuts to health care in modern memory and continues to stonewall the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, keeping the public in the dark about who may be implicated.
Instead of addressing the real problems facing families or being transparent with the American people, Trump is using public resources for political theater, betting that soldiers in the streets will distract from his economic failures and continued secrecy. Americans aren’t fooled. And let’s be clear: This is not a distant problem confined to Washington. It is a direct threat to the freedoms of every American. If a president can flood your streets with federal agents and import troops from other states under the guise of an “emergency,” then no community is safe. Freedom of speech, the right to protest, and even the basic expectation of civilian rule are all on the line.
Do we truly want an America in which the president, of either political party, has complete and absolute control over law enforcement and the use of military force in our nation’s capital, or in other cities across our country? To us, that sounds a lot more like Moscow or Pyongyang than Washington, D.C.
This is Trump’s endgame: to replace legitimate governance with fear and force. That is the playbook of a “wannabe dictator,” not a president sworn to uphold the Constitution.
Congress must act. The resolution introduced by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to end Trump’s fabricated state of emergency in Washington is a critical first step. But it will take far more. Leaders from both parties must condemn this abuse of power and stop its spread before it becomes entrenched as the new normal.
Trump has already shown us who he is and what he intends to do. The rest of us must act before his blueprint for authoritarian rule spreads beyond D.C. into every American community — because if we allow it in the nation’s capital today, we risk losing the freedom to stop it in our own communities tomorrow.
Lisa Gilbert, Brett Edkins, Praveen Fernandes, and Kelsey Herbert are co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition.