Militarizing America’s Cities

Trump’s Authoritarian Play to Suppress Opposition

National Guard troops at the Washington Monument. Photo from @NickAtNews

On August 11th, Donald Trump reused his Los Angeles strategy and deployed federal law enforcement and the military to Washington, D.C. Exploiting the capital’s unique legal status, Trump went further than before and has subordinated the D.C. police to federal control. Since then, soldiers and federal agents have been patrolling the National Mall and surrounding monuments with a mandate to “fight crime” and carry out Trump’s stated mission to “beautify” the city.

The White House claims this extraordinary step was prompted by the assault of a former DOGE staffer (Edward Coristine, profiled earlier this year) who was reportedly injured while intervening in a carjacking in Dupont Circle. Yet Washington has already been experiencing a decline in violent crime prior to Trump’s deployment. Many Americans are asking why Trump was so quick to deploy the military and flood the city with federal agents over a single incident involving an ally’s staffer, while he infamously refused to send the National Guard to help Capitol Hill police on January 6th. If we are serious about discussing crime, we cannot overlook Trump’s mass pardons of violent insurrectionists.

What’s happening in D.C. is not about crime control - it is about normalizing the presence of federal forces in America’s cities. This is a dress rehearsal for Trump’s wider plan: to intimidate opponents, suppress demonstrations, and project dominance in urban centers. Nowhere is Trump’s authoritarian impulse clearer than in his embrace of ICE. The exponential growth of ICE’s budget and his stated plans for further expansion suggest that Trump sees the organization as a personal cudgel. Unlike local police or even the military, ICE combines investigatory power, paramilitary capacity, and direct accountability to the executive branch. The prospect of ICE agents stationed near polling sites, particularly in communities that have long endured racial profiling, poses a grave risk to voter turnout in the future.

This is not law enforcement and it is not crisis response. This is political intimidation. Trump is borrowing from Vladimir Putin’s playbook of using special police and paramilitaries to crush dissent. These are the moves of a leader who governs from weakness, grasping at authoritarian tools to maintain control. Americans must recognize these deployments for what they are: a gross abuse of power designed to stifle opposition and subvert democracy.

There is, however, one source of optimism: Trump’s consistent incompetence. The Trump-Putin summit failed because Trump was unprepared and weak; the same flaws may undermine his attempts at authoritarian control. Everything Trump touches collapses. He does not have the discipline or fortitude to sustain an authoritarian project. We must continue to build people-power, resist intimidation, and stand together. Only then can we overcome the dark shadow of this presidency.