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    ‘It’s not safe in DC as an immigrant’: racial profiling surged during Trump’s Washington takeover

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    In the 30 days since Donald Trump took control of Washington DC’s police department and deployed national guard troops, the city has seen the indiscriminate detention of immigrants, the rise of racial profiling and the arrests of large numbers of people for low-level crimes.The US president claimed the takeover, which began on 11 August, was necessary because of violent crime in the country’s capital, especially after the attempted carjacking and assault of a former Doge staffer. “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said during a news conference at the White House at the time.But although Washington DC has long struggled with gun violence, its violent crime rate is at a 30-year low, much lower than that of cities in red states. And the large majority of people affected by the federal takeover are not perpetrators of violent crime.Both groups targeted – immigrants and those accused of minor crimes – have been largely picked up by law enforcement through racial profiling and other tactics that experts say have instilled a climate of fear and a distrust of law enforcement.A White House official said on Monday that 2,120 people have been arrested since the start of Trump’s takeover, 20 known gang members had been arrested and 214 firearms had been seized. Although violent crime has decreased during this period, Washington residents say the impact has not been worth the overbearing law enforcement presence.View image in fullscreenFederal agents with numerous agencies, including Immigrations and customs enforcement (Ice), Customs and Border Protection, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Park Service, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the US marshals service have all been activated across the city. Often a single arrest will involve officers from multiple agencies and the local Metropolitan police department (MPD).Though the deployment of national guard troops from six states was the most high-profile aspect of the 30 days, the camo-clad troops, who are now armed, were largely focused on patrolling tourist sites and Union Station, the city’s main train station. With little work to be done, some were instructed to do landscaping and other “beautification” tasks.The Home Rule Act – which allowed Washington DC to establish a local government – only allows the president to take over the city’s police department for 30 days without approval from Congress, aspects of Trump’s actions are likely to continue past Wednesday. Mayor Muriel Bowser has issued an order for the MPD to coordinate with federal law enforcement to the “maximum extent allowable by law within the District”, and national guard troops reportedly may stay until the end of the year.Washington DC residents have pushed back against what many call an occupation, which is deeply unpopular in the largely Democratic city. On Saturday, thousands marched from Malcolm X park in Northwest DC to the White House in an event organized by Free DC, a community organization working to protect the city’s Home Rule that has trained thousands of people since 11 August.“Trump’s crackdown does not create safety, but its opposite,” said Scott Michelman, legal director for the ACLU of DC. “People are scared to go to their jobs, to drop off their kids at school, and to go about their daily lives because of the pervasive law enforcement and military presence that Trump has foisted on this city.”When Trump first announced the takeover of the local police department, he said cops will be allowed to do “whatever the hell they want”.Over the last 30 days, offenses that before 11 August would likely not have led to arrest have resulted in criminal charges, and federal law enforcement who have accompanied MPD have used policing tactics, such as car chases, check points, and stop and frisks, that MPD typically avoids and that experts say may violate the US constitution.“Anyone who has studied the history of policing in this country knows that that type of green light to pursue inchoate hunches, to use force, to stop people at random, falls most heavily on Black and brown people, and we have sadly but predictably seen that play out on the streets of the district,” Michelman said. “We’re deeply concerned that one of the primary effects of Trump’s surge and militarization of law enforcement in DC has been racial profiling.”While some communities, especially those that suffer from a disproportionate amount of violent crime, have been grateful for additional policing and patrolling, much of the activity has not targeted dangerous criminals.According to a Reuters analysis of records from Washington’s superior court from halfway through the takeover, the federal agents have been “converging in large numbers on low-level crimes such as marijuana use and public alcohol consumption”. More than half of the cases federal agents were involved in were minor offenses, including misdemeanors and felonies under Washington DC’s code, but not federal felonies.In the first two weeks, just over 30 cases were filed in federal court for more serious gun and drug-related charges. But many of the charges federal officials have tried to land have not stuck. Grand juries have refused to indict defendants at an unprecedented rate, and judges have also pushed back against the tactics.“This is perhaps one of the weakest requests for detention I have seen and something that, prior to two weeks ago, would have been unthinkable in this courthouse,” magistrate judge Zia M Faruqui said on 28 August.Faruqui has also called out police for racial profiling defendants. In one incident, she claimed a Black man was singled out by police because he was carrying a large bag.View image in fullscreen“It is without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve even seen in my life,” Faruqui said, according to NPR. “I’m absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search.”Michelman of the ACLU said: “We’ve heard of a sharp uptick in stops that appear to be inexplicable except by the individual’s race or personal appearance.”Maryland resident Brandon Worthan told the Guardian he was subjected to what he claims was an illegal search when he came to Washington on 27 August.The 38-year-old was waiting for his girlfriend outside her soon-to-be-opened bar on a quiet stretch of H St Northeast at about 9pm, and said he was speaking to another Black man on the street when roughly 30 to 40 vehicles suddenly pulled up. “Out of nowhere, I just got blitzed,” he said. “All kinds of unmarked police cars, MPD, Secret Service, all kinds of cop cars just pulled up on me and they didn’t ask me any questions.” He said he later saw vests identifying agents with the DEA, FBI, Ice, the US marshal service, and troops in military camo.According to video from the incident and Worthan’s account, officers grabbed his arms, put him in handcuffs, searched his body, and found a bottle of alcohol in his back pocket. “I wasn’t drinking the bottle,” he said. “I didn’t have it in my hand.”Worthan spent the night in the central cell block, where defendants are held temporarily until their court appearance. He said the room was filled with people arrested for similar low-level crimes, including smoking weed and simple assault. “It was, like, 200 people going to court that day,” he said. Worthan said he never saw a judge, and was released by 4pm the next day, with no charges filed.“He’s targeting minorities and people from different countries,” Worthan said about Trump. “It’s just crazy to see it on social media and TV, and then when they actually do it to me, I’m like wow this is really what’s going on.”“I think what’s happening is it is getting people to be off the streets because everyone is just like: ‘I could get messed with by the police for standing outside.’”Shortly after Trump’s 11 August announcement about his intentions in Washington DC, attorney general Pam Bondi instructed the local police department to work with federal immigration enforcement officials.A large part of the Trump administration’s action in Washington over the last 30 days has focused on detaining undocumented people. They have gone about this by setting up Ice checkpoints at busy intersections in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods and patrolling in specific locations, such as restaurants, churches, and schools, that tend to employ immigrants.Ice has reportedly teamed up with local police to target delivery drivers on mopeds, and videos have circulated the internet showing arrests of construction workers and other laborers as they drive or go about their jobs.“We have documented, time and time again, people being pulled over simply because they may be Brown or Black, they may look like an immigrant, they may be speaking Spanish,” said Amy Fischer, a court organizer with Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid in Washington DC.View image in fullscreenThe increased enforcement has created a culture of fear among the city’s immigrants, with many saying they have been afraid to leave their homes, go to work, walk down the street, drive their cars or take their children to school.“People are very very scared and are doing what they can to simply avoid being in DC,” Fisher said. “There simply is an understanding that it’s not safe to exist in DC as an immigrant.”Immigration enforcement has particularly targeted the Home Depot in Washington DC, like in other cities, due to the large number of undocumented day laborers who often gather outside. Emily, who wanted to be referred to using first name, said her neighbor in the Brookland neighborhood was detained on 11 August when he took his white work van to Home Depot to buy materials for a construction project. Ice has reportedly been targeting laborers in white vans across Washington.The man, who has three kids including a three-month-old baby, is being held in detention in Virginia and hasn’t seen his family since.“It took three of four days for him to show up in the system and know where he was,” Emily said.His business partner, with whom he also shares a house, is now extremely scared to be out, and is driving minivans to work instead of his typical white van.The Trump administration has said it plans to replicate some of what it did in Washington DC in other cities, including Chicago where it says an operation targeting immigrants is under way.Fischer said she doesn’t expect much to change in Washington DC, either, now that the 30 days are up. “We still expect MPD to work with Ice and to do immigration enforcement and things like checkpoints,” she said, and immigration enforcement may become a regular presence across the city.As a result, immigrants are unsure when they will feel safe being out in the city. “At this point, we have more questions than answers,” she said. 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      Chicago suburb warns residents that federal agents may be about to arrive

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      A Chicago suburb has warned its residents that federal immigration agents may be present in the coming days as Donald Trump continues to threaten an immigration enforcement crackdown and national guard deployment in the nation’s third largest city.The city of Evanston issued a statement urging its residents to report sightings of federal agents, after local officials said they were informed over the weekend about the likelihood of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activity.Evanston’s mayor, Daniel Biss, told the local outlet Evanston Now that he received information from the governor’s office suggesting the likelihood Ice agents would be deployed there “in the coming days”.“In Evanston, we welcome our immigrant and refugee neighbors and protect each other,” the statement read. “We will do all we can to safeguard our community and keep Evanston families together.”Within hours of the statement, Trump repeated his desire to send federal enforcement and national guard troops to “straighten” Chicago out.“You try and reason with people, like in Chicago, with the governor there, you try and reason with them, and it’s like you’re talking to a wall,” the president said during remarks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.Furthermore, a social media post from the Trump-led Department of Homeland Security said the agency was “launching Operation Midway Blitz” in honor of an Illinois woman who authorities say was killed in January by a Guatemalan national who was in the US without permission.The suspect in the case was identified as 29-year-old Julio Cucul Bol, and authorities say he was drunk-driving.Invoking a term that historically has been associated with the intense, sudden military attacks waged by the Nazis during the second world war, Monday’s DHS post claimed the operation in Abraham’s name would target those who “flocked” to Chicago knowing it limits local law enforcement cooperation with Ice. The post also contained a tribute video to Abraham, who was killed in the crash alongside a 21-year-old woman named Chloe Polzin.Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson released a statement on Monday afternoon responding to the DHS announcement on X.“The city of Chicago received no notice of any enhanced immigration action by the Trump administration. We remain opposed to any potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process because of Ice’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees,” he said.On Wednesday last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that an advance team of at least 30 agents was undergoing crowd-control and flash-grenade training at Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago. And 230 agents, most of whom work for Customs and Border Protection, were being sent to Chicago from Los Angeles, the outlet reported.Meanwhile, at a news conference last week, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, expressed concern that Ice agents would target Mexican Independence Day events in the middle of September. The El Grito Chicago Mexican Independence Day festival was postponed due to concerns about Ice operations.Trump’s deployment of military troops to Los Angeles in July was deemed illegal in a ruling by a federal judge in California. And his federalization of Washington DC’s police department in August was unprecedented.Nonetheless, the Republican president has turned his focus to other major Democratic-led cities, threatening federal intervention over what he has purported is a “national crime emergency”.Despite falling crime rates nationwide, Trump has insisted his priority is “cleaning up cities” with a focus on violent crime and homelessness. And he has repeatedly suggested he next wants to deploy the national guard to Chicago – where, like in Washington DC, violent crime is at its lowest in decades.Calling Chicago a “hellhole”, Trump has boasted: “We’re going in. I didn’t say when, [but] we’re going in.”Trump has verbally attacked Pritzker, opining that the Illinois governor has been reckless for not asking for the president’s help.Earlier on his Truth Social platform, Trump insisted that he wants to “help the people of Chicago, not hurt them”.The post derided Democratic leaders in Chicago and Illinois, saying “the city and state have not been able to do the job”.“People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION,” Trump’s post continued. “IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!”Shrai Popat contributed reporting More

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      ‘Not addressing the issues’: DC residents wary of Trump’s national guard deployment even amid youth crime

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      With a small group of school-age children around him, Dylan Whitehorn is the center of attention with his clippers, trimmers and brushes. He’s known as “Mr D the Barber”, and on this summer afternoon in mid-August, Whitehorn had a steady line of kids waiting for a free back-to-school haircut at a neighborhood carnival.Several Metropolitan police department (MPD) officers patrolled the event, but their presence wasn’t overwhelming. It was a distinct difference from other parts of Washington DC, where upwards of 2,000 national guard troops were on the ground as part of Donald Trump’s temporary takeover of the city’s police department with federal troops.“It’s really been heartbreaking to see it,” said Whitehorn. “And to hear Donald Trump tell [federal officers] do what you want. You know, that kind of gasses them up, because they pretty much know or feel like they can gun you down, and there won’t be any accountability for that. And when you’re sending your kids to school in that climate, especially when this country has a history of killing young Black males, it’s a terrifying thought.”Amid a sweeping crackdown that has included immigration raids and checkpoints, Trump has called for teens as young as 14 years old to be charged as adults when accused of certain crimes in DC, citing the recent case of a 19-year-old former “department of government efficiency” (Doge) staffer who was allegedly assaulted by a group of teens.In late August on Fox & Friends, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, also doubled down, and said she would push to prosecute teens even younger than what Trump suggested. “We have got to lower the age of criminal responsibility in Washington DC. The gangs and the crews are 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, I can’t touch them,” said Pirro in the clip. “If someone shoots someone with a gun and they’re 17 years old and that person does not die, I can’t prosecute them. I can’t get involved with them.”Minors aren’t part of Pirro’s jurisdiction because the US attorney for the District of Columbia is responsible for prosecuting adult felonies, while the local DC attorney general handles youth criminal cases. But the focus on young people committing crimes has become one of the central issues in the capital city’s friction with the Trump administration.Juvenile justice advocates say that DC’s current legal system ensures accountability and responsibility for minors involved in harmful behavior, without incarcerating them in a system built for adults. But DC natives and parents said they had mixed thoughts about how to effectively respond to youth crime. Frustration with community gun violence, even as violent crime has gone down after the pandemic surge, has made many residents in the Democratic city warily consider federal assistance.“It honestly depends on the crime because I’ve seen some of the younger kids out here carrying guns, like I can’t even sugarcoat it. If you out here killing then, yeah, you can serve adult time,” said Will Scales, a DC parent of three. “The punishment should be appropriate.”Research from the DC Policy Center shows the juvenile arrest rate in Washington DC is nearly double the national rate. There were more than 1,120 juvenile arrests from 1 January to 29 June this year, making up roughly 7% of all arrests in the city, according to data from the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, an independent DC agency that tracks public safety statistics. These trends have remained consistent since 2023, when youth crime spiked after the pandemic.The MPD has not publicly released any information about juvenile arrests during this federal operation, as it only publishes reports on juvenile arrests twice a year.Whenever a minor is arrested, an MPD spokesperson said, they are taken to the juvenile processing center. Depending on the severity of the criminal charge, the teen may be held overnight before they can see a judge the next day, or if they are eligible to participate in a diversion program, the teen is released to their guardian the same day as the arrest.Last year, the local DC attorney general’s office prosecuted over 84% of violent juvenile offenses, including homicide and attempted homicide, gun possession, carjacking and robbery cases.Still, city officials and advocates stress that the city has done more than prosecution alone.When crime spiked in 2023, DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, issued a public emergency declaration on juvenile crime, which expanded city resources and programs. This spring, the city launched the juvenile investigative response unit, a new initiative within the police department that expands outreach to teens in the criminal justice system and investigates violent crime involving youth.More recently, the DC city council approved tougher juvenile curfews after a series of incidents involving large groups of teens engaging in harmful and criminal behavior throughout the city.“There’s no question they still need to work on public safety,” said the DC city council member Robert White in an interview. “If we could actually get support from the federal government to keep doing the things that are working, we could continue to drive down crime. If the president spent just what he is spending from the defense budget, deploying the guards to DC on homelessness and crime, we could end both of them this week, but that’s not his goal.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhitehorn, meanwhile, acknowledges that youth crime has been an issue in DC, but he believes the answer isn’t as simple as locking teens up in jail. He knows this from his own experience: Whitehorn went to prison twice, spending nearly 15 years behind bars.“I get it that [if] they kill somebody, and I hate [for it] to be me or someone I love, but 14 years old, that’s just too young. I think it’s too young to get life … and that’s normally what you get for murder,” said Whitehorn. “I don’t think they have to be tried as an adult.”DC resident and parent Benetra Hudson believes there should be more parental involvement. She said this included more community policing efforts from neighbors, not police.“I’m 40 – when I was growing up, I had a whole community,” Hudson said. “I couldn’t do things because the lady at the corner knew my mom, and she would tell my mom or my grandmother before I could even get home from doing whatever it was I was not supposed to do.”When it comes to punishment, Hudson believes that teens aged 13 and 14 are too young to grasp the reality of their mistakes fully.“I feel like it gives them less of an opportunity if they’re charged as an adult, because they’re not going into a real adult situation in jail, and they’re not rehabilitated to look forward to the future,” said Hudson. “It’s a different thing when you’re actually incarcerated and you’re going to a juvenile facility to rehabilitate you to be better than you were as a juvenile, so when you are an adult, you don’t have those same mishaps.”Michael Umpierre, director of the Center for Youth Justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, agreed that police surveillance was not the most effective way to prevent youth crime.“If we truly want safer communities, we should be investing in schools, family supports and community-based youth programming. That is how we create pathways for young people – and all community members – to thrive,” he said in a statement.Others in the community echo that sentiment, arguing that the national guard’s presence won’t address the root causes of crime in the city.“People are not coming out because you’re out there, but they’re still going to kill, they’re still going to do all they’re doing as soon as you’re gone,” said Whitehorn. “It’s not fixing, it’s just blanketing the situation, but it’s not addressing the issues.” More

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      Chicago mayor to sign executive order directing city to resist Trump’s immigration raids

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      The mayor of Chicago is planning to sign an executive order on Saturday outlining how the city will attempt to resist Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to reports.Brandon Johnson will set out guidance for the city’s agencies and law enforcement, CNN reported, “in the midst of escalating threats from the federal government”.Last week, the White House requested that a US military base on the outskirts of Chicago be made available to assist with immigration operations, as the Trump administration plans a broader takeover of Democratic-run “sanctuary cities”.Johnson’s order “affirms” that Chicago police will not “collaborate with federal agents on joint law enforcement patrols, arrest operations, or other law enforcement duties including civil immigration enforcement”, CNN reported.It also directs city police to wear their official police uniforms, continue to identify themselves, follow body-camera procedures and not wear masks to clearly distinguish themselves from any federal operations, according to a copy of the order.“The deployment of federal military forces in Chicago without the consent of local authorities undermines democratic norms, violates the City’s sovereignty, threatens civil liberties, and risks escalating violence rather than securing the peace,” the order says.It also says city departments should “pursue all available legal and legislative avenues to resist coordinated efforts from the federal government”.On Thursday, Tom Homan, the administration’s “border czar”, said Chicago, along with a number of other cities, would soon be targeted in a planned immigration crackdown.“Operations are ramping up across the country. But you can see a ramp-up across the operations in Chicago, absolutely,” Homan said.In an interview with Fox News, Homan was asked whether he wanted to give a message to Johnson. Homan responded: “Get out of the way, because we’re going to do it.”NBC News reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the border patrol and other agencies will send numerous agents and equipment to Chicago as soon as next week, in an attempt to increase arrests of undocumented immigrants.The planned move comes weeks after the president deployed armed soldiers and military vehicles to patrol the streets of Washington DC, claiming, despite all available evidence, that the use of the national guard was necessary to control crime.The Trump administration has been working on plans to send the national guard to Chicago, something Johnson and JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, have said would be an abuse of power.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Friday, Pritzker said such a move would amount to an “invasion”. He told CBS News that, should Trump send in the national guard, voters “should understand that he has other aims, other than fighting crime”.Pritzker said those aims may be to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections”.Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the president, their communities would be much safer,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Cracking down on crime should not be a partisan issue, but Democrats suffering from TDS are trying to make it one. They should listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser who recently celebrated the Trump Administration’s success in driving down violent crime in Washington DC.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Democrats seek ‘immediate answers’ after reported arrests of firefighters by US border agents

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      Patty Murray, the Washington senator, has called for the Trump administration to provide “immediate answers” about reports that two firefighters were detained by border agents as they were responding to a wildfire in the state.Federal immigration authorities on Wednesday staged an operation on the scene of the Bear Gulch fire, a nearly 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) blaze in the Olympic national forest, where they arrested two people who were part of a contract firefighting crew, the Seattle Times first reported. The fire is the largest currently burning in the state.Authorities made the firefighters line up to show ID, the Seattle Times reported. One firefighter told the newspaper that they were not permitted to say goodbye to their detained colleagues.“I asked them if his [co-workers] can say goodbye to him because they’re family, and they’re just ripping them away,” the firefighter said to the Seattle Times, adding that the federal agent swore and told the firefighter to leave.The operation sparked widespread condemnation in the state. Murray in her statement released on Thursday morning demanded information about the whereabouts of the firefighters and the administration’s policy around immigration enforcement during wildfires.The Trump administration’s immigration policy is “fundamentally sick”, Murray said. She continued: “Trump has wrongfully detained everyone from lawful green-card holders to American citizens – no one should assume this was necessary or appropriate.”The US border patrol later on Thursday released some information on the operation, saying that it had assisted the Bureau of Land Management after that agency requested help after terminating contracts with two companies following a criminal investigation.While verifying the identities of contract personnel, federal agents identified two people “present in the United States illegally”, border patrol said in a statement, including one person who had a previous order of removal.The agency did not provide more details about the nature of the criminal investigation and the identities of the firefighters have not been made public.Authorities arrested the men on charges of illegal entry, and escorted 42 others off federal lands, according to the border patrol statement.The US Forest Service said in a statement that it was aware of the border patrol operation and that the activities did not interfere with firefighting efforts.Murray in her statement said the president had been undercutting firefighting abilities in other ways, including by “decimating” the US Forest Service. The administration significantly cut budgets and staffing at the agencies that manage much of the country’s federal lands, leaving the US unprepared for this year’s fire season, the Guardian previously reported.“Here in the Pacific north-west, wildfires can [burn] and have burned entire towns to the ground. We count on our brave firefighters, who put their lives on the line, to keep our communities safe – this new Republican policy to detain firefighters on the job is as immoral as it is dangerous,” said Murray, who has represented Washington in the US Senate since 1993.“What’s next? Will Trump start detaining immigrant service members? Or will he just maintain his current policy of deporting Purple Heart veterans?”Nearly 430 personnel are responding to the Bear Gulch fire on the state’s Olympic peninsula. Firefighters told the Seattle Times that two contract crews had been sent to cut wood and were waiting for a supervisor when federal law enforcement arrived in the area. More

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      America survived a coup attempt. Can it endure dictatorial creep? | Lawrence Douglas

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      January 6 demonstrated that longstanding democracies can readily resist a disorganized effort at a coup. They are less equipped to withstand the normalization of exceptional measures: the use of federal agents to quell domestic protest, the staging of police raids on the homes of leaders’ political opponents, the pretextual invocations of emergency powers. Each of these steps may seem temporary and targeted; they may even enjoy a thin patina of legality. But over time, a democratic order turns into what Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish lawyer whose book The Dual State stands as one of the first and most perceptive examinations of Hitler’s regime, called a “prerogative state” – a government in which the executive “is released from all legal restraints and depends solely on the discretion of the persons wielding political power”.So let us be clear: Trump’s commandeering of control of the Washington DC police department was simply an opening salvo. While Americans were greeted with images of soldiers in combat gear, toting rifles and establishing roadblocks and checkpoints near the National Mall, Trump was already tasking his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, with creating “specialized units” of the national guard to be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues”.What are the politics behind this militarization of domestic policing? Trump says he alone has the will and resources to pacify the “killing field” of Chicago, but clearly his “crime fighting” justification is no more than a ruse. Statistics – that is, reality – tell us that the crime rate in Washington DC was at a 30-year low when Trump sent in the troops. Which is not to deny the rhetorical power of ruses. Installing soldiers in Democratic strongholds allows Trump to present himself as the protector of law and order, especially to Maga supporters who have been trained by rightwing news outlets to view the nation’s largest and most multiethnic metropolitan areas as dens of iniquity and vice. Never mind that this is the president who pardoned members of the lawless mob that stormed the Capitol, fired career justice department prosecutors who worked to hold insurrectionists to account, and has installed in the department the likes of Jared Lane Wise, an insurgent who was charged with urging his fellow rioters to kill members of the police.Militarizing the police also serves Trump’s politics of intimidation. Here we can connect the deployment of troops on the National Mall to the FBI’s raid on John Bolton’s residences. Both are disturbing displays of the kind of force more familiar to a police state than to a constitutional democracy. The fact that both acts were formally legal – two federal magistrates signed off on the Bolton warrants, while several statutes specific to the District of Columbia authorized the president’s use of the national guard – makes them textbook examples of the kind of dictatorial creep that Fraenkel diagnosed.Deploying troops to police Chicago would, of course, represent a far more alarming and legally dubious exercise of executive power. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a post-Reconstruction law, essentially bars presidents from using troops as domestic police. But we would be naive to conclude that federal law provides an adequate safeguard against the consolidation of the prerogative state. The Insurrection Act carves out disturbing exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, allowing the president, in cases of “rebellion”, to deploy the military to enforce federal law. Would a supreme court that has held that a president enjoys broad immunity from future prosecution for all “official acts”, no matter how nefarious, question a president’s determination of what constitutes a “rebellion”?While the appearance of troops on the streets of Chicago or New York may frighten marginalized communities from exercising their basic rights of free movement, it may also trigger an equally dangerous and predictable response. The specter of city streets patrolled by soldiers trained to fight enemy combatants, not US citizens, may well serve not to quell violence but to invite it. The prospect of protests turning ugly and violent is all too real. The deployment of troops, under the pretext of responding to an emergency, then works to create the very emergency that justifies an ever-greater deployment. The danger is this is precisely what the president wants.Why? Trump has already aggressively inserted himself in the battle over the 2026 midterms, pushing Texas to further gerrymander its already gerrymandered districts; jesting that war may supply a justification for delaying elections; and pledging to issue an executive order ending mail-in ballots – while clearly lacking the authority to do so. What if he were to deploy troops to polling places on election day?In principle, a strong edifice of law explicitly bars such a deployment on election day, but imagine if the president, in the wake of a series of violent protests, invokes the Insurrection Act to “safeguard” polling stations from domestic unrest. Now we have armed soldiers at polling stations, handling ballots and “monitoring” the chain of custody – all done in the name of protecting democracy. Legally, such a deployment would stretch the Insurrection Act beyond recognition, but courts deliberate slowly; elections are decided in days.As Fraenkel noted, authoritarianism does not operate outside law; it manipulates law until legality and illegality are indistinguishable.

      Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts More

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      Grand jury declines to indict alleged Washington DC sandwich thrower

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      Grand jurors have rebuffed federal prosecutors by refusing to approve a criminal indictment against a man who allegedly threw a sandwich at a law enforcement agent in protest against Donald Trump’s deployment of armed troops on the streets of Washington DC.It is the second time in recent days that a grand jury had declined to vote to indict a person accused of assaulting a federal officer and signaled strong public objection to Trump’s decision to send national guard troops and federal agents onto the streets of the US capital, purportedly to crack down on violent crime.The case of Sean Charles Dunn, who was accused of hurling the sub-style sandwich, became a cause celebre after video of the episode went viral on social media.Dunn, 37, a former justice department paralegal, was initially charged on 13 August after being accused of throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer who was patrolling an area of Washington’s north-west district known for its bars and restaurants with other agents.Footage shows a man, presumed to be Dunn, confronting an officer as he stood on the kerbside. He then threw a soft object at point-blank range, hitting the agent in the chest, before running off with the officer and several of his colleagues in pursuit.The complaint against Dunn states that he stood close to the officer and called him and his colleagues “fascists” and shouted: “I don’t want you in my city.”After the incident, the Trump administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed officers going to Dunn’s apartment, heightening the attention the case attracted. Posters depicting Dunn lofting a sandwich have since appeared around the nation’s capital.It is rare for federal prosecutors to fail to secure charges at a grand jury hearing, given that they control the information that jurors hear and defendants’ lawyers are prohibited from being in the courtroom.It is unclear if prosecutors will continue to seek to press charges against Dunn, which they could do by withdrawing the felony charge and refiling it as a misdemeanor, which does not need an indictment.But even that would amount to a symbolic climbdown for the Trump administration, which has demanded that offenses by prosecuted under the most serious federal charges, which carry heavier sentences.Dunn is due to appear before a magistrate judge on 4 September in a hearing intended to determine whether a crime was committed.The spurning of the indictment against him mirrors the case of Sidney Lori Reid, against whom federal prosecutors failed three times in 30 days to secure an indictment of a felony assault against an FBI officer, after she was arrested during an immigration protest last month.Prosecutors on Monday reduced the charges to a low-level misdemeanor, suggesting that they had inflated the accusations against her.On the same day, a judge dismissed all charges against a man who was arrested last week at a Trader Joe’s store after police alleged he had two handguns in his bag.Judge Zia M Faruqui said prosecutors had violated Torez Riley’s constitutional rights in charging him, declaring: “Lawlessness cannot come from the government.”A flurry of defendants have been charged with federal crimes over relatively minor infractions that would normally be handled by local courts, if they resulted in criminal charges at all, since Trump’s highly controversial troop deployment. Critics have condemned the deployment as an attempted military takeover of a city run by the president’s Democratic opponents and motivated by a desire to intimidate rather than to stamp out crime. More

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      JD Vance booed during hamburger handout to national guard troops in DC

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      JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.Handing out burgers to troops deployed last week by Donald Trump, at the station’s Shake Shack alongside the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, Vance told soldiers “we appreciate everything you’re doing” and asserted: “We brought some law and order back.” Meanwhile, a crowd of demonstrators protested outside.The crowd shouted slogans such as “Free DC!” and “From DC to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Some also shouted expletives as the three men walked into Union Station and gathered at the restaurant, and continued as they tried to speak to reporters and eventually left.Asked why the troops were at the station instead of parts of the city where crime rates were statistically higher, Vance claimed it was being overrun with “vagrants, drug addicts, the chronically homeless and the mentally ill” and that visitors didn’t feel safe. “This should be a monument to American greatness,” he said, later adding: “We do not have to live like this.”Addressing the protests, Vance said: “It’s kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they’ve never felt danger in their entire lives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAppropriating the protesters’ chants, he added: “Let’s free Washington DC, so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free DC from.”His sentiments were echoed by Miller, who belittled those who had gathered in protest as “crazy communists”. “We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington DC,” he said.Last week, the president federalized the city’s Metropolitan police department and directed Hegseth to mobilize national guard troops, claiming he was cracking down on “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” in the nation’s “lawless” capital, despite a sharply falling crime rate with violent crime at a 30-year low.An estimated 1,900 troops are being deployed in DC. More than half are coming from Republican-led states including Louisiana and South Carolina. Besides Union Station, troops have mostly been spotted in downtown areas, including the National Mall and metro stops. More

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      Federal prosecutors launch inquiry into Washington DC police over allegedly fudged crime statistics

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      Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Washington DC police systematically manipulated crime statistics to make the city appear safer than it actually is.The probe, anonymous sources tell the Washington Post, NBC News and Fox News, being conducted by the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia under Jeanine Pirro, is the latest escalation between the Trump administration and DC officials over federal control of local policing.The justice department did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation.Trump somewhat confirmed the investigation on Monday, writing on social media that DC provided “fake crime numbers” to create a “false illusion of safety” and officials were “under serious investigation”.The federal investigation reportedly started after Cmdr Michael Pulliam was suspended in May by the Metropolitan police department for allegedly altering crime data. The local NBC station reported last month that Pulliam, the former commander of Washington DC’s 3rd district that patrols the Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights neighborhoods, faced accusations from the police union of falsifying data, including misreporting stabbings and carjackings as lesser offenses. Pulliam denies the charges.But federal prosecutors are now examining potential wrongdoing by multiple police and city officials, according to law enforcement sources.DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, has repeatedly cited police data showing violent crime down by 27% over the last year to argue against Trump’s federal takeover of local police. The department has separately reported that violent crime fell by 35% in 2024.The chief of DC’s police union, Gregg Pemberton – who supports federal control – calls both sets of statistics “preposterous”, and said officers know the reality on the streets.“We go call to call to call – robbery to carjacking to stabbing to shooting,” Pemberton told NBC News Washington last week. “Crime is ubiquitous in every quadrant of the city.”Pemberton claimed that Washington DC police have a directive to underreport violent crimes.“What we’ve heard through our members and through members of management that were willing to talk with the union is that this is a directive from the command staff … that they wanna make sure that these classifications of these reports are adjusted over time to make sure that the overall crime stats stay down,” he told NBC. “And this is deliberately done.” More