The Dangers and Absurdities of Trump’s DC Occupation

It was 8 pm, humid, and I was by myself, across the street from where my kids went to elementary school, banging a large metal spoon against a pot. I was alone, because I had gotten the address wrong for a pots-and-pans demonstration against Donald Trump’s military occupation of Washington, DC. What I missed was a cacophonous community protest, one of many across parts of the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia). After living in DC, I am now a five-minute walk across the border in Maryland. But my family works in DC, my neighbors (those who haven’t yet been laid off) work in DC, and our lives are wrapped up in a town suffering under another Big Lie.

As absurd as I felt doing a pots-and-pans solo performance while families looked at me quizzically, this now feels appropriate. It was no more absurd than proclaiming a crime epidemic in a city where crime has fallen significantly since 2023. It was no more absurd than being lectured about law and order by Justice Department officials covering up a child-sex ring that seems to involve their boss. It was no more absurd than a white, middle-aged Justice Department employee named Sean Dunn becoming a folk hero (no pun intended) for calling one of Trump’s troops a “fascist,” chucking a messy sandwich at close range into his chest, and then outrunning them in boat shoes. It was no more absurd than hearing Attorney General Pam Bondi, with her cross necklace big enough for an impromptu crucifixion, say that the sandwich guy with boat shoes is part of the “deep state” that she’s been tirelessly fighting.

It was no more absurd than the fact that the city’s Reichstag Fire was sparked by the alleged assault of an Elon Musk acolyte known as “Big Balls” by kids as young as 12 years old. It was no more absurd than seeing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt being asked by white-supremacist gadfly, Russian stooge, and plagiarist Benny Johnson in an official White House press briefing if Big Balls would be getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was no more absurd than hearing these oh-so-manly Republicans line up to say how scared they are to go work in the morning. Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, a brutish dolt who challenges liberal congressional witnesses to fistfights, said he doesn’t buckle his seatbelt in DC out of fear he’ll be carjacked. Representative Tim Burchett said he sleeps in his office, terrified of the city outside.

Whether they are making themselves laughingstocks to prove their loyalty to Trump or because they actually live with this fear, I cannot imagine admitting such things publicly. They are fine with their kids thinking that Dad, in the most heavily policed part of the United States, is scared to leave his office. A cornerstone of white conservatism in 2025 is howling about the death of American “manhood” and extolling the virtue of the gun—all while confessing to being a coward.

Trump says from the safety of the freshly paved-over Rose Garden, where his UFC ring will likely go, that we have “caravans of youth rampaging through city streets at all times of the day.” (Note the use of “caravan,” a descriptor usually saved for immigrants trying to cross the border. It’s Klan Mad Libs.)

Please listen to me: I am out here every day, and there are no “caravans of youth” looking to carjack Oklahoma senators with manhood issues. Instead, Trump is trying to nationalize what he did to the Central Park 5 and, just like with the Central Park 5, it’s a divisive lie. This is one more Big Lie, facilitated by Fox News, that Trump’s supporters need to believe. They crave for Trump to be their white knight, which is why he is desperate that they not reckon with his time on Epstein’s island. Trump needs to distract them, and he needs to suppress democratic revolt against a failing, increasingly unpopular agenda—and this move does both.

This is not about street crime. This is about the president’s public desire to militarily occupy cities in states with Democratic governors, put a final stake in the heart of democratic norms, and, most critically, do it all on fictitious terms. The key is to make people accept the lies so they become complicit. Crime-rate drops are irrelevant. Murder rates in red states are irrelevant. When you choose to believe the lie, then you find yourself defending it. When you defend it, you become a part of the harm it does. Trump getting people to believe what is untrue is the political version of getting more prints on the handle of a gun.

DC is the perfect testing ground for this coup, because it doesn’t have statehood and only limited home rule. As longtime DC civil rights leader the Rev. Graylan Hagler told me, “We were already occupied by law enforcement making DC one of the most police-occupied cities in the country, with Capitol police, park police, transportation police, the FBI, the DEA, and the list goes on, and many of those agencies additionally having separate police departments of their own. Only the MPD [The Metropolitan Police Department] was under local control, and that no longer exists. With the National Guard on the streets and all local empowerment gone, we are a city and people living under martial law.”

This is why civil rights leaders like Reverend Hagler have long advocated for DC statehood: Because without it, DC residents are GOP prey. From charter schools to mandatory drug laws, a GOP-controlled Congress always treats DC as its own political laboratory. This is the end result: A federal tyrant running the city without any accountability. Banners hang from overpasses now with a tweak on the longtime slogan of both 1776 and the DC statehood movement: “No Occupation Without Representation.”

That occupation involves checkpoints, ICE raids, the terrorizing of unhoused people, and Washington Post interactive neighborhood maps so you can watch the seizure of the nation’s capital from the comfort of your couch. National Democrats and centrists have never taken the DC statehood movement seriously. The price for that will be paid well beyond the district’s borders.