Observations of the Occupation

During my emotional break(down) away from political blogging for most of this month, trump declaring a "crime emergency" in Washington DC to abuse presidential powers pretty much dominated the news traffic I read.

Deploying various National Guard units and other federal agencies to take over the metro's local law enforcement, trump issued lie after lie justifying his power grab that for all intents is his first big step into authoritarian rule that he will never leave (via Daniel Dale at CNN Politics):

President Donald Trump delivered a barrage of false claims about crime in Washington, DC, during a series of Monday comments defending his takeover of the police force and deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital.

Touting an ongoing 11-day period with no reported murders in Washington, Trump falsely claimed it had been “many years” since the city had previously had a murder-free stretch of even a week; in fact, Washington had three such periods since late February of this year, one of them 16 days long. Trump falsely claimed Washington now has not only no murders but “no crime” at all; while reported crime is down during his takeover, there have still been hundreds of offenses. (personal note: including the illegal use of a sandwich, but we'll talk about that a bit later)

Trump falsely claimed Washington had been at an “all-time” high in crime at the end of the Biden administration; in fact, it had been nowhere close to the violent peaks of the early 1990s. And Trump wildly overstated Washington residents’ support for the takeover, baselessly putting it at “95%” even after a poll showed overwhelming local opposition...

It's during this crisis that I look back at the window of opportunity that the Democrats had between 2021 and 2023 when they controlled the House and Senate and the Presidency to where Biden could have pushed for statehood to DC (and Puerto Rico) to avoid these kinds of abuse the federal government can inflict on the locals. Statehood is a serious thing for what is one of our nation's biggest population centers suffering under an outdated fear of the nation's capitol being under attack by its own residents. trump's own attempt at insurrection on January 6th proved it's not the locals that's the problem, it's the partisan agitators from the Republican Party side of things.

And it's still the Republicans pandering to their worst fears and biases, aimed at "urban" metros that Fox Not-News and other Far Right media outlets depict as wretched hives of minorities and liberals. You'll notice all the media attacks aimed at DC, New York City, and Chicago while the metros in Republican-controlled states like Houston and Memphis TN are suffering higher crime rates (per 100,000 people as of 2024). Speaker Mike Johnson can't admit the main city in his Louisiana district - Shreveport - has a higher crime rate than DC.

In the meantime, with all the federal officers and National Guard units deployed across the city the biggest observation is that these extra law enforcement people are... just standing there (via Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare):

I can’t say I found them threatening, though I am admittedly not an undocumented immigrant living in fear of ICE. While a few were armed, they weren’t arresting anyone or pursuing anyone or, actually, doing much of anything. They were all, well, just standing around. 

I am not the only one who has captured photographs of this deployment of National Guard being really boring.

A friend, jogging on the Mall today, noticed this gaggle of them at the World War II Memorial. Notice all the crimes they are not stopping...

The common theme here is that this deployment isn’t really about doing anything. It’s not going to do anything about D.C.’s crime problem, though I’m sure the president will make up whatever numbers he needs to to claim otherwise. And while I’m sure it is creating fear among Washingtonians who have reason to worry about immigration detention and deportation, I don’t think it’s really about that either...

The answer, I think, is nothing more or less than chest-thumping machismo. It’s a dog and fire hydrant thing. Putting troops on the streets, even bored troops who aren’t doing anything except helping people navigate public maps, is a form of dominance...

This is part of the Far Right obsession with Alpha Male status, of using power not to affect change or improvements but just to show off how manly - even the conservative women that love to pose with guns and brag about killing puppies - they are. This is vice signaling to their racist MAGA voting bloc that they are "owning the libs" and making life miserable for all the Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and "deviants" they fear existing in our major cities.

In the meantime, the Real Americans serving in our Guards are stuck outside in DC during the hot and humid month of August picking up trash because they're not really doing anything else except play to trump's dictatorial fantasies.

Even the DC residents - the ones who would be most affected if there were actual crimes taking place - know the whole thing is a staged act, and arguably violations of their own civil liberties while the "crackdown" imposes more curfews and limitations of their rights. The locals are doing what they can with civil protests, but also with more direct efforts to give trump's Justice Department lackeys serious headaches (via Quinta Jurecic at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

It’s rare for grand juries to refuse to indict. It’s even rarer for grand juries to refuse to indict multiple times in a single month—in significant part because prosecutors usually know better than to present shaky cases that might not gain jurors’ approval.

But Donald Trump’s desire to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., seems to have come at the cost of that good judgment. Over the past month, federal prosecutors in D.C. have failed at least five times to persuade a grand jury to indict a D.C. resident for allegedly attacking federal law enforcement. These are not the only embarrassments suffered recently by federal prosecutors in the District, and judges have begun to lose their patience over missteps and sloppy cases. Despite the president’s promise to “take our capital back,” his law-enforcement surge is struggling in court.

The most recent rebuke by a grand jury involves the case of Alvin Summers, who allegedly scuffled with a U.S. Park Police officer after driving his car onto the Mall. Before that came a grand jury’s refusal to indict Sean Charles Dunn, the man now memorialized as “Sandwich Guy,” who hurled a salami sub at a Customs and Border Protection agent early in Trump’s federal deployment across the capital. The three grand-jury refusals before that all came in a single case: that of Sidney Lori Reid, whom prosecutors charged with a felony—potentially punishable by eight years in prison—over a tangle with FBI and ICE agents while Reid was protesting an immigration arrest. The agents pushed Reid up against a wall, they said, and the resulting scuffle produced a few scrapes to an FBI agent’s hand.

Even the common people who make up these juries know damn well that a Subway BMT footlong is not a lethal weapon (well, unless the gluten count is too high). The infamous saying of "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich" now has a notable exception.

These juries know this all isn't about "cracking down on crime." They know this is all about the conservative urge to inflict cruelty on the Outsider groups they fear and hate, that this is all performative political bullshit on trump's part to justify his iron-fisted rule from the White House. They see the minor infractions getting enlarged to federal felonies and refuse to play along. They know who's inflicting the harm here - trump's street thugs - and won't accept trump and his lackeys' excuses.

What happens from here depends on the courts - at the district and appellate levels going against trump's power grabs - and on a Republican-controlled Congress now facing the growing discontent of a majority of Americans - even in their own states - who are not enjoying the preening and posing of trump as a strongman while issuing more economic hardships with inflation and disappearing jobs.

While trump is only supposed to issue these "emergencies" as temporary powers, you can see him and his legal cohorts arguing to keep such powers permanent... and to spread such powers further out across America to Blue States and Blue Cities in violation of the Constitution. It's not going to stop with Los Angeles, not with DC, not with what he's planning to do to Chicago next. There is hope that the courts can and will overturn these efforts and rein in trump's abuses... except for the fact that the Roberts Supreme Court have demonstrated they are willing to roll over and beg for anything trump wants to do to the rest of us.

This won't end until trump is out of power and all of his handlers and minions are sitting in jail cells for all the crimes they're committing in his name (at this point, I doubt trump will ever see the inside of a prison ever, goddamn him).

Keep fighting, America. It's not exaggerating to say everything is at stake here.