In another step towards the establishment of an authoritarian regime in America, with a dictator-president ruling through the police and military, President Donald Trump has ordered the mobilization of federal police from multiple agencies to patrol the streets of the US capital, Washington, D.C.
Federal officers have been drawn from 15 federal agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the US Capitol Police, the Federal Protective Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the US Park Police, the US Marshals Service, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the police forces of Amtrak passenger rail service and the Washington Metro.
At least 120 federal agents were on the streets Friday night, supplementing the 3,400 officers of the Metropolitan Police Department. But a far larger number may be mobilized over the course of the week-long exercise, which could be extended “as needed,” according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Trump is threatening an even greater show of force in the US capital, including a direct federal takeover of the local District of Columbia government, and the deployment of the National Guard. Posting on Truth Social Tuesday, Trump wrote, “If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore.”
At a press briefing Wednesday, Trump repeated the threat, saying, “We have to run D.C.,” adding, “That includes bringing in the National Guard—maybe very quickly, too.” Asked about seeking congressional repeal of home rule, the limited self-government in the federal district established in 1973, Trump replied, “The lawyers are already studying it.”
As that comment indicates, the effort to take control of the US capital by force has been under consideration for some time. Trump actually proposed taking such action in 2020, during the nationwide mass protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Units of the National Guard were called up, but kept outside the District because the Pentagon high command viewed the deployment as poorly prepared and premature. There will be no such opposition in 2025.
As a pretext for his latest effort to flood the District with police and troops, Trump cited the attempted carjacking Sunday of a former staff member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the budget-cutting task force once headed by billionaire Elon Musk. Two 15-year-olds have been arrested and charged as juveniles for the alleged attack on Edward Coristine in Dupont Circle, but Trump called for the District of Columbia to change its laws to allow youth to be prosecuted as adults.
“This is the first step in stopping the violent crime that has been plaguing the streets of Washington, D.C.,” Leavitt said in a statement Friday. However, FBI figures show a sharp decline in both violent and property crimes in the District for the past five years, despite the poverty and desperation in the poorest sections of the city.
The most deranged and bloodcurdling statement came, predictably, from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Trump’s most openly fascistic aide, who claimed Thursday that Washington, D.C. “is more violent than Baghdad, it is more violent than parts of Ethiopia, and parts of many of the most dangerous places in the world.” The clear implication is that Washington, like Baghdad, should be the target of US military violence on a massive scale.
Trump’s provocation in Washington, D.C. must be seen in the context of repeated efforts to normalize police-military repression at home, and to accustom the American population to the sight of tanks and troops in their streets. In one of his first executive orders, Trump ordered thousands of Marines to be deployed to the US-Mexico border, and on Friday it was reported that US military forces have been authorized to engage in combat operations against so-called cartels which operate in the border region.
Even more ominous actions include the deployment of Marines and National Guard troops into Los Angeles in early June, on the pretext of violence deliberately provoked by ICE round-ups of immigrant workers, and mobilization of tanks, helicopters, warplanes and thousands of soldiers for a military parade in Washington on Trump’s birthday, June 14. Large-scale ICE raids are targeting cities like New York and Chicago, aiming to provoke violence and set the stage for further military intervention.
In the US capital, Trump has the power to call up and deploy the D.C. National Guard without the consent of the mayor, Democrat Muriel Bowser. And under the 1973 Home Rule Act, he can take over the DC police department in “special conditions of an emergency… as the President may deem necessary and appropriate.” Trump has invoked such emergency powers in virtually every sphere of his presidency, including tariffs, attacks on immigrants, and the crackdown on opposition by students and youth to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
There is a glaring contradiction in Trump’s law-and-order demagogy, particularly as it relates to Washington, D.C. By far the largest outbreak of violence in Washington—or in any American city—in recent years was the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, by thousands of fascistic Trump supporters, invited to Washington by Trump and urged to march on the Capitol and “fight” to keep him in the White House. Five people died and more than 130 Capitol police were injured in the onslaught.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has pardoned all the January 6 criminals, while purging the Department of Justice of the FBI agents who investigated the coup attempt and the lawyers who prosecuted the fascist thugs. This history is studiously avoided in the media coverage of Trump’s campaign in support of police-military violence.
Trump’s threats to use military force in the streets of the US capital must be taken with the utmost seriousness. This is a government at war with the working class, at home and abroad, seeking to defend the class rule of the billionaire oligarchs who control both capitalist parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.
This war is being waged from a position of desperate weakness and crisis. Trump has already faced the largest mass demonstrations in American history, culminating in the June 14 “No Kings” protests in which more than 10 million people took part. His policies are deeply unpopular, and his approval rating in the polls has plunged below 40 percent.
Only the spinelessness of the Democratic Party and the collaboration of the trade unions allow Trump to proceed as though he were the undisputed ruler of the entire US population and even the world.
It is up to the working class, potentially the most powerful force in society, to prepare the necessary social and political response to the crisis of capitalism and the danger of dictatorship and imperialist war. This means building a mass political movement of working people, based on a socialist program.