D.C. Residents Tear Into Federal Officers as GOP States Send Even More

Washington residents are irate over the capital city’s federal occupation.

Federal officers conducting an arrest outside a Trader Joe’s in the city’s Union Market neighborhood Monday evening were met with jeers and chants from a crowd. Protesters were furious at the federalized police presence.

“You’re not even from here. Piss off, every last one of you,” yelled one woman.

“Get the fuck off the streets, you’re not here for us,” shouted another.

“Fascists, go home!” a man cried out.

Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country. In 2024, crime in the nation’s capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Trump has since turned to his red-state allies to bolster the occupation. So far, six Republican-led states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio—have sent hundreds more National Guard members to Washington. Their contributions will result in at least 1,100 more militarized officers descending on the city’s streets.

But the directive does have an expiration date: Trump has less than 30 days before his occupation of the Metropolitan Police requires congressional approval by way of a new law.

His time constraints on leveraging the D.C. National Guard are a bit more complicated. Trump’s repeated use of the National Guard brushes up against the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The trial challenging the legality of his decision to deploy the National Guard in June against Los Angeles protesters kicked off last week in a California courtroom.