Trump’s National Guard Deployment Directly Attacks Black DC
Trump’s National Guard Deployment Is A Direct Attack On Black DC
When Donald Trump announced he was sending 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., he harkened back to the conservative rhetoric of “law and order.” He called it “safety.” But those of us who live here—who raise kids here, pay rent or mortgage here, mourn here, dance here, celebrate here—know exactly what it is: a political show of force designed to surveil, intimidate, and criminalize Black people in our own city, especially our teenagers. This isn’t protection. It’s punishment dressed up as public safety.
The pretext falls apart on contact with the facts. In 2024, D.C.’s violent crime hit a 30-year low, falling 35% year over year—with homicides down 32%, robberies down 39%, carjackings down 53%, and assaults with a dangerous weapon down 27% when compared to 2023 levels. In the first half of 2025, violent offenses kept trending downward, including robberies, down another quarter. That’s not a city in free fall; that’s a city pulling itself back from a hard few years.
And despite the “most dangerous city” rhetoric, D.C. doesn’t even appear in the U.S. News’ Top-10 “Most Dangerous Places” list—a list that, year after year, names other cities as having higher risk profiles. Facts won’t stop a political stunt, but they should matter to anyone making decisions about our lives.
I also know what happens when politicians use soldiers to “solve” social problems. I’m a Kent State University grad. On May 4, 1970, the National Guard fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds into a crowd of unarmed student protestors, killing four and wounding nine. We memorialize that day because it taught a brutal lesson: when the government confuses dissent with danger, violence follows.
And we’ve seen this playbook just this summer. In Los Angeles, after community protests against immigration raids, the administration deployed National Guard troops and even 700 Marines, over the objections of state and local leaders. A federal trial now questions whether that deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force. In other words, what looks like “security” was likely unlawful militarization of public space—and it was aimed at immigrant communities simply demanding dignity. The throughline from LA to D.C. is hard to miss.
So let’s talk plainly: police and soldiers are not arbiters of safety—not for Black neighborhoods, and not for teenagers who need care and opportunity more than curfews and checkpoints. Policing in America has always been more about controlling populations and protecting property than nurturing community. If we want fewer harms, the answers aren’t in armored vehicles and federalized patrols. They’re in housing, schools, after-school jobs, mental-health care, violence-interruption, street lighting, transit access, and stable income. Safety is what we build together; “order” is what gets imposed on us.
Trump’s move also exposes the legal wound D.C. lives with every day: we don’t control our own home. He invoked a provision of the Home Rule Act to sidestep local authority and place our police under federal command—an unprecedented intrusion that treats D.C. residents not as neighbors and voters, but as a problem to be managed from a podium. If it can be done here, in the nation’s capital, it can be done anywhere.
And be clear about who this is aimed at: Black D.C. Black kids on the Metro. Black teens filming dances in the park. Black people coming home from a late shift. The presence is the message. The “show of force” is the point. When troops line a corridor through a Black neighborhood without credible evidence of rising crime—at a time when crime is falling—what we’re seeing is a calculated attempt to chill speech, assembly, and joy before we even have a chance to use them.
The truth is, D.C. is already over-policed. Layering federalized policing and military presence on top of that doesn’t make anyone safer—it makes organizing riskier.
That’s the point. Preemptive suppression masquerading as concern.
This is why Home Rule isn’t an abstract talking point. It’s the only way to put our city’s future back in our hands. Let us decide how to invest in public safety. Let us choose counselors over cruisers, housing over handcuffs. Let us build on the very progress this administration pretends doesn’t exist—because we made those gains, not by staging photo-ops, but by doing the work.
If we accept a military occupation as a reasonable response to a declining or even an increasing crime rate, then we accept the idea that the government can militarize any city, at any time, for any reason. LA showed us how quickly an administration will leap to uniformed force in the face of dissent. D.C. shows us how easily a president can treat a majority-Black city as a personal fiefdom. Put those together and you have a national template for turning political disagreements into policing operations.
If you want “law and order,” start with laws that invest in us and order that respects us. House unhoused people. Fill the clinics. Fund the schools. Pay the counselors and case managers. If you want a capital that reflects America at its best, then give D.C. what every other city takes for granted: the right to govern ourselves—and the resources to keep one another safe.
The administration can call this a crackdown. An emergency. An urgent matter. I call it a clarification. It clarifies who believes in democracy when it’s not convenient. It clarifies who trusts Black people to lead our own lives. It clarifies whether “public safety” means keeping the public alive—or merely keeping the public in line.
We know which side we’re on. And we’re not going anywhere.
Preston Mitchum is an attorney, entrepreneur, and writer whose work focuses on the intersections of racial justice, gender equity, and LGBTQ+ rights. He runs PDM Consulting, a social impact and advocacy consulting firm.
SEE ALSO:
Black D.C. Is The Stage For Trump’s Authoritarian Rehearsal
Free D.C. Coalition Ramps Up Opposition To Trump’s Takeover
Trump’s National Guard Deployment Is A Direct Attack On Black DC was originally published on newsone.com
