No one believes that the deployment of troops to America’s most liberal, most racially diverse, and most culturally thriving cities is about solving a real problem
P
resident Trump imposed a military takeover of the nation’s capital on Monday, sending National Guard troops to Washington. He also seized control of the DC municipal police department, invoking an obscure section of the 1973 D.C. Home Rule Act which allows the president to take control of local law enforcement in the district for a period of one month in times of emergency.
That there is no emergency is irrelevant: Trump has declared one in order to exercise powers that are only available to him in a state of exception, which is, of course, what the whole country increasingly finds itself to be experiencing as the president expands the powers of his office from those of a constitutional executive into something more like the power of authoritarian control.
The move follows the Trump administration’s deployment of both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles earlier this year; in a press conference announcing the move on Monday, Trump suggested that he also intends to deploy the military to cities such as Baltimore, Oakland and New York. “This will go further,” he said. “We’re starting very strongly with DC” The deployment reflects Trump’s continued determination to further erode the longstanding American taboo against deploying military personnel for domestic law enforcement.
