WASHINGTON ‒ Blocks away from where President Donald Trump announced the latest slate of Kennedy Center honorees, workers began to sweep away homeless encampments along his route to the White House as part of his broader crackdown in the capital city.
The Aug. 13 move comes days after Trump seized control of Washington, D.C.'s local law enforcement, deployed National Guard troops, and ordered people living outside to "immediately" move, suggesting, as the president put it, that they be relocated "FAR from the Capital."
Amber Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, said officials cleared at least two tents on a patch of green space near the Kennedy Center as Trump spoke at the performing arts center.
Members of the city's Department of Human Services pinned notices to at least nine other tents in the area, notifying residents that the camps would be broken down and closed if not removed by the following morning.
George Morgan, a lifelong D.C. resident who has lived in the encampment for two months, said he's not sure where he will go. He won't go to a shelter because they wouldn't allow him to bring his American pit bull terrier.
