The most dangerous step toward authoritarian rule since Trump took office

On August 12, the White House took control of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., and deployed 2,200 National Guard troops and hundreds of federal agents in the city. Trump and his allies used a provision in the 1973 Home Rule Act allowing the President to declare an emergency and deploy federal security forces in the nation’s capital for a month.

The emergency? “Out of control” crime, according to Trump.

This claim is the flimsiest of excuses. Washington, D.C., like most U.S. urban areas, does have a crime problem. But D.C. ranks 29^th among the top 50 U.S. cities with the highest rate of violent crime; it ranks 33^rd when all crimes are taken into account (including non-violent crimes such as theft). Its crime rate has in fact declined over the last two years. Violent crime in the city was down 35 percent last year from 2023, Justice Department data show, the lowest in more than 30 years. Most of the city’s residents describe their neighborhoods as safe. And, as of August 16, more than 40 percent of the roughly 300 arrests the newly deployed federal agents made in the city targeted immigrant workers, not violent criminals.

EDITORIAL

Trump’s response to these facts? The data have been falsified. Trump and his allies are doubling down on an outright lie, hoping that by repeating a falsehood over and over it will stick and become the perceived reality for much of the public. It’s the same technique of the Big Lie Trump used to peddle the myth of a “stolen election” in 2020 and justify as “patriotic” the January 6, 2021, assault by an ultra-rightist mob on U.S. Congress — which resulted in six deaths and many injuries — in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the will of the majority at the time.

Above all, the hostile takeover of the D.C. police — coming on the heels of deploying the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles in June to enforce a crackdown on undocumented immigrants in order to spearhead a spike of deportations — sets a precedent for similar domestic military interventions elsewhere.

Trump has repeatedly threatened Baltimore, Chicago, and New York, among other cities, with similar treatment. As D.C. has shown, this Oval Office, whose executive power grows by the day, can concoct an “emergency” out of thin air.

Trump is now talking about pushing Congress to continue the deployment in D.C. for an extended period of time, beyond the 30 days existing law allows, before taking the operation to other parts of the country.

Confirming these insidious plans, the Washington Post first reported on August 24 that the Pentagon is planning a military deployment to Chicago. This could include “mobilizing at least a few thousand members of the National Guard as soon as September to what is the third most populous city in the United States,” the Post said. The use of active-duty military forces is also being considered.

Trump’s justification? Crack down on crime, homelessness, and undocumented immigrants.

“The Chicago effort would further expand Trump’s use of military force domestically, even when state and local authorities call the idea unwelcome and unwarranted,” the Post noted [emphasis added]. “Administration officials have defended such deployments, arguing that they are taking necessary steps to bring back law and order.”

The language Trump used to announce the D.C. takeover is indicative of the qualitative step toward a more repressive regime that the military intervention in D.C. represents. “This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump claimed.

The echo of ultra-rightist Patrick Buchanan could not be clearer.

“And as those boys took back the streets of Los Angeles, block by block, my friends, we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country,” Buchanan declared in his infamous Cultural War Speech at the 1992 GOP convention.

Buchanan — who was seen by many as an incipient fascist — was referring to the use of federal troops in Los Angeles to put down a riot that broke out in L.A. that year after the savage beating of Rodney King, an African-American man, by Los Angeles Police Department officers. (Police repeatedly beat and kicked King for about 15 minutes, an event widely filmed by a bystander and broadcast nationally, sparking a rebellion in L.A.)

The D.C. takeover, and the crackdown on immigrant workers, are part of an increasingly perilous deployment of every conceivable lever of state power since Trump took office seven months ago. For working people and the vast majority in this country they are among the most dangerous steps taken by this administration so far. They are part of a rapidly developing pattern leading toward dictatorial rule, as World-Outlook explained in Trump’s 2^nd Term: One-Man Rule & the Danger of Incipient Fascism.

These steps include the GOP-led gerrymandering drive (now being matched in kind by similar moves by some Democratic-led states) to enable Republicans to boost their haul of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 elections. Trump’s plans to “get rid of mail-in ballots” and voting machines nationwide — restricting access to the ballot box before next year’s midterm elections — is an even more ominous threat to democratic rights.

It is not clear how much of the edifice of bourgeois democracy — preferable over any form of dictatorship, because of the greater immediate threat the latter poses to the existing rights and organizations of the working class — will still be standing at the time of the November 2026 elections. But the direction is unmistakable.

In the case of D.C., Trump is testing the waters to see how far he can go by stepping over elected city officials and daring the courts to stop him. The initial reaction by D.C.’s mayor to the White House takeover of the city’s police was conciliatory, indicating the fear Trump has instilled in many among the Democratic establishment and other opponents of his policies.

Part of the problem is that liberal programs aimed at addressing social problems Trump demagogically claims he will fix by using executive power are as ineffective as the President’s actions. Clearing out homeless encampments in D.C., which federalized officers have carried out recently, does not solve the homelessness crisis, any more than liberal campaigns advising homeless people of their right to stay on the street.

A massive public works program to build affordable housing, laws to end the current rampant speculation in real estate by vulture funds and large investment firms, and federally guaranteed health care as a right for all — prioritizing the treatment of mental illness — would go a long way toward addressing this acute social problem.

Trump’s recent actions reflect not only his personal disdain for Washington, but also long-held racist attitudes by the federal government toward a city whose population has been majority Black throughout most of its history.

The Home Rule Act — passed in 1973 — was the last time Congress reformed how D.C. is governed. The Act allowed residents of the District of Columbia to elect a local mayor and city council. But these were largely powerless figureheads, because Congress and the White House retained full ultimate control over all legislative, judicial, and budgetary matters.

“With Congress controlling the purse strings, D.C. has the highest per capita expenditure on police of any city comparable in size in the country,” explained an article in the October 26, 1973, issue of the World Outlook magazine, analyzing the passage of the Home Rule Act. “At the same time, education and other social services get short shrift — 71 percent of the District’s schools are using makeshift facilities and substandard classrooms.

“Such racist oppression has marked the dispute over D.C. home rule ever since the end of the Civil War, when thousands of freed slaves began to settle here.

“A partially elected government was set up in 1871, but the city’s white elite feared that the newly enfranchised Blacks would threaten their privileges and power. In 1874, Congress threw out the elected officials and substituted the system of presidential and congressional control that has continued to this day with only minor revisions.

“The resurgence of the Black liberation struggle in the 1950s gave new impetus to demands for self-government, and some concessions have been won. In 1961 D.C. residents for the first time gained the right to vote in presidential elections; in 1967, the right to an elected school board; and in 1970, the right to elect a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives.”

It continued: “The only proposal put forward so far that would provide equal rights for D.C. residents is statehood.”

That remains true today. In fact, interest in statehood for D.C. has begun to surge again as nearly 80 percent of the city’s residents are opposed to Trump’s hostile takeover of the city’s law enforcement, according to a recent poll by the Washington Post.

Organizing united-front actions inclusive of all supporters of democratic rights to demand statehood for D.C. could inspire and mobilize the residents of the city — its labor unions and civil rights organizations, its students and other young people. It would be a powerful, concrete step against the military takeover by the Trump administration. It would offer effective resistance to the grim march toward one-man rule in the United States today.

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