Papers, please
On checkpoints, shows of military force, and the fight for a Free D.C.
Back in January, at the dawn of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts, Anand talked to “Morning Joe” about what all Americans stand to lose in a check-your-papers society:
When you start having Gestapo raids in America, and we start becoming a country where, as in East Germany, a knock on the door is the thing people are thinking about instead of the brilliant idea they want to go create, then we are moving very, very far from the president worrying about what regular people need.
At that point, the threat was clear, but the parameters of the effort hadn’t been established. ICE hadn’t yet received the funding infusion that’s turning it into the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller hadn’t yet emerged as the leader of Trump’s mass deportation program. The U.S. hadn’t yet appropriated $45 billion in detention center construction funds and moved to build a network of concentration camps. And the National Guard and Marines hadn’t been sent to occupy blue-state cities. There hadn’t been any consideration of arming Guard troops.
But that is in fact where things stand now. Militarized checkpoints on 14th Street Northwest — and crowds of protesters who recognize that this is not at all normal.
D.C. residents have their worries about crime, as do many Americans, but nearly 80 percent of them are opposed to the federal takeover.
“I find that the city is a peace-loving city,” says Michelle Jones, 70, a lifelong District resident who lives in Southeast Washington. She thinks D.C. police “could do a better job and be more proactive in areas where there is high crime.” But Jones, who is Black, strongly opposes the president taking control of the police and ordering National Guard troops into the city.
“He has shown he is an authoritarian and he has demonstrated this is an authoritarian regime across the country,” Jones said. “To make these grandiose statements that the city is filthy and filled with gangs, I don’t understand it.”
But Trump and his allies have a continuing interest in the ginned-up emergency. So far, six Republican governors have pledged to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., backing up the White House’s federal takeover of law enforcement in the capital. All six states have cities with worse violent crime problems than D.C., where crime rates are at a 30-year low. If — by the numbers — military deployments aren’t warranted in Jackson, Mississippi, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it’s hard to make the case that they’re warranted at all.
Which is why the White House and the Justice Department are now claiming D.C.’s favorable crime statistics are fake — something that’s become a habit in the executive branch. Just look at Donald Trump’s battle against inconvenient economic data. But the numbers don’t have much to do with it:
In a statement, the leaders of the Democratic Attorneys General Association also warned that Mr. Trump’s efforts to commandeer law enforcement in Washington amounted to “a major step toward authoritarianism.”
“This will not start and end in D.C.,” said Attorneys General Kathy Jennings of Delaware and Kwame Raoul of Illinois. “The president has made his intentions very clear that he wants to abuse his powers to take over other cities, using these troops as a tool to advance his political agenda.”
Despite the number of commentators looking to give this latest round of domestic military deployments the benefit of the doubt, it’s clear that the White House has little interest in public safety. As Jamelle Bouie writes for The New York Times, the troops aren’t being used where there are any real concerns about violence:
You won’t find the National Guard in any of the city’s high crime areas. The vast majority of soldiers and agents deployed to Washington are stationed in the vicinity of the White House and other high-profile sections of the city. There are soldiers patrolling the National Mall; armored vehicles parked at Union Station; and ICE agents manning checkpoints on U Street, an area known for its bars, restaurants and nightlife. They’re not there for safety, but for show.
This is, above all, security theater. And it didn’t come out of nowhere. The fact that a military force empowered to stop people on the street in the capital under any pretext is the latest step in a long, slow erosion of rights under the pressure of immigration politics, supercharged by the accommodation of Americans to post-9/11 searches and screenings and the concurrent militarization of American policing as people and material returned home from the War on Terror. And the current approach — criminalization of immigration violations and mass deportation — has been gathering steam since the battle between the red states and the federal government over who controls immigration policy under the Biden administration, and now the federal government has switched sides.
A government interested in public safety wouldn’t move this week, of all weeks, to lift restrictions on carrying long guns in the nation’s capital.
But that doesn’t mean any of this is a “distraction.” The deployments, the checkpoints, the rejection of the constitutional definition of birthright citizenship, the transition from freedom to a check-your-papers society — all are of a piece with Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian Institution — a rejection of what America means, and should mean. And that’s no distraction. Again, as Jamelle Bouie points out:
It is all for show; most of these troops will spend most of their time around the same tourist-friendly areas where most of the National Guard in Washington has already been sent. But just because it’s for show does not mean, to use a term favored by Democrats, that it is a distraction. The president isn’t trying to shift your attention as much as he is indulging his grievances and pursuing, however impulsively, his political goals. And at the top of that list, as he’s made clear in many different ways, is seizing as much power as he can to rule the United States as a strongman.
The clumsiness, the hollowness, the occasional silliness of the president’s actions should not distract you from the reality that even as he’s putting on a show, he’s also doing everything he can to reach his ultimate aim.
Arbitrary stops, empty streets, and checkpoints don’t look like a free society. And more importantly, their existence signals the end of one. Ill-conceived stunts and shows of force can be deadly serious, as former Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon, Jr. points out:
This excessive show in DC also is a deterrent to any large physical assembly of the people to peacefully protest. And it brings to mind a criticism I’ve heard regarding No Kings: it was too spread out across the country. Well this is a perfect reason why.
Ok. Message read and even though I have been a paid subscriber for a while, I don't normally participate.
There were alot of very serious true realities with commentary included. Also at the end tanks are noted. Which to me relates to Flag Day and the stunt that failed miserably in DC.
Citizens are not coming out to support the regime. Many are justifiably scared. A few thugs want to harass the peaceful folks. We just must keep up what we all can individually do, collectively join. And find hope and love in that narrative we are living. Acknowledge what is happening, but remain resolved. It's not easy so then breathe and pause as much as you need. For those breaths fill and help sustain us all.