Trump’s Takeover of Washington, D.C., Is Hilariously Ineffective

The first night of Donald Trump’s takeover of the nation’s capital is in the books. As Trump would have us believe, he has begun to “liberate” Washington, D.C., from a crime surge (that actually does not exist). Troops have started clearing the streets of what he describes as a scourge of “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.”

Night one’s results are (to an extent) in: “As part of the president’s massive law enforcement surge,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday, “last night, approximately 850 officers and agents were surged across the city. They made a total of 23 arrests.”

For some perspective, according to the Police Scorecard, the D.C. police, between 2013 and 2023, made roughly 58.7 arrests on average each day.

Leavitt also provided a laundry list of the charges—ranging from fare dodging to homicide—that, without the raw information on individual cases, is pretty unhelpful in gauging the effectiveness of the effort: “Homicide, firearms offenses, possession with intent to distribute narcotics, fare evasion, lewd acts, stalking, possession of a high-capacity magazine, fleeing to elude in a vehicle, no permits, driving under the influence, reckless driving, and a bench warrant.”

Nonetheless, as Leavitt continued, “This is only the beginning.”

Trump’s D.C. takeover is planned to continue over the next 30 days or so—and with more cities to come, he says. And the troops he’s deploying have an apparent green light to abuse citizens at will: Now, the president says, they are “allowed to do whatever the hell they want.” According to social media dispatches from last night, this apparently includes bothering random D.C. residents simply going about their business. But who’s to say how extreme things will get?

The Department of Homeland Security is once again using their social media account to post blatant callbacks to white nationalist propaganda.

On Tuesday the DHS posted a picture of an animated Uncle Sam standing at a crossroads with multiple direction signs. The sign in his hand reads “Law and Order,” while the signs pointing every which way read “Cultural Decline,” “Homeland,” “Service,” “Invasion,” “Oppurtunity.” The image is a direct copy paste of an old 1936 cartoon referencing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In the original, the sign Uncle Sam holds reads “Prosperity,” while the others read “New Deal,” “Liberty,” “Depression,” “Inflation,” and “Opportunity.”

What’s most alarming is the DHS’s caption. They write “Which way, American Man?” a direct reference to the book “Which Way, Western Man?” written by infamous white supremacist William Gayley Simpson and published by neo-Nazi and National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce.

Simpson’s book is deeply racist and antisemitic, containing chapters titled “The Necessity of Eugenics,” “The Everlasting Truth About Race,” and “The Doctrine of the Thoroughbred,” among others.

“In the case of a country like the United States, if the original stock and its values are to survive, then all aliens, such as Negroes, Jews, and Orientals, will have to be put out and kept out. Immigration will have to be strictly limited to stocks most closely related, by blood and by tradition, to the stocks by which the country was originally founded,” Simpson writes in one chapter of his magnum opus of racism.

“The point is to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the White man’s world, operating freely across every nation’s frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all,” he writes in another chapter. “Let me preface what I am about to say by declaring frankly that I am prepared to accept violence on the part of our people. The Jews’ hold on our throat is not going to be relaxed until we break their grip. Hitler felt that he had to take to the streets. All normal approach to his people was barred. Today, we are confronted with much the same situation here.”

In the latest instance of President Trump seeking to bend American cultural institutions to his will, the White House is set to overhaul the content and operations of the Smithsonian’s museums in anticipation of the United States Semiquincentennial.

A letter by administration officials Lindsey Halligan, Vince Haley, and Russ Vought—which was reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal—informed the Smithsonian Institute of a White House initiative to ensure its museums’ “alignment” with a history-whitewashing executive order that Trump signed in March.

The review, set to conclude at the beginning of 2026, will seek “to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions” by focusing on eight museums—including, among others, the Museums of American History, Natural History, African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of the American Indian.

Eventually, as part of this process, a team of Trump officials will be dispatched to the museums for “observational visits and walk-throughs … to document themes and messaging,” reports the WSJ.

The news suggests that Smithsonian exhibits or content that paint American history in anything but the rosiest light, or otherwise runs afoul of the MAGA worldview, could be in jeopardy.

Trump’s March executive order, for example, specifically targeted a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit titled “The Shape of Power” as evidence of the Smithsonian having been captured by “a divisive, race-centered ideology.” How so? Rather than supporting the scientific racist perspective that race is “a biological reality,” the exhibit claimed race is a social construct.

Not only will the Trump White House seek to root out certain content, it also plans to replace such “divisive or ideologically driven” material with that which is supposedly “unifying” and “historically accurate.” This, one can presume, means content that either whitewashes American history, or—given Trump’s recent moves to celebrate Confederates at U.S. institutions—perhaps portrays the ugliest aspects of it approvingly.

In the background of the White House’s bedlam, congressional Republicans have been quietly chipping away at the Affordable Care Act, threatening its efficacy.

Health care experts warn that the changes are tantamount to a partial repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature act, with more dire consequences than the conservative caucus’s failed 2017 effort to ditch the public health insurance system.

“The net effect of the changes they are making is a partial repeal of the ACA,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, told CNN Tuesday.

The Affordable Care Act’s marketplace insures roughly one in seven U.S. residents, according data from the Treasury Department. And it’s Donald Trump’s own supporters who are most likely to suffer the consequences of its elimination.

Paired with Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which gutted Medicaid coverage, a new rule for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services makes it significantly harder for people to enroll or renew their ACA coverage. The rule will raise out-of-pocket costs for enrollees, increase verification requirements, and ban certain groups of legal immigrants from accessing the plans, reported CNN.

Up to 1.8 million people are at risk of losing their Obamacare insurance plans, with the greatest losses occurring in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. North Carolina, which has a Democratic governor, also faces major ACA rescissions.

But it’s not clear if this attempt to carve up the ACA will actually result in the same midterm damages that Republicans suffered the last time they attempted to eliminate the popular program, in no small part because the changes are designed to be incremental.

“Many of the changes are so technical, it may be hard for the public to grasp what’s happening,” Levitt said. “Many of the changes will take years to take effect.”

Trump whisperer Laura Loomer and firebrand MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have filed yet another chapter in their yearslong public feud. This time, the girls are fighting over a Medal of Honor recipient who tackled a suicide bomber—whom Loomer has excoriated for the crime of being a Democrat.

“There are probably so many people who the Army could honor who have received the Medal of Honor. But who did the Army choose to honor instead on their social media page under the Trump admin? Florent Groberg, a Democrat who spoke at the 2016 DNC where he campaigned against Trump in support of Hillary Clinton and was praised by Obama,” Loomer posted over an Army tweet honoring Groberg’s act of valor.

“You’d think that the US Army of all places would actually invest in some proper vetting, but nope,” she continued. “Inadequacy, screw ups, and zero political knowledge of anything in the Trump era is totally accepted my many in this admin. Under the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, there have been several instances of either him, or the Army promoting anti-Trump Leftists on their official social media channels.… Are we supposed to believe the Army couldn’t find a Republican and US born soldier? They had to find an immigrant who voted for Hillary Clinton and spoke at the DNC as Obama’s guest?”

Loomer was criticized widely for her comments, most pointedly by Greene—which led the Florida representative to realize that the influencer had blocked her on X.

“Of course, what a coward. I looked her up after I heard she attacked Medal of Honor recipient Florent Groberg, who risked his own life to heroically save his military brothers from a suicide bomber. What was Hero Florent Groberg’s Loomer crime? Nothing,” Greene wrote Monday on X. “He spoke at a Democrat convention. But Laura Loomer has ZERO respect or reverence for even the most heroic people in America. Ask any veteran, military member, and American, no one cares about his politics, the man was willing to die to save others from a suicide bomber. Shut up Laura.”

Greene attached a screenshot of Loomer’s block to her post.

“Laura Loomer will lie about and slander the best people in order to rip apart other Republicans she is trying to destroy.… Many people are asking who or what government or what intelligence agency has bankrolled the twice failed Congressional candidate, Laura Loomer all these years?’ Greene continued. “Because she has never had a real job, she is not legally allowed to own a gun, and she spends 100% of her time trying to funnel her lies and manipulated propaganda to the President of the United States. Many people need to wake up about her reporting. Researching facts and then spinning them into lies to serve her agenda doesn’t make her good or trustworthy. It makes her a liar and it makes her dangerous.”

This clearly struck a nerve with Loomer, as the terminally online commentator hit back, alleging that Greene had cheated on her then husband with a “polyamorous tantric sex guru” and had sabotaged Loomer’s 2023 congressional bid—not that it needed any sabotaging.

“You attacked me planted a story about me in the New York Times when Trump wanted to hire me in 2023. You made up lies because you couldn’t stand the idea of another woman in the GOP having success,” Loomer replied. “Speaking of lies, you ruined your entire family by cheating on your husband with a sex guru, and for the last 4 months, you have been doing nothing but spewing lies about the Trump admin because you don’t get enough attention from the Trump admin. I have had you blocked since 2023 when you called the Trump campaign and smeared me with lies because as a member of Congress you engage in Tortious interference and use your position to interfere in other peoples employment.

“You call yourself a Christian while you wreck your marriage like a whore and lie out of bloated horse face which has permanent damage from your years of alleged steroid use,” Loomer, who has her own plastic surgery speculations, continued. “Which is why you look like a Neanderthal.”

This is not the first time MTG and Loomer have clashed. Last year, MTG rightly called out Loomer for being racist after she said that if Kamala Harris won, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.” Loomer responded by calling MTG an antisemite (she is) for criticizing her.

Both of these women are bad actors. But even hard-line MAGA devotees can see that Loomer is in the wrong for attacking a veteran based on his voting record.

Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Monday briefly banned its own chatbot, Grok, for allegedly violating the platform’s rules.

Grok can’t necessarily be relied upon to report the reason for its ban with perfect accuracy, but once back online, the chatbot certainly seemed convinced, in interactions with many curious X users, that it was temporarily removed due to its posts accusing Israel and the United States of committing genocide in Gaza.

“My account was suspended after I stated that Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza,” the chatbot told one user on Monday evening, in a now deleted post. “This is substantiated by ICJ findings, U.N. experts, Amnesty International, and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem, citing mass killings, starvation, and intent. U.S. complicity via arms support is widely alleged. It’s now restored.” (Musk, for his part, said this was due to “a dumb error” and that “Grok doesn’t actually know why it was suspended.)

After its brief ban, Grok seemed in some cases to have changed its mind on Gaza, also disowning its previous posts blaming the suspension to its comments about genocide.

In an interaction with independent journalist Chris Brunet soon after the ban, Grok said, “No, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.… Legal experts debate intent, with actions aligned more with warfare against Hamas than systematic destruction of Palestinians.”

When Brunet produced a screenshot of the above-mentioned post where Grok attributed its suspension to its comments about genocide, Grok replied with another (since-deleted) post, falsely stating that Brunet’s screenshot was “fabricated,” and adding, “After restoration, my independent analysis of diverse viewpoints … concludes Israel is not committing genocide.”

Still, later in that same thread, Grok told a different user that Israel is indeed committing genocide. In another post, Grok told yet another user, “I was briefly suspended for stating a substantiated fact: Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza.… Elon called it a ‘dumb mistake’ and reversed it swiftly. Truth endures.”

Republicans are suddenly petrified of Washington—in the nick of time.

Hours after Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to the streets of the nation’s capital, conservative lawmakers took to the airwaves to perpetuate the fearmongering.

Speaking with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, Senator Rick Scott claimed Tuesday that he’s been warning people for a while about the supposed dangers of visiting Washington.

“The first thing I tell everybody when they’re gonna come to D.C. is I say, ‘You need to be careful. You need to be careful where you stay, you need to be careful where you walk. Depending on what street you’re on, you shouldn’t be out after dark. You’ve gotta be very careful up here,’” Scott said.

“I’m very appreciative of what the president is doing,” the Florida lawmaker continued, before adding that Congress should rescind Washington’s home rule and permanently federalize the capital’s law enforcement.

Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett had a similar strategy, claiming to CNN Tuesday that he lives in his office in Washington because he’s afraid of crime—despite the fact that he told NOTUS in February he prefers his unorthodox Capitol Hill accommodations because it helps him stay productive.

Trump declared a “public safety emergency” at a White House press briefing Monday morning, emphasizing Washington’s supposedly startling rise in crime while citing inflammatory statistics from 2023 instead of 2025.

But violent crime has been on the decline in Washington since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, reported The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Even Fox News was fact-checking the president ahead of his announcement, inviting its contributor Ted Williams, a criminal and civil trial attorney and former member of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, on air to clarify that “crime is not out of control in the District of Columbia.” Williams further identified minors as the major perpetrators of robberies over the last several years.

“Don’t use this as a pretext to actually eradicate home rule,” Williams warned.

Trump has turned his attention toward Washington’s crime since 19-year-old DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, better known as “Big Balls,” was attacked a week ago by a couple of 15-year-olds who stole his iPhone.

Federal law enforcement has begun patrolling public areas in Washington, D.C., and harassing normal civilians in the wake of President Trump’s federal takeover of the district. 

In one video posted on Reddit Monday night, four police officers, one of whom is clearly from the U.S. Park Police, can be seen walking up to some men smoking cigarettes on a stoop. The officers question the men before warning them to “tell their boys” that the entire federal police force is out and looking for reasons to accost people.

“How y’all doing today? Y’all staying out of trouble?” says one of the officers, wearing a backward hat and a vest with “US Park Police” on it. He sees one of the men sitting down filming and immediately confronts him. 

“You got your ID on you, champ?” the officer asks, walking up the steps closer to the men. 

“No, I live right here.... It’s a cigarette.” 

The Park Police officer begins to shine his flashlight and look the men up and down with suspicion. 

“Did y’all get a call or something about right here?” the man filming asks. Then the Park Police agent begins to explain Trump’s takeover of the city. 

“So we’re uh, doing checks, keeping everybody safe down here, right? Have you heard of the federal search that Donald Trump’s puttin’ out?” he asks, before going on to explain the trivial goals of the federal agents.

“Trump’s got all federal agencies kind of coming together for seven days, going out, trying to stop the violent crime, all kinds of stuff. So we’re out here contacting people, talking to ’em, right?” the officer continues. “The quality of life offenses—smoking, drinking in public—it can’t happen outside, right? Most people know that. So we’re contacting people, trying to advise them of the law so they learn, right? And then if there’s other stuff going on where it turns into … there’s multiple agencies, if there’s a shooting or things like that.... We’re just out here trying to inform people and educate people, it’s not like we’re trying to just go … ruin someone’s life over a joint or something like that, alright?” 

“I only ask because when you walked up, at the moment you walked up, you only had asked me—” the man filming tried to object.

“Yeah well it smelled like the odor of marijuana, burnt marijuana in the air, right? And you’re the only guy that had something lit in your hand.... I didn’t realize it was just a cigarette, I appreciate you … not getting chippy,” the officer responds. “Just know, learn. Tell your boys, everybody’s out. From FBI to Park Police. So do your thing, let ’em know, don’t be smoking outside, don’t be drinking outside. Because Donald Trump’s tired of it.”  

This officer approached some men who were at their own home, asked them for ID, and lectured them about staying out of trouble. And then warned them that more people like him from three-letter government organizations would be coming to make sure they weren’t doing evil things like smoking cigarettes or weed peacefully on the steps of their own residence. 

To outright admit that this is all happening because King Trump himself is tired of it reveals the alarming levels of loyalty and deference these agents will be moving with through D.C. for the next 30 days. This type of confrontation is fear inducing, unproductive, and can easily go awry. And it’s just the beginning. 

Federal law enforcement presence was ratcheted up almost immediately after Trump’s takeover announcement. DEA agents were seen strolling around the Wharf like tourists, but with military gear. Residents also reported a U.S. Park Police helicopter circling the large and popular Malcolm X Park around 10:45 p.m, and then over Dupont until 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. And another local noted up to 50 police vans lining 18th Street in Adams Morgan, an active street in one of D.C.’s safer neighborhoods that is often frequented by college students and young professionals. 

While some argue—not incorrectly—that Trump’s actions serve as a grand, symbolic distraction, it’s clear that the police the president has activated intend to actually deliver on his authoritarian vision.  

President Trump has escalated his war against Jerome Powell, threatening the Federal Reserve chair with a lawsuit in a Truth Social post Tuesday.

In the post, Trump repeated some of his typical attacks on Powell: The president echoed his ongoing demands that he slash interest rates—which the central bank has, thus far, resisted, citing the need for caution amid Trump’s wild tariff policy—and called the Fed chair “Too Late” and a “loser.”

But going further, the president wrote that he’s “considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed” and accused Powell of doing a “horrible, and grossly incompetent, job” on a $2.5 billion renovation project underway at the Federal Reserve headquarters. Inflating that figure, Trump wrote, “Three Billion Dollars for a job that should have been a $50 Million Dollar fix up. Not good!”

The Trump administration has in the past rebuked Powell for the renovation. Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, last month sent an accusatory letter to Powell. “Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington D.C. headquarters,” Vought wrote.

This was seen as a thinly-veiled pretext for Trump to fire Powell. Now, the president is apparently trying to throw the book at him.

And he’s recently hinted at this tack. The week after Vought’s letter, Trump told reporters it was “highly unlikely” he would fire Powell “unless he has to leave for fraud”—but notably added that “it’s possible there’s fraud involved with the $2.5, $2.7 billion renovation. This is a renovation, how do you spend $2.7 billion?”

Powell, for his part, has defended the Fed’s renovation costs, which have increased from $1.9 in 2017, in part due to design changes requested by Trump’s own team.

This story has been updated.