“Leave Us Alone!” D.C. Residents Furious as Federal Takeover Begins

Washington, D.C. residents are beginning to see the actual impact of Donald Trump’s National Guard invasion, and they’re already sick of it. 

Various photos and footage taken on 14th Street around 9:50 p.m. Wednesday night in Northwest D.C. show a large police checkpoint with officers from the Metropolitan Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in both marked and unmarked cars. Many of them were masked, and they pulled people over and out of their cars, reportedly arresting at least one person, a Black woman. 

In one clip, a crowd gathers around the officers at the checkpoint, booing loudly with a few “fuck you’s” in the mix. In another from the same checkpoint one incensed woman can be heard yelling “none of us want you here, go home!” at the officers. 

“You are surrounded by a mob of people that hate you!” yelled another. “Go home!” 

“Leave us alone!” said one more, before boos rained down again. 

This all comes just days after Trump announced his federalization of the MPD and his deployment of 800 National Guardsmen into the city, which began Wednesday morning. Residents have already seen an increased ICE and DEA presence in calm neighborhoods like Adams Morgan and Georgetown. On Monday night, U.S. Park Police were seen randomly harassing Black residents smoking cigarettes, that the officers reportedly mistook for weed, on the steps of their home, “Because Donald Trump’s tired of it.”  

Trump has suggested that this federal takeover will only grow lengthier and more intense, even as crime remains at a non-emergency level and citizens begin to grow angry. This upcoming weekend is likely to be busy, placing a city and its residents—who Trump swears he’s keeping safe—on edge.

E.J. Antoni, the MAGA partisan Trump tapped to replace Erika McEntarfer as head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, reports NBC News. The Heritage Foundation economist and Project 2025 contributor can be seen among J6ers in footage archived by ProPublica.

One video, reportedly taken just about 10 minutes before the mob forced its way into the building, shows Antoni on the west side of the Capitol.

Tear gas is deployed in the air at the front of the crowd, causing people to shift. Shortly thereafter, a man NBC identified as Antoni, sporting what appears to be a University of Pennsylvania varsity jacket, gradually makes his way from around the center of the crowd toward the back. (According to The Guardian, Antoni seems to have familial ties to UPenn.) He can be seen visibly face-on starting at the 1:40 mark, as well as from behind at around 2:15, soon before the camera pans over to Alex Jones with bullhorn in hand.

NBC reports that additional footage depicts Antoni on the Capitol’s east side, walking away from the building.

A Trump administration official told NBC that Antoni was a “bystander” on January 6, who did not engage in “anything inappropriate or illegal.” Antoni was “in town for meetings” with his then employer, and had meandered to the Capitol from an office just blocks away after seeing the news, the White House claims.

Antoni’s LinkedIn indicates he was then a research fellow at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Although the White House did not specify the location of the meeting from which he allegedly “wandered,” the organization’s address is listed on its website as an over 40-minute walk (or a quick drive) from the Capitol building.

When Trump on Wednesday announced KISS as a Kennedy Center Honoree, the president called the rock band’s founding members, including bassist and vocalist Gene Simmons, “incredible people.”

The feeling doesn’t seem entirely mutual, as the KISS frontman (whom Trump fired on his reality show The Apprentice in 2008), is a vocal critic of Trump’s influence on U.S. politics.

While Simmons recalls being “happy” Trump announced his candidacy in 2015—and, in April 2016, then-candidate Trump thanked the rock star for his favorable comments—KISS turned down an invitation to play at Trump’s first inauguration. “In this polarizing era, it’s not a good idea,” Simmons said.

The musician apparently began to sour on the president some time during his first term, specifically due to his election lies, culminating in the January 6 Capitol riot.

Simmons’s mentions of Trump on Twitter largely consist of links to news stories about the Big Lie and his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout January 2021, Simmons frequently engaged with users propagating Trump’s claims about election fraud—debunking them, calling them “misinformed,” and urging them to do more research on the matter.

In August 2021, he spoke to Yahoo! Entertainment, and the conversation drifted toward Trump: “Look, we all lie to some extent,” he said, “but what happened in the last four years was just beyond anything I ever thought imaginable for people who have lots of power—not just him, but the administration, everybody … all these QAnon people.”

Regarding the importance of speaking one’s mind, Simmons added, “In a political dialogue, if somebody spews complete fiction and QAnon stuff, you want to be able to have somebody who says, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? What, do you just shit in your diapers and forget to wipe it?’”

In May 2022, Simmons told Spin that Trump made America more polarized and “got all the cockroaches to rise to the top. Once upon a time, you were embarrassed to be publicly racist and out there with conspiracy theories. Now it’s all out in the open because he allowed it.

“I don’t think he’s a Republican or a Democrat,” Simmons, who endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012, continued. “He’s out for himself, any way you can get there. And in the last election, over 70 million people bought it hook, line and sinker.”

In a November 2022 interview with Bill Maher, Simmons agreed with Maher that Trump “doesn’t understand how government works and doesn’t care to learn.” These past criticisms aside, Simmons was grateful for Wednesday’s recognition: “We are deeply honored to receive the Kennedy Center Honor,” he told TMZ.

The Trump administration and the aviation companies working for it have been purposely hiding the tail numbers on immigration flights to avoid public scrutiny and accountability, CNN reports. This move comes as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ratchets up in frequency and aggression, as deportation flights are up 15 percent from last year.

A plane removing a tail number is the equivalent of a car removing a license plate. With the tail number, civilians, journalists, and immigration organizations alike can keep an eye on which deportation flights are leaving, and to where. It also helps loved ones track their deported family members.

The flights are run by multiple private charter companies and at least one commercial airline, each of which have lucrative contracts with ICE.

Flightradar24, one of the websites that covers immigration, noticed in March that those subcontractors requested that their tail numbers be hidden from public flight-tracking sites and records, making them extremely difficult to follow. The bulk of these flights are domestic, moving detainees from facility to facility.

“Flights operated on behalf of the United States government are often unidentified at the government’s request. As subcontractors to the United States government, we ask that you direct your questions to them,” said a spokesperson from Avelo Airlines, a company that has dedicated three of its planes to ICE deportations.

“This is vital information to be able to understand how ICE is conducting its enforcement and deportation activities,” ACLU National Prison Project senior counsel Eunice Cho told CNN. “Sometimes this is the only information that the public has with respect to where ICE is placing people because of a general lack of transparency around detention and deportation under this particular administration.”

The Department of Homeland Security has yet to comment.

Trump administration officials are offering blunt warnings for sanctuary cities: The democratically elected immigrant protection status does not matter.

Speaking with Fox News Wednesday, border czar Tom Homan spilled that Washington’s sanctuary city status was irrelevant now that the president had federalized the capital’s law enforcement.

“Does the fact that there’s National Guard now there—it’s a sanctuary city, like sanctuary cities across the country—but it’s unique in that it has federal control, and now you have the National Guard on the ground side by side with ICE. Does that combination basically negate the sanctuary city status in Washington, D.C.? At least for these 30 days, in terms of what you can do there, Tom?” asked host Martha MacCallum.

“Yes,” Homan said, plainly. “I think D.C. under federal control is not going to be a sanctuary city.

“We’re working with the police hand in hand, and when we encounter a criminal illegal alien, they will be turned over to ICE,” the former acting director of ICE continued. “And that’s the way it should be.

“I’m not saying every illegal alien in D.C. is a criminal. But many are,” Homan said. “There is no sanctuary for these people in the city of D.C.”

Washington’s City Council unanimously approved the Sanctuary Values Amendment Act in 2019, and Mayor Muriel Bowser signed the act into law that same year. But Bowser has worked to undo that legacy since Trump returned to the White House, attempting to repeal Washington’s sanctuary status law in a 300-page budget bill. In June, the D.C. City Council erased the language in the budget that would have killed the sanctuary law in the board’s effort to retain the designation.

But Washington isn’t the only sanctuary city in the hot seat. In late May, the Department of Homeland Security released a list of some 35 regions, including 13 states, that it considered to be “deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws and endangering American citizens.” The states included California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, in addition to the nation’s capital.

During a press conference Monday announcing the imminent takeover, Trump warned that several of America’s liberal bastions could experience the same fate, specifically calling out New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Oakland.