Could federalizing D.C. be a turning point?

On August 11, President Trump officially declared an emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime had reached such levels that he was compelled to utilize authorities granted to him under Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which requires the D.C. Metropolitan Police to be put at the president’s disposal for up to 30 days. This was followed by the president’s deployment of the D.C. National Guard and various federal law enforcement officers, including Homeland Security, the FBI, and the DEA, to walk the beat in an attempt to combat the disorder that plagues our nation’s capital.

The move has all the hallmarks of the Trump law and order agenda. Much like the man himself, it emphasizes creating a vibe of confidence and authority through public shows of force to more or less will the desired end into being.

As the kids say, “You can just do things.”

The Democrats predictably painted the president’s move as a figurative crossing of the Rubicon, one more iteration of the long-predicted Trumpian coup d’état. The D.C. government filed a lawsuit insisting the president cannot do what the red letter of the law explicitly says he can. Former Obama National Security officials took to the pages of the New York Times to lament that the Department of Defense wasn’t willing to “stand up to Trump” over his completely lawful deployments.

Meanwhile, the more radical elements of the Left’s coalition took to the streets to declare the president’s crime initiative an “occupation,” bang pots and pans, hold protests, and confront members of the National Guard outside Union Station.

As The Daily Caller reported, the lead organizing entity behind the Left’s protest campaign is the Free DC Project, which is led by a number of professional protest organizers with criminal records. According to the New York Post, the project is fiscally sponsored by the Community Change organization, a progressive group with a history going back to the 1960s. It’s bankrolled by tens of millions of dollars from left-wing dark money groups, including George Soros’s Open Society, the Tides Foundation, and Arabella Advisors.

Free DC Project also has ties to more radical organizers including “Harriet’s Dreams,” a “Black-led abolitionist community defense hub.” As I noted for The American Mind back in 2020, “community defense” is coded language within the Antifa-adjacent police abolitionist space for replacing police with radical political commissars. Also close to the Free DC Project is the BlackOUT Collective, a group of “direct action” trainers who cut their teeth preparing protestors to clash with local police and the National Guard during the Ferguson riots of 2014.

BlackOut traces its training pedigree to The Ruckus Society, which itself has a reputation as being one of the best in the business when it comes to professional disruption training. Ruckus Society’s founders were organizers in the infamous 1999 “Battle of Seattle,” one of the earliest cases of anarchist “Black bloc” activities on U.S. soil. BlackOUT Collective is responsible for providing direct action training for the Free DC Project’s anti-policing protests.

All of this raises the question: Is this a fight the Left wants? There’s reason to think so.

D.C. is favorable territory. It’s overwhelmingly left-wing politically, from the city government to the federal bureaucrats in the District (including presumably the now-fired DOJ employee who recently assaulted a federal officer).

Both the D.C. and federal governments regularly settle with District protestors, awarding lawbreakers with millions of dollars in 2000, 2017, and 2020. Those arrested routinely have both local and federal charges dropped, as in the case of the anarchist organizers of the J20 inauguration protests against then incoming President Trump in 2016. The Left benefits from a federal judicial bench stacked with plenty of Democratic appointees, as well as the knowledge that their radical attorneys can easily delay trials until a more favorable administration orders the DOJ to dismiss all charges and instructs it to settle for millions.

So while President Trump can put more police and National Guard troops on the street to keep the gangbangers silent, keeping the Left’s agitators in jail for any length of time is a different story.

Recent video footage showed Harriet Dream’s organizer Afeni Evans, who was arrested for alleged fare evasion on the D.C. metro, released with charges dropped after organized protests. This came after Harriet’s Dream threatened to dox the arresting officer (who is also black) and demanded Evans’s release. Expect other troublemakers to get similar kid-glove treatment.

The Left is surely hoping that the clashes will deliver them a viral media moment that will justify the kind of 2020 national uprising for which they salivate. And unlike in 2020, this time any precipitating event can be blamed directly on the Left’s hate object par excellence: Donald Trump.

So if there is to be a fight, the radical Left may prefer to have it begin in D.C., for they view the prospect of federalizing D.C. as an existential threat. In a recent New York Times podcast, Ross Douthat covered the growing sentiment that absent a “new constitution”—which includes abolishing the Senate and Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court—the Left simply cannot compete democratically. As long-time Democratic strategist James Carville stated, to “save democracy” the Left may need to “unilaterally” establish D.C. statehood.

That is the fight the Free DC Project and its allies were created for and have received millions from left-wing foundations to fight for. They may see the “Trump occupying D.C.” narrative as laying groundwork for their campaign to finally achieve their holy grail of D.C. statehood, granting two Democratic senators and a representative.

The struggle for D.C. represents the classic organizing tactic of the “dilemma action,” where the president is forced into accepting one of two equally unpleasant options. Either do nothing and D.C. continues its slow slide into a de facto left-wing autonomous territory, a potent symbol of the very national decline Trump was elected to prevent. Or risk a public clash on a field of battle most favorable to the Left, where a single viral moment could spell disaster if the radicals play their cards right.

To secure victory, the Trump Administration will need to navigate between two extremes. They will need to project strength and confidence without playing into a “Trump the dictator” narrative and also find a way to make federal charges stick in order to deliver the radical Left a genuine loss.

AUTHOR

Kyle Shideler

Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.