OUR PICKS: D.C. CRACKDOWNAs Trump Militarizes DC, Pentagon Plans 24/7 Force for Every City | Trump Is Expanding the Role of the American Military on U.S. Soil | Trump’s Farcical D.C. Crackdown, and more

As Trump Militarizes DC, Pentagon Plans 24/7 Force for Every City  (George Grylls, The Times)
A “domestic civil-disturbance quick-reaction force” would be ready to deploy nationwide more quickly than the National Guard.

How Trump Is Expanding the Role of the American Military on U.S. Soil  (Michael R. Gordon, Vera Bergengruen, Lara Seligma, Wall Street Journal)
Deployment of the National Guard in D.C. comes as president plans to broaden the use of U.S. military bases for immigrant detention centers.

Why Donald Trump Is Wrong to Take Over the DC Police  (Economist)
The emergency he cites is over-hyped.

Trump’s Farcical D.C. Crackdown (Quinta Jurecic, The Atlantic)
His law-enforcement surge is a show of weakness, not power.

The President’s Police State  (David A. Graham, The Atlantic)
Trump is delivering the authoritarian government his party once warned about.
For years, prominent voices on the right argued that Democrats were enacting a police state. They labeled everything—a report on homegrown extremism, IRS investigations into nonprofits—a sign of impending authoritarianism. Measures taken by state governments to combat the spread of COVID? Tyranny. An FBI search of Mar-a-Lago? The weaponization of law enforcement.
Now that a president is actually sending federal troops and officers out into the streets of the nation’s cities, however, the right is in lockstep behind him. This morning, Donald Trump announced that he was declaring a crime emergency, temporarily seizing control of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the D.C. National Guard to the nation’s capital.
Trump’s move is based on out-of-date statistics. It places two officials without municipal policing experience in positions of power over federalization and the MPD, and seems unlikely to significantly affect crime rates. What the White House hopes it might achieve, Politico reports, is “a quick, visually friendly PR win.” Trump needs that after more than a month of trying and failing to change the subject from his onetime friend Jeffrey Epstein.
But what this PR stunt could also do is create precedent for Trump to send armed forces out into American streets whenever he declares a spurious state of emergency.
Throughout his two presidencies, Trump has treated the military as a prop for making statements about which issues he cares about—and which he doesn’t. He deployed the D.C. National Guard during protests after the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020. Earlier this summer, he federalized the California National Guard and sent Marines to Los Angeles to assist with immigration enforcement, but they were sent home when it became clear that they had nothing to do there. Yet according to testimony before the January 6 panel, Trump did not deploy the D.C. National Guard when an armed mob was sacking the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help Trump hold on to power.
Good policing is important because citizens deserve the right to live in safety. Recent drops in crime in Washington are good news because the district’s residents should be able to feel safe. But Trump’s militarization of the city, his seizure of local police, and his lies about crime in Washington do the opposite: They are a way to make people feel unsafe, and either quiet residents’ dissent or make them support new presidential power grabs. Many of Trump’s defenders are angry when he’s called an authoritarian, but not when he acts as one.

Inside Trump’s Decision to Deploy the National Guard in D.C.  (Matt Viser, Emily Davies and Perry Stein, Washington Post)
President Donald Trump long had a playbook for such a move and a week ago had new motivation after a former aide was injured in an attempted carjacking

Deploying the D.C. National Guard  (Chris Mirasola, Lawfare)
The president’s concerning use of the D.C. National Guard relies on incredibly broad and outdated statutory law and a history of maximalist executive branch practice.