A week ago today, military vehicles and National Guard troops first rolled into Washington, DC, after President Trump had declared a “pubic safety emergency,” purportedly to rescue the nation’s capital from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse”—despite DC’s dropping crime rates. The feds announced they were taking over the DC police (although who is in charge has been a matter of public and legal debate), and there was an initial deployment of 800 National Guard troops—another 850 or more have since been called up.
It did not take long—in a city in which more than 93 percent of residents voted for someone other than Trump in 2024—to make their feelings about the federal takeover known. There have been protests, both small and spontaneous (such as at a 14th Street checkpoint last Wednesday night) and large and more organized (hundreds marched on Saturday from Dupont Circle to the White House). The interactions between protestors and federal officers have largely been peaceful, unless you count DC’s latest resistance hero, the hoagie-chucking “Sandwich Guy.” We fear what the presence of the new Guard troops—these may be armed—could mean.
Staff photographer Evy Mages has been out on the streets all week, covering both the protests and scenes of the military on our city streets (which so far seems to entail taking a lot of selfies around monuments).
