TL;DR
Blue cities across the country should prepare to be Trump’s next target – and FIGHT
He’s even more desperate for spectacle ahead of the midterm elections
Local politics is where we hold the power to refuse Trump’s threats and theatrics
Earlier this month, Trump put Washington D.C.’s police department under federal control and deployed 800 National Guard troops. Since then, numbers have increased courtesy of GOP governors eager to do Trump’s bidding. As of the weekend, troops in DC have begun carrying weapons – in a civilian area, as kids go back to school. While his action is legal for up to 30 days under the district’s Home Rule Act, he’s the first president to invoke it. And given that violent crime in DC, while far from perfect, has trended down for the second year in a row, it’s pretty clear this is all a weird, self-gratifying spectacle for Trump.
We briefly interrupt to note that other than die-hard MAGA loyalists, even those who agree that D.C. needs help consider this a bad move. Also, it’s supported by Governors with cities with equally bad, if not worse law and order problems.
And now back to programming...
Trump is working from his favorite chapter in the authoritarian playbook: cherry pick and maximize, or use fabricated (or blatantly false) claims to justify overreach. Less than a year into his second term, Trump has already pulled out this play in L.A. and now D.C. And if there’s one thing that the last decade has made clear, Trump delights in pushing the envelope if he thinks it’ll get him points and own the libs, so there’s certainly no reason to believe he’ll stop here and now. Blue cities across the country should fully expect to be his next target, a warning that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has already issued, and the president has seemed eager to feed. Over the weekend the Pentagon confirmed planning is underway to send troops to Chicago.
Trump’s political strategy here, as far as he has one right now, is at least in part to deflect from his own scandals. (And by that, we mean the Epstein files still have not been released. Carry on.) Playing up on law and order is a deliberate attempt to distract – and an ironic default mode, at that. Because we are still talking about a convicted felon here, people.
His push at the power envelope is even more alarming now given its lead up to the midterm elections. Creating a frenzy where there isn’t one leaves him with the opportunity to position himself – and eventually his handpicked, loyalist candidates – as the solution to the imagined problem. If you can imagine a fireman running into houses that aren’t burning, and then calling for backup, that’s the kind of thinly veiled theatrics we’re dealing with here.
And because Trump has not followed through on his big campaign promises he’s all the more desperate for something to claim as his fight. Even if that something is – no, not ending wars, not securing the border, and definitely not lowering costs – but troops patrolling outside of what looks like … the Georgetown Cupcakes storefront? If it doesn’t make complete sense, don’t try too hard to make the puzzle pieces fit together. It’s all spectacle, never sensible.
So here’s what we want all elected officials and current political candidates to be acutely aware of in this moment: If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. The troops will show up first, the justification will get retconned later. There are no threats to democracy that exist in the vacuum of a single city or district. Trump might focus on one target from a rotating carousel at a time, but he’s highly aware of the effects it will have on citizens and officials across the country seeing images on social media and the news.
This is all the more reason why local candidates, campaigns, and elections are critical to exercising our democracy and keeping it alive. When federal overreach becomes the playbook, local leaders become the frontline – and sometimes last standing – defenders of democratic governance. They're the officials who can refuse to cooperate with unconstitutional federal mandates, protect local values, and maintain community autonomy.
This moment should be a catchall answer to the questions: “Why should I vote?” “Why would I run?” “How can I make a difference?” This is a moment for us all to step up, and understand why we need to run and vote locally. Because it does make a difference. Local politics is where individual votes carry the most weight, and where local leadership can take direct action to protect the community. It's where we hold the most power to downright refuse participation both in Trump’s threats and his theatrics.
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That’s because we offer free training to Democrats looking to run for office, work on a campaign, or become a leader in their community. We do it for free and demand no prior political experience – because we believe that your caring about your community is the most important qualification you need to run. And we believe it will take all of us working at the grassroots level to resist oppression from the top.
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