The New Yorker:

President Trump is deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and taking over the city’s police force for the next thirty days.

How bad is it?

“This is troops-in-the-streets, shades-of-authoritarian rule bad,” Marc Fisher, an associate editor and columnist at the Washington Post, told us. “Legally, it’s not quite as bad,” he said, pointing out that the President does have the authority to control the National Guard in D.C. and temporarily take over the city’s police department during an emergency. However—“this is where it gets ugly,” Fisher said. There is no clear emergency in this case: violent crime in D.C. reached a thirty-year low last year, according to the U.S. Attorney, and is down twenty-six per cent in 2025 compared to 2024, based on statistics from the Metropolitan Police Department. “The Administration,” he said, “is making this move by—forgive me—trumping up a crime emergency where one doesn’t exist.”

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