Graff: Tweets like this from Trump, I think, are indicative of what has really worried me over the course of this month, which is we have seen this continual escalation and ratcheting up of the hostility and aggression and posture of the D.C. federal takeover in a way that, again, felt different. There was a version of this in early August where I was like, Maybe this is one of those weird performative things where they’re going to be a couple of nights of a couple of extra FBI patrols through the city and maybe some National Guard troops posted at the National Mall.
But what I think we saw over the course of last week was this rising level of aggression of the federal interference in D.C.—up to and including ICE officers and agents of this weird amalgamated federal task force of various agencies coming together to fight nondescript crime of some kind in D.C. literally shouting, Papers, please, to people getting off the metro in D.C. on their way home from work and forcing people to show ID to walk out of a transit station. We saw a 14-ton up-armored MRAP patrolling the streets of D.C. slam into and T-bone a civilian car. And now, as of this weekend—as of Sunday night—the National Guard are now authorized to be carrying weapons. We can see now that this is an occupation by the U.S. military on domestic soil that is being done to a population and not in support of them. They’ve tried to have this fig leaf of, We’re out there protecting D.C. But what you actually see in DC is deserted streets, deserted monuments, restaurant reservations cratering—because people don’t want to go out on the street and risk these interactions with the armed agents of the state that are there.
