On August 11, President Trump officially declared an emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime had reached such levels that he was compelled to utilize authorities granted to him under Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which requires the D.C. Metropolitan Police to be put at the president’s disposal for up to 30 days. This was followed by the president’s deployment of the D.C. National Guard and various federal law enforcement officers, including Homeland Security, the FBI, and the DEA, to walk the beat in an attempt to combat the disorder that plagues our nation’s capital.
The move has all the hallmarks of the Trump law and order agenda. Much like the man himself, it emphasizes creating a vibe of confidence and authority through public shows of force to more or less will the desired end into being.
As the kids say, “You can just do things.”
The Democrats predictably painted the president’s move as a figurative crossing of the Rubicon, one more iteration of the long-predicted Trumpian coup d’état. The D.C. government filed a lawsuit insisting the president cannot do what the red letter of the law explicitly says he can. Former Obama National Security officials took to the pages of the New York Times to lament that the Department of Defense wasn’t willing to “stand up to Trump” over his completely lawful deployments.
Meanwhile, the more radical elements of the Left’s coalition took to the streets to declare the president’s crime initiative an “occupation,” bang pots and pans, hold protests, and confront members of the National Guard outside Union Station.
As The Daily Caller reported, the lead organizing entity behind the Left’s protest campaign is the Free DC Project, which is led by a number of professional protest organizers with criminal records. According to the New York Post, the project is fiscally sponsored by the Community Change organization, a progressive group with a history going back to the 1960s. It’s bankrolled by tens of millions of dollars from left-wing dark money groups, including George Soros’s Open Society, the Tides Foundation, and Arabella Advisors.
Free DC Project also has ties to more radical organizers including “Harriet’s Dreams,” a “Black-led abolitionist community defense hub.” As I noted for The American Mind back in 2020, “community defense” is coded language within the Antifa-adjacent police abolitionist space for replacing police with radical political commissars. Also close to the Free DC Project is the BlackOUT Collective, a group of “direct action” trainers who cut their teeth preparing protestors to clash with local police and the National Guard during the Ferguson riots of 2014.
BlackOut traces its training pedigree to The Ruckus Society, which itself has a reputation as being one of the best in the business when it comes to professional disruption training. Ruckus Society’s founders were organizers in the infamous 1999 “Battle of Seattle,” one of the earliest cases of anarchist “Black bloc” activities on U.S. soil. BlackOUT Collective is responsible for providing direct action training for the Free DC Project’s anti-policing protests.
All of this raises the question: Is this a fight the Left wants? There’s reason to think so.
D.C. is favorable territory. It’s overwhelmingly left-wing politically, from the city government to the federal bureaucrats in the District (including presumably the now-fired DOJ employee who recently assaulted a federal officer).
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Author: Kyle Shideler
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