Trump unleashes show and awe on Washington — creating his own Potemkin police state in the nation’s capital.
It’s not going well— Rolling Stone (@rollingstone.com) August 20, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Figured I’d share this while we wait for the Blogmaster’s nightly update. (Does anyone still read Armies of the Night, outside of college classrooms?) Stephen Rodrick, for Rolling Stone, on “Fake Armies of the Night”:
A quarter mile from the White House, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in downtown Washington was once Abraham Lincoln’s place of worship. A black hitching pole where he would tie up the family carriage is still here. Lincoln would come here most Sundays during the Civil War, burying his face in his hands and praying for guidance.
Donald Trump has never been seen here, but the dozen or so homeless people around the church are about to endure his presidential reality. It’s just after 10 a.m. on Friday. A woman is stone asleep on the blazing cement while a couple of men in T-shirts share a cigarette. There are exactly two tents, some shopping bags and a couple of carts. A volunteer’s phone blares out an inspirational sermon from a Christian station…
… A volunteer with long braids named Jakia works the half-asleep crowd and approaches an old man. The church has a center that offers showers for the poor and Jakia urges the man to clean himself.
“Don’t make me go Jackie Chan on your ass. Get in there and wash your booty.”
The man mumbles to himself but doesn’t move. He looks up in time to see and hear the sirens of six police cars bursting the dope-sick silence. The operation is part of a series of raids on D.C.’s homeless encampments overseen by federal law enforcement as part of Trump’s edict to reclaim a city that he already rules with a dictator’s prerogative.
Trump said one of his desires was to take back the city from “drugged out maniacs and homeless people.” There are no maniacs here, just American citizens who have lost their way. Jakia walks around telling the homeless to store any belongings they want to keep inside the church. Some comprehend, and Temitope Ibijemdou, a 35-year-old man, deftly takes down his tent in seconds. (“I’ve had some practice,” he tells me.) Ibijemdou then helps a sick friend into the church. Meanwhile, the old man mumbles to Jakia that the police are just doing their job. She shoots him a look.
“It’s not their job. They took an oath to protect and serve. You can’t protect and serve by preying on other people, especially poor people.” …
DONALD TRUMP’S D.C. TAKEOVER IS the usual Trumpian blend of idiocy, cruelty, and bullshit. Just look at its creation myth. In the early hours of August 3, a 19-year-old was attacked by a group of D.C. teenagers near Washington D.C.’s U Street bar scene as he tried to prevent a friend’s car from being stolen. Beyond that, the details were murky and the lamentable event — I’ve been mugged in D.C., it’s not a life highlight — would have been quickly forgotten except for one thing. The beat-up kid was Edward Coristine, aka “Big Balls,” an Elon Musk hire for his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Coristine is too young to legally drink, but is old enough to wipe out a federal employee’s career with a key stroke.
A week later, Trump vowed to avenge Big Balls by launching a hostile takeover of the capitol in order to “take our capital back from violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.” He wasn’t referring to his Cabinet.
I arrived in Washington two days after Trump’s announcement. I make contact with housing activists who send me texts as federal law enforcement hover while the local police clear out homeless encampments. “They’re at MLK Library.” “Police are at Washington Circle Park.” “Cops are tearing down tents near the Kennedy Center.”
At first it seems like I am being pranked. I get to the hot spot and there are two tents. At the MLK Library, there is just a News Nation crew and two confused men stepping into a homeless shelter van. In two days, I see maybe a dozen tents total at four different spots. As context, I was in Los Angeles in June for the protests against raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There are more tents on Silver Lake Boulevard under the 101 than I see in all of Trump’s Washington.
“Mayor Bowser has been clearing them out for years,” activist Jesse Rabinowitz tells me on a bench in Washington Circle Park. He’s with the National Homelessness Law Center. He points to his right and then to his left…
Russia had its Potemkin Village, now the United States has a Potemkin police state. Washington, D.C. has chronically dealt with crime issues — the city says violent crime is currently down after a post-pandemic spike, the Trump administration is suing the city claiming they cooked the books — but the Trump Surge isn’t concerned about murders and knifings in poor and desperate D.C. wards, no matter what the administration proclaims. No, this is a pretend thug’s idea of a takeover. Armored vehicles appear and then vanish around Union Station. There are night club patrols where U.S. Marshals film journalists filming them.
It is all optics. Unless you are brown-skinned. Then you can be slung off your scooter in affluent Foggy Bottom on a Sunday morning and bashed to the ground by anonymous Feds in masks and riot gear…
The protesters eventually reach Constitution Avenue and come across a solitary National Guard vehicle with four soldiers loitering about. The protesters and the media see them simultaneously. The soldiers and their ride are instantly engulfed by cameras and bullhorns screaming, “Go home!”
For a moment, I can see one of the soldiers and his eyes are full of fear. In a role reversal, the National Guard are rescued by D.C. police who form a protective ring around them. The situation doesn’t escalate, but I wonder what would have happened if someone threw a water bottle. And then I remember a conversation I had with an activist the day before about why there were not more public protests.
“I don’t want to be the guy known for organizing the rally where people got their heads bashed in or killed,” he said. “We don’t know how they would react.” The man grimaced. “And that means Trump has already won.”…
ON A USUAL SUNDAY MORNING, the Salvadoran vendors outside of the Target in the immigrant heavy neighborhood of Columbia Heights are out hawking fruit and T-shirts. But not today. Instead, black SUVs creep by.
For Salvadorans of a certain vintage, it brings back memories of Archbishop Óscar Romero. The bishop gave a sermon in 1980 urging soldiers to obey God’s law and not the commands of the government’s right-wing death squads. The next day, Romero was shot dead by his own government while saying Mass in San Salvador. A shrine to the now venerated Romero is near the altar in The Shrine Of The Sacred Heart, a Catholic church a few blocks away…
After Mass, I talk to an older woman holding hands with her husband. They tell me that church attendance has actually increased because of Trump’s return.
“We need this now, more than ever,” says the woman.
We chat for a minute and then say goodbye. A young man in a green shirt adroitly picks up that I’m a reporter, my vulture eyes scanning the parishioners for someone else to talk with.
“I know you mean well, but people are scared. Let them leave in peace.”
Of course he is right. I kneel, cross myself, and head for my car…
Baud
Trump knows what his audience wants.
Shane in SLC
I’m an English professor and I had to look up Armies of the Night. I don’t think anyone teaches Mailer anymore, either.
Steve LaBonne
I would like to say that this version of our country is unrecognizable, but I know (and have lived through) too much history to say that.
Miss Bianca
@Shane in SLC: Oh, good, so I’m not the only one who’d never heard of it either!
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
I’m always here if you’re ever looking for someone to share your ignorance about anything.
EdTheRed
I live in DC. This whole bullshit occupation is stressful, heartbreaking, and maddening…and I’m a middle-aged white guy who was born in DC. For anyone with brown skin, it must be a whole nother level.
Checkpoints pop up all over the place – today we had stops on North Capitol Street, a major commuter artery, and I-295, which is, well, a god-damned interstate. Soldiers in seemingly every metro station, now with added firearms. Helicopters flying low over residential neighborhoods at all hours (one *just* buzzed my house in a normally-quiet hood just east of Rock Creek Park).
Streets and sidewalks are eerily empty. Restaurants and bars, too. Everyone is just…on edge.
And the worst part, for me personally, anyway, is the profound sense of abandonment. We have no voice in your legislative branch. We’ve just been…left to fend for ourselves however we can. Can’t say that I’m ever going to forget this. Probably won’t forgive it, either. I hope the Brownshirts don’t come to your town, but if they do, you can’t say you weren’t warned.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: lol – thank you, Baud!
Ruckus
I am, for once very glad to be old enough that I might have around 20 years left to live. Could be 25 but likely not longer.
Of course shitforbrains will not live much longer but will his replacement be any different or just worse?
This country is at a crossroads. We can grow the fuck up or we can continue to faultier as a supposed democracy or we can keep going – at least a segment anyway, as if it’s 1800 rather than 2025. I’m for answer number one. Grow the fuck up and realize that this is supposed to be a democracy, not a monarchy for the rich and pompous.
Miss Bianca
@EdTheRed: Oh, shit. They really are ramping up. I am so sorry to hear this.
I got no words except to say that man, Dems need to get on the stick about making DC statehood a campaign promise that they intend to deliver on.
Geminid
DC-based New Lines Magazine has a good article about this by Rasha Ellis. She is New Lines Editorial Director and a DC resident who gets around her city by bicycle.
The article is titled:
This link should work. If it doesn’t, I’ll blame WordPress and that son-of-a-bitch Redis.
Well, the link does not work. I may know the problem and will try again in a reply to this comment. But the article is worth looking up. New Lines articles generally are; long but not wordy, just well-written.
mrmoshpotato
I…
The fact that this isn’t satire is deeply fucked up.
Baud
@Geminid:
Here you go
newlinesmag.com/reportage/a-dispatch-from-americas-garrison-capital/
Steve LaBonne
@mrmoshpotato: Satire is dead.
Geminid
@Baud: Thanks!
Elizabelle
We are all dodging the elephant in the room, though. Do you think that public parks and public spaces should be filled with homeless encampments? A lot of these folks have way more issues than being without a roof.
I really feel for California. The land of dreamy dreams, with million dollar starter housing. Gets a share of the unhoused from the other 49. One’s chance of freezing to death are greatly reduced.
It’s a problem from hell. How do you solve it?
ETA: Trump, of course, is grandstanding. But it’s a real problem for blue state political leadership.
Anne Laurie
I only know about it because my mother was an insane Mailer fangirl, who nagged me to plow through the original Harper’s essay version when it came out. (I was in high school then.)
Norman Mailer, I assume, has been Cancelled with extreme prejudice, for good reason. (Even in the 1970s, novelist Erica Jong famously quipped “Beware of male novelists who dismiss women writers; their penises are tiny & cannot spell”.) I suspect he’s still sometimes assigned in courses about post-WWII and 1960s politics, though.
Ruckus
@EdTheRed:
They’ve been to my area, if not the actual town. I never saw any other than on the news because I’m an old and don’t get around as much as I used to. But I live in a very multi racial area, with all walks of life and origins. But then this is CA, which has been multi racial, many languages, most of which I couldn’t tell you what they are to save my life. Wasn’t that sort of the point of this country in the first damn place? I mean sure we tried to take it over but the reality is that over my decades we’ve accepted people from most every country. I’ve met quite a few from at least prior generations from other countries, of various shades. I’m only one generation away from some citizens from other countries.
Wasn’t that one of the entire premises of this country, that we could have a place to live that wasn’t owned by one family and screw everyone else? This was never a monarchy, and was never supposed to be one, Of course it’s not supposed to be a police state either. The police/military are supposed to work for ALL of us, not the other way around.
Anne Laurie
We provide the support such people need to stay off the streets, even if they’re not ‘deserving’.
Here’s an article from the Washington Post I’ve been meaning to post about:
Dallas ended downtown homelessness. White House wants to change the rules.
Jackie
@Anne Laurie: Your article is paywalled.
Elizabelle
@Anne Laurie: Good catch. I meant to read that one too.
Math Guy
What Newsom, Pritzker, Walz, and a few other high-profile elected officials are doing by publicly calling bullshit on this administration is important and gratifying, but I don’t think it is enough. And the work done here to support Democratic candidates is also important, but I don’t think it is enough. And all the satirical memes, social media posts, and the work of people like Colbert and Terry Moran in the media is important, but I don’t think it is enough. If we are going to put a stop to this, it is going to take all of the above and many, many millions of people saying enough and putting their daily lives aside and refusing to go to work, refusing to spend their money or attention on all but the barest necessities, and gathering in front of government buildings from the White House down to every state legislature, every city hall, and refusing to yield. We won’t be able to put things back the way they were, and maybe we shouldn’t even try – we’ve seen some of the flaws and weaknesses laid bare – but if we don’t stop this soon it is going to get very dark and we will no longer be able to find our way out.
Dangerman
@Elizabelle: How do you solve it? A lot of money. Massive amounts of money.
There are homeless services but it’s obviously not enough. Some Folks abuse those services and it’s back to the streets for them.
I’ve heard some people like being homeless. Hey, whatever rocks your world.
I was in a park one day and a woman drove up in a nice truck and said to someone else she was going to spend the day panhandling. So, I give the people at the corners nothing because, one, there are those services and, two, there are those fakes.
Again, it’s a money problem. A BIGTIME money problem. We need to build treatment centers for those that need treatment. Mental health. Physical health. Hospitalization if necessary.
satby
@Elizabelle: @Anne Laurie: From the Pulitzer Center, an example of a successful program in Finland. But the real elephant in the room is that there’s programs that can be successful, but we are thwarted from doing them by the people who don’t want their tax dollars paying for the “undeserving”. As a society, we’re cruel to homeless people because they tend to be mentally ill or substance abusers (or both) and they make us uncomfortable. A good way to get over that is buy a homeless person a lunch from whatever fast food joint is around, and chat a bit when you offer it to them. Bring your own burger too. I’ve met good people that way.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Unfortunately, we need 60 Dem Senators to do it. Maybe if we agree to split Idaho into 2 states they might go along, but there’s just no way in Hell they are going to agree to create a state that will have 2 reliably Democratic senators.
It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Ohio Mom
@Elizabelle: You solve homelessness—or at least reduce it greatly — by housing people. But that costs gobs of money and there clearly isn’t the political will for that.
ETA: I see several others got here first. There is data supporting “housing first” — people given shelter are more open to treatments and interventions.
satby
@Dangerman: yeah, there are some fakes, but they usually have mental or abuse problems too. It’s not a lucrative career. And why I will buy food but not give $.
And it started when Regan (May he rot in hell) closed the mental health hospitals that provided treatment people needed.
Sure Lurkalot
Archive link to Wapo article on homelessness.
archive.today/1Fzxu
Sure Lurkalot
@satby:
Example number infinity plus one of how America is in no way a “Christian nation”.
Both Finland and Norway have adopted “housing first” initiatives that have survived changes in political administrations. Both countries have significantly reduced their homeless populations. Programs provide permanent housing…the idea being one cannot begin to solve the cause of one’s homelessness without shelter and a shared belief that housing is a human right.
Oh, and despite the substantial upfront cost, the programs have saved money because policing and criminalizing homelessness is more expensive.
satby
@Sure Lurkalot: exactly.
Dangerman
@satby: Agree on Reagan.
I tried to give a presumed homeless person some fast food in Eureka (CA) years ago. She tossed it away like I had put poison in it. She probably heard that was what some people do (and some people might). Anyway, I mostly gave up on the food thing, too. A little food may be a little help but even that has a downside; maybe I give them a few calories but no where near enough for proper nourishment.
It’s a huge problem.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Homelessness is a huge problem. The lack of support for housing first policies isn’t just limited to rich people who want to keep their tax money. It also doesn’t get support from poor and poorish people who are spending a huge chunk of their income to pay for shoddy housing. The fact that rents are so high now paradoxically reduces the support. I think you’d get support for institutional housing for them, but not for just renting them a decent apartment. Plus, I don’t think you’d get support from advocates for the homeless for institutional housing.
StringOnAStick
I hate to say it, but if R’s told blue state/city residents ‘elect us and we’ll make the homeless go away and never be in your sight again’, a whole lot of people would vote just for that alone. I’ve seen too many nominally D people I know go full fascist on getting rid of the homeless, and it is disgusting but very real.
satby
@Dangerman: nobody cares about proper nourishment when they haven’t eaten at all that day. My lunch buying days were mostly when I worked in downtown Chicago, I would ask the (usually middle aged or older) homeless men if I could buy them lunch since I was just going in (to wherever we were in front of). Most said yes, so I’d ask what they wanted me to get And then we’d sit and eat our sandwiches. The majority of them were vets.
And I realize not everyone is the born and bred urban animal I am who would be comfortable doing that, but if you push a bit past your comfort level you’ll never be the same.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@StringOnAStick: I agree. It bothers me, but I think you are right.
catclub
@Sure Lurkalot:
It will take time and money to learn this.
satby
@StringOnAStick: it’s fear: of the strange, of the unknown, of the (admittedly occasionally unpleasant); and of how close many of us might be to having the catastrophic luck that throws someone out onto the streets.
satby
@catclub: already been demonstrated numerous times in this and other countries. But we have problems with provable facts in this nation.
Eyeroller
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Institutional housing could be OK if it were something like a single-room occupancy (SRO) where they’d have a private room, private bath, maybe a minifridge, basically like a modest hotel room. That could go along with at least some therapy or some kind of social services. That wouldn’t be all that expensive compared to what we are otherwise spending, and has been shown in other countries to be beneficial, but we don’t even want to do that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@satby: I don’t think its an issue of provable facts. I think its an issue of people who don’t care if we spend more money on things as long as it feels more fair to them. I honestly think this is an issue liberal technocrats do not understand. I know, for instance, that policing welfare and disability fraud costs much, much more than ignoring it. As a strictly financial matter, policing it doesn’t make financial sense. However, if more lower middle class and upper lower class people didn’t know someone (or know someone who knows someone) that was successfully cheating the system, there would be a lot more support for it. The desire for fairness is deeply ingrained. You can not like how some people define ‘fair’, but the need for things to be fair starts very young. Ultimately, the GOP does a better job of speaking about and to that than we do. They mislead and they exaggerate, but they are hitting on something real and fundamental.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eyeroller: The GOP would never propose that, because it costs money. Democrats won’t propose it, because advocates for the homeless would oppose it. However, I think the public would mostly support it. I say that based on what I’ve seen here, especially when they were soliciting feedback on how to spend the Ram’s settlement money. Some of the most popular proposals involved rehabbing and using some city owned property to house the homeless. Our progressive (at the time) city leaders didn’t even consider it.
I don’t understand the objection to shared bathrooms and kitchen facilities. I lived in a dorm in college. More poor people used to live in boarding houses. In Europe, a number of hotels operate that way, too. There’s nothing wrong with that.
EdTheRed
Not to downplay the plight of the unhoused, but…what the living fuck does that have to do with roving gangs of masked goons disappearing every other brown-skinned delivery driver on a scooter they can get their hands on?
DC’s homeless crisis started in the 1980s when Ronald Fucking Reagan cut funding to St. Elizabeth’s and turned hundreds of mentally unwell people out onto the streets. In recent years, the unhoused have put their tents on *federal* property, so MPD can’t kick them out, because Mayor Bowser has been *significantly* tougher on kicking them out than the feds.
But having a conversation about the roots of and solutions to homelessness in a thread about a military occupation of the U.S. capital is just buying into Trump’s rationale. Fuck.
Jesus fucking Christ. Sorry our skirt was too short. We should have known it would attract Trump’s attention.
I hate this fucking timeline.
sab
@Elizabelle: No I don’t. They have nowhere to live. I am so old that I remember when we had a lot of public housing. Not much of that anymore.
dww4
@EdTheRed: I’m with you on this. And I’m almost as angry and distressed as you. Eldest granddaughter and her boyfriend, both of them activists, decided to pull up stakes and move from ATL to DC . They arrive in DC by car on Saturday.
Redshift
@EdTheRed: I’m with you – we absolutely do not have to engage with whatever bullshit excuse the Trumpists out forward for their power grab. Out of all the things we’re told to ignore because they’re “distractions,” those are the only ones that are.
Because we care about people, Dems and liberals get baited into discussing the “real underlying problem” even if it’s brought up in obvious bad faith. And if we try not to, people in our own side will say “why are you ignoring people’s real concerns?”
The answer to “but you have to admit…” is that this is about a power grab and an authoritarian takeover and nothing else. It’s not about crime, it’s not about homelessness, they’re doing nothing good about those, and if we had the perfect solution for both, none of this would end because it’s not about that AS YOU CAN TELL BY ALL THE OUTRAGEOUS LIES THEY’RE TELLING.
Jay
The “Big Balls” story, so far is just that, a story with competing narratives.
It’s extremes range from:
A heroic attempt to prevent a brutal car jacking of a female in distress by a violent gang of multiple juvenile “yout’s”,
vs, the attempted rape and sexual assault by “Big Balls” on a 15 year old girl interrupted by her best friend.
The two “suspects” have been released, she to her parents home custody, him to his Foster Home’s custody.
Jay
In BC, amongst other places, a program has been tried. A version of UBI, where in the unhoused are given a cash amount, not significant, basically one months income for a minimum wage worker, with no strings attached.
In the Downtown East Side, where the Wosk Center ran a pilot, 87% of recipients were housed with in a month, all had landed reliable jobs of varying degree, (quite a few already had jobs) and 6 months later, 83% were still stable.
In Vancouver, BC you need “first month, last month, damage deposit and a credit report, (or guarantor)” to rent an apartment. For a 1 BDR with no pets, that’s currently $6100 down payment.
Roughly 68% of the unhoused or in shelters, have full time jobs.
Yes, there are issues with mental health, a lot less than you think, there are issues with addiction, again, often a lot less than you think.
When we were unhoused, yes, we drank a lot more than we used to, but working a physically hard job, with age issues and pain issues, well, drinking some helps you sleep with your wife and two cats in a small car on a busy street so you can go to work the next day.
It took over 6 months of working full time “crap” jobs, the kindness of some of T’s coworkers, (who would let us house sit), Covid and BC’s Foreign Owners Tax, for us to move indoors full time.
BC has relied on SRO’s for decades, (Single Residency Occupant), mostly old hotels in the Downtown East Side. Bed, fridge, (no microwaves or hotplates, illegal, fire hazard, common), shared bathroom per floor, communal space (kitchen, eating, laundry) in the basement or what used to be the Grand Foyer. They have proven over decades to be often corrupt, mismanaged, and deathtraps with only a few societies ever managing them well, but with the staff and occupants constantly harassed by the Police, Building Inspectors and the Fire Department. Occupants often report abuse by the staff, criminality and a restrictive environment with no privacy or independence.
Redshift
@Jay:
Yes, according to the news story about it, the account that’s getting repeated everywhere is his report to the police. Not other witnesses, or, as I recall, even a statement from the woman.
And even by his own account, he says he shoved her into the car and went to “deal with it,” meaning it’s entirely possible he started the fight and could have avoided it by just getting in the car.
Redshift
@Jay: Very important to hear, than you. I listened to an interview with the researcher who devised the pilot study for (I think) that program, and one of the most striking things was that the common belief that people become unhoused because they’re alcoholics or addicts is almost never true.
The cause of poverty and homelessness is almost entirely just lack of money, and can be fixed with money, and all of the common beliefs about moral failings are just BS to avoid facing that.
Jay
@Redshift:
It’s not even so much “money”, it’s savings. Being unhoused is expensive, and many “jurisdictions” do their best to make it so. Fines, tickets, towing and of course, “sweeps”, where almost everything you own is seized and thrown away. Tent, gone, sleeping bags, gone, stove, pots, kitchen ware, gone, welcome to fast food, clothes, go, and it all has to be replaced.
We got towed once. 2 weeks of our wages to get the car back. Nice lady at the impound took in our cats, cared for them and didn’t charge a penny for their care.
Luckily, our stuff was left in the car, untouchedno folding camp chairs, unluckily, we had to sleep, eat and dress rough for two weeks until we had the money. No bivvy bags, no sleeping bags, no pillows, no clean clothes, fast food (ish) for breakfast, lunch and dinner, no cat’s curled up and purring on my chest. Sleeping hidden in bushes in the dirt, with just our jackets to keep off the rain.
Our “crime”. Parked in the same spot, (legal parking) for 3 days in a row, and a NIMBY complained.
Something I still do, is use my settings to hunt free wifi. During early covid, T worked remotely, so car + free wifi meant a second income.
Shalimar
Nice simple summary of Americans. On average we’re just assholes, and I don’t know that it is fixable.
Chris T.
@Jay:
The Woke Center? That’ll never fly here!
What? Oh, the Wosk center? Never mind.