A man in Washington, DC, plays the Imperial March from Star Wars while following patrolling soldiers. One of the soldiers threatens to call the police.
— Raider (@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social) September 14, 2025 at 2:23 PM
===
Resistance to Trump’s D.C. crackdown is taking many forms Residents want solutions to crime, but many who live here say aggressive federal law enforcement tactics threaten civil rights and instill a sense of fear, not safety.
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202…— Linda💙🌊🆘🐕🐿️🕊️🇺🇦 (@lindaworkerbee.bsky.social) September 6, 2025 at 8:26 PM
This article is mostly about resistance to ICE, but the National Guard soldiers have become collateral damage. Long piece, but worth reading the whole thing. [Gift link]
… Opponents of what they see as an authoritarian clampdown on the city are embracing impromptu demonstrations, including ringing bells in the masked faces of law enforcement, scribbling signs to warn drivers about ICE checkpoints, bombarding social media with footage of arrests, and employing art and humor to build consensus — and momentum.
A few small organized protests have taken place, and a march planned for Saturday is expected to draw several thousand people. But in the past several weeks nothing has approached the size and scale of the enormous demonstrations aimed at Trump during his first administration, including the Women’s March and the weeks of racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.
That’s partly by design, say activists who have been wary of calling for large demonstrations against Trump’s crackdown because of safety concerns and uncertainty about whether a peaceful protest will be met with force and widespread arrests. And, they say, because smaller efforts can be more fruitful right now.
“If a single massive protest could get could get rid of this man, it would have happened already, right? And so we have to think of different things,” said Alex Dodds, co-founder of Free DC, an organization formed earlier this year to protect home rule. “What fixes this is sustained resistance and noncooperation with people who are attempting to use our government, which belongs to us, to harm our communities and to harm us.”…
Some of it is spontaneous: Residents filming and jeering at masked ICE agents making arrests or manning roadblocks in their neighborhoods, commuters yelling at National Guard troops ordered into the District by Trump, crowds heckling Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Union Station and telling them to “get out of my city!”
Other events are planned and repeated: Every night at 8 p.m. in various parts of the city, residents gather on street corners, meet in parks or stand on front porches banging pots and pans to show their opposition. People hold signs and wave flags at weekly demonstrations along the District’s major thoroughfares. On Labor Day, protesters raised a large sign reading “Due Process for All” on a bridge over the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Mobile billboards driven around the city bear messages such as “Why are you hiding your face? Public servants should face the public.”…
In every quadrant of the city, posters, stickers and graffiti blast Trump’s law enforcement surge in D.C. as a threat to liberty and urge residents not to comply. The text on one poster, with images of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson below, reads, “This is the government the founders warned us about.” Another proclaims “In DC, we want ICE out of our community. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” A stylized poster showing the Constitution with a fist superimposed on it reads, “Defend the Constitution From All Enemies Both Foreign and Domestic.”…
While residents want crime and lawless behavior to be addressed in the city, they are overwhelmingly critical of the Trump administration’s approach, according to a Washington Post poll. Eighty percent of D.C. residents oppose Trump’s executive order to federalize law enforcement in the city, with about 7 in 10 opposing it “strongly.”…
National Guard documents accidentally sent to The Washington Post, show troops felt “shame” over Trump-ordered D.C. deployments. The report highlighted unclear objectives, demoralizing tasks, and public disapproval, raising concerns about politicizing military forces
www.techdirt.com/2025/09/12/n…— Isabel Santos (@isabelsantos.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 6:02 AM
Tim Cushing, at TechDirt — “National Guard Accidentally Sends Evidence Of Troop Disillusionment To The Washington Post”:
This news — you know, the stuff that shows National Guard troops aren’t exactly happy to be expendable pieces in Trump revenge schemes — is unsurprising. No one signed up for this, but Donald Trump and a bunch of suck-ups scattered across a handful of red states have made Trump’s War on DC the new day-to-day operation for troops who’d probably rather be doing anything else than this.
And what exactly is “this?” Well, it’s all sorts of things. Some of “this” is standing idly by while law enforcement officers do law enforcement work. Some of “this” is sleeping on floors, defecating in Humvees, being the constant gardener you never wished to see in the world, and not knowing if you’re actually going to get your next paycheck, much less the pension you’ve been drilling for.
While previous reports of widespread discontent have been mostly hearsay contributed by anonymous troops and officers, this one comes straight from the US military. Yeah, the Department of War is just as sloppy as the guy running it — the one who decided it was okay to share war plans with family members and family members’ acquaintances…
…Not for public consumption, however, is an internal “media roll up” that analyzes the tone of news stories and social media posts about the National Guard’s presence and activities in Washington. […]
“Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” a summary from Friday said. “One segment features a local [resident]describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.”
A National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to The Post last week…
That’s the sort of unforced error that has been the calling card of the military under Pete Hegseth’s “leadership.” A guy who loves photo ops and fawning interviews more than he likes actually doing his job isn’t an anomaly in the Trump administration. It’s the other thing: emblematic…
… If the military was careless enough to send this to a Washington Post email address, it has likely made the same mistake elsewhere. We’ll see if any other news agency speaks up now that the Post has gone on record with this. Or maybe we’ll discover months or years from now that this was actually a deliberate leak, but one that had to be sternly denied lest Hegseth and the man he owes this unearned position to decide it’s time to bring back summary executions for consorting with the enemy.
That’s the more remarkable part of this report. The rest of it just adds to what we have already assumed and that has been buttressed by a handful of anonymous National Guard members. All of this sucks, and very few troops are fully supportive of invading US cities just to make Trump feel even more powerful…
Saying mean things to Donald Trump is not a RICO predicate act. Even YELLING at Donald Trump is not a RICO predicate act.
— Stand With Chicago Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 9:58 PM
/2 Also: if you suggest that shouting at the President in a restaurant is RICO, you are (1) completely without shame or self-respect, and (2) believe, probably accurately, that your chosen audience is made up of total morons.
— Stand With Chicago Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 10:11 PM
===
Also the president, vice president, secretary of state and defense went into an unsecured location. Much bigger problem than "he got yelled at"
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 10:06 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,300: A Brief Tuesday Night Update
NotMax
Kitchen staff probably surreptitiously added a little something extra to the plated food as well.
prostratedragon
Doesn’t look like preservation to me.
A Log Lady comment.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
What can you build for $200 million? How about a five story, 160,000 square foot year-round facility with a purpose more beneficial than a glorified dance hall, that will provide employment to hundreds, if not thousands, for decades?
Darkrose
31 House Democrats voted to allow Trump and Congress to override DC sentencing guidelines.
Ankit Jain, DC junior shadow senator, said:
I’m not surprised that Jeffries was useless. I am deeply disappointed in Eugene Vindman, who knows firsthand that Trump and the GOP can’t be trusted.
YY_Sima Qian
More horror stories from the ordeals that the South Korean engineers/specialists detained from the Hyundai/LG factory in Georgia:
Sadly, par for the course for such ICE facilities, but surely shocking & appalling to South Korean audiences.
Baud
Baud
Politico
NotMax
@Baud
Conservative Liar Test?
//
John Revolta
the country of lawsuits”.
God, it makes ya proud, doesn’t it? Kinda brings a lump to the old throat! USA! USA! (You better cheer along, buddy, if you don’t want to hear from my lawyers……..)
bjacques
Popehat is right. It’s irresponsible and dangerous to shout RICO! in a crowded eatery.
David Anderson
How challenging is it to learn bagpipes well enough to make cats in heat think that sound is slightly annoying?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
What really frightens me is the unsubstantiated thing I heard that badmouthing a dead right-wing extremist firebrand can be used as an excuse to revoke one’s passport. If that isn’t government interference in free speech, I don’t know what would qualify.
Baud
Reading this Reddit post may get you fired.
YY_Sima Qian
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Repubs are proposing such legislation in Congress, not law, yet.
There are somewhat similar precedents during the McCarthy era “Red Scare”, where the State Department refused to issue passports to US citizens suspected of being Communist sympathizers (meaning anyone Left leaning) to travel overseas.
Baud
The Trump administration continues its bold efforts to address the root causes of economic anxiety.
YY_Sima Qian
I did not realize Bessent owned thousands of acres of farmland in North Dakota. Oh the irony (gift link to NYT article below):
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: But what they’re concurrently trying to do is force states to demand proof of citizenship to vote, with a passport being the most reliable way to do that. Of course, a passport is an expensive and cumbersome thing to get under the best of circumstances, and many people don’t have them.
(A birth certificate or certificate of naturalization should work, but of course the Trump administration asserts that those don’t really count as proving citizenship either. In fact it’s not clear they regard anything in particular as proof positive of citizenship–they get to pick who is really a citizen. I suppose the logical endpoint is that to vote, you have to prove that Donald Trump would like you.)
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Oh, the reactionaries are definitely working hard to turn the US into an illiberal managed democracy under their domination.
I am definitely glad I got the PRC permanent resident card early this year. Perhaps I should be glad that the PRC’s procedure for withdrawing one’s PRC citizenship is so cumbersome that I (& probably 99.99% of PRC emigrés have never gone through w/ it), even though my PRC passport & residence permit have long been voided.
bjacques
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: by the way, we’re staying in Greece this week, near Pylos, and were treated to a harangue on a beach by a Greek person to a British couple seated nearby. He sounded almost American and volunteered he had (or has) lived n Miami
He accepted unquestioningly that Kirk was a martyr for free speech and then reeled off some of Kirk’s greatest hits. The British couple were from Cambridge and the husband had been reading the London review of books. Eventually he wound down and left. We pretending not to listen and left before he finished, so didn’t catch the couple’s reaction then.
When he first turned up, he was wearing a scuba mask and the top half of a wetsuit and was carrying a black Nike gym bag. Having seen way too many movies, I kept a close eye on him to see him withdraw a towel and not something else. It turns out this particular beach—more of a cove, really—is excellent for snorkeling, and I saw at least one other person busy at it. By the way, this beach also has the remains of a Mycenaean tomb on the hill overlooking it, via a short and easy trail.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’m to the point where I think defunding the entire national security apparatus sounds pretty good. I won’t deny there’s a lot of home grown crazy but without Putin’s social media influence campaign I doubt Trump ever becomes president. Ten years later the CIA, NSA, FBI etc have not a single effective countermeasure. That’s a big fat failure to protect and defend the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
I’ve never been convinced that our wold spanning overseas deployments do all that much to keep us safe, and now the personnel here are being used to oppress their own citizens. So shut it all the fuck down, including the weapons programs and all those contracts with big tech. What’s the fucking point? No foreign invader ever has or could have done this much damage to the country in more that two centuries and they haven’t even tried to slow it down. It’s all completely useless as far as I can tell.
Scott
I disagree with the urge to harass the NG troops. They are victims of Trump as much as anyone. They need to be peeled away from the right wing patriotic phonies. Maybe hand out flowers? Or treats?
lowtechcyclist
Nope, and it’s not coincidence either. It’s enemy action, and he deserves every bit of it.
He deserves much worse, of course, but that’s the most anyone can do right now.
Trivia Man
DC soldiers: Are we the baddies?
randy khan
I had my first sighting of National Guard troops in downtown DC yesterday, three of them standing at one of the entrances to the Metro Center Metro station. They looked bored, even with their guns. Still, it was a bit disturbing.
Metro Center is one of the busiest stations because 4 of the 6 Metro lines converge there, but it is in one of the safest parts of town, so the presence of the National Guard is purely performative. But it’s also just a few blocks from the White House, so it may make White House staffers feel better to see Guard troops there.
stinger
During his confirmation hearings, Hegseth vowed that if he was confirmed, he’d go on the wagon. Now he’s buying rounds at taverns. None of them keep their word about anything.
twbrandt
“inadvertently emailed”. Yeah, right.
waspuppet
@Scott: The Guard members I’ve talked to were clearly embarrassed. I had plans to get in their faces about what they were doing but after 30 seconds of conversation they were so clearly embarrassed that it just would have been mean — especially the first wave, who were DC Guard and therefore actually lived here.
I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing any secret police out and about. I’m looking greatly forward to that.
lou
I live in DC and do a lot of walking. The NG deployment is such a waste of taxpayer dollars. They either wander around in big clumps (The Waterfront, Navy Yard), or lean against retaining walls chitchatting or playing with their phones (The Mall). The NG in the Metro stations are the scariest. Some lean on the mezannine balconies looking down on the train and looking bored (Dupont Circle, Union Station), but others have their long guns at attention (Waterfront, Navy Yard).
I have kept a respectful distance to them. On the other hand, I’m banging pots at 8 p.m. and photo’d an arrest of a young black man who was with his wife and child in a Honda Civic near Lincoln Park. It was Park Police backed up by unidentified other people, some wearing masks. I think the charge of possession of weed (legal in DC!) A crowd gathered and we were yelling things like “Sieg Heil!” “How does it feel to belong to the KKK?” etc.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: I do feel sorry for the poor guard troops. They have been ordered to go there. If they refused, UCMJ would come into play.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Served with a guy who had that condition. It is very painful, when the hair grows back into the skin. Icky looking too.
Dan B
@Paul in KY: 60% of black men have the condition. Hegseth wants an all white military. He’s going to harass every minority.
Paul in KY
@Dan B: Sad to say that appears to be what is happening. Feel so bad for all who has to endure such petty BS!