Condemn the Authoritarian Takeover of D.C. and Deployment of the National Guard

We write to you in urgent opposition to Donald Trump’s takeover of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, and to the reckless deployment of federal agents and the National Guard into our nation’s capital. This is an unacceptable and dangerous overreach of executive power—one that must be met with clear, immediate, and bipartisan condemnation from every elected representative. The crisis Mr. Trump claims to be responding to does not exist. Crime in Washington, D.C. is down from previous years, as confirmed by official statistics. Yet once again, he is Shadowboxing—manufacturing a sense of chaos in order to justify the escalation of force, just as he has done before. This pattern—fabricating emergencies to “solve” them—has become a political trademark, offering him staged victories while eroding democratic norms and inflaming tensions that did not exist until he created them. We have seen this before. In Los Angeles, he deployed the National Guard and even Marines, not in response to an actual threat, but to showcase a strongman image for political gain and to test boundaries. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. D.C. is not a battlefield, and its residents are not enemies of the state. We call on you—our elected representatives—to publicly denounce this abuse of power, to reject the false narrative being used to justify it, and to take every legislative and oversight measure available to bring this deployment to an immediate end. Silence in this moment will be read as complicity. The use of federal force against peaceful communities and local governance strikes at the very heart of our republic. It is not just a D.C. issue—it is a dangerous precedent that threatens cities and citizens across the United States. We demand that you speak out now, act decisively, and defend the people you swore an oath to serve.