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WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement crackdown on Washington expanded Wednesday and top administration officials visited National Guard troops to support a deployment that has left parts of the US capital looking like occupied territory. Anger and frustration dotted the city as the vice president lauded an operation that he asserted has “brought some law and order back.”
The tense situation, which began more than a week ago when Trump took control of the local police department, appeared primed for escalating confrontations between residents who say they feel under siege and federal forces carrying out the president’s vision of militarized law enforcement in Democratic cities. Other residents have said they welcome the federal efforts as a way to cut crime and bolster safety.
As Trump ratcheted up the pressure, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared burgers with soldiers at the city’s main railroad hub as demonstrators gathered nearby. The appearance, a striking scene that also included White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, illustrated the Republican administration’s intense dedication to an initiative that has polarized the Democratic-led city.
Vance told the troops assembled in the Union Station Shake Shack that “you guys are doing a helluva job” and “we brought some law and order back.” While protest chants echoed through the restaurant, he rejected polling that shows city residents don’t support the National Guard deployment as a solution to crime.
Someone booed Vance loudly and repeatedly as he left. The vice president grinned and said, “This is the guy who thinks people don’t deserve law and order in their own community.”
Trump has already suggested replicating his approach to D.C. in other cities, such as Chicago and Baltimore. He previously deployed the National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles in response to immigration protests.
Swaths of the city are on edge
In the seven months since Trump took office for the second time, the traditionally liberal city of Washington has buckled under his more aggressive presidency. Thousands of federal employees have been laid off, landmark institutions like the Smithsonian are being overhauled on grounds of doctrine, and local leaders have been increasingly wary of angering the commander-in-chief.
Now parts of the city are bristling with resentment over Trump’s approach. Spectators chanted ” free D.C. ” at a soccer game. Residents share sightings of immigration agents to help migrants steer clear. In the Columbia Heights neighborhood, crowds jeered federal officers and flipped middle fingers as they drove away. On some nights, people bang pots and pans outside their front doors in a cacophonous display of defiance.
Less than a mile from the US Capitol, an armored National Guard vehicle collided with a civilian car in the early morning on Wednesday, trapping the driver inside until emergency crews arrived. The massive military transport, designed to withstand improvised explosive devices in war zones, towered over the crushed silver sport utility vehicle. Bystanders gathered.
“You come to our city and this is what you do? Seriously?” a woman yelled at the troops in a video posted online.
More troops have been arriving in the city, many from six Republican-led states. An estimated 1,900 are being deployed in total, with most posted in downtown areas like the National Mall, metro stations and near the park where baseball’s Washington Nationals play.
In addition, federal officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies have circulated through D.C. to make arrests.
Col. Larry Doane, the commander of the joint task force in the D.C. National Guard, said they’re trying to provide “an extra set of eyes and ears” for police and “helping them maintain control of the situation.”
“This is our community, too,” Doane said.
That’s not how D.C. native LaVerne Smalls, 46, feels. “It’s very different. It’s very quiet,” she said. “And I don’t like it. It should be full of life.”
Smalls knows D.C. has struggled with crime, but she didn’t used to feel worried walking around. “I feel even more threatened,” she said. “And I think that’s how they want us to feel.”
The actions from law enforcement have occasionally veered beyond safety and crime reduction and into regulating expression. Over the weekend, masked agents took down a profane protest banner in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood — to the apparent delight of the administration, which posted a video of the incident online. “We’re taking America back, baby,” one of the agents said in the video.
Corey Frayer, 42, who lives nearby, said “that sends a message.”
“Mt. Pleasant has always been a very activist, outspoken neighborhood,” he said. “And I think they think if they can show up here and scare us, then they’ll have done their job.”
Arrests are increasing as local officials navigate the situation
The White House said more than 550 people have been arrested so far, and the US Marshals are offering $500 rewards for information leading to additional arrests. “Together, we will make DC safe again!” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media. City statistics show crime was already declining before Trump’s intervention, despite his claims of a crisis necessitating the federal takeover of the D.C. police department.
The number of people arrested each day in Washington has increased by about 20 percent since the government began sending in a surge of federal agents, according to law enforcement data.
On average, there were 78 people booked in the city jail in the first 10 days, compared to 64 in the 10 days before that. Those numbers don’t include immigration arrests, though they do include arrests by both local police and federal officers, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss data that has not been publicly released.
Policing experts say it’s tough to draw firm conclusions over such a short period of time, especially since increases in police presence can relocate crime instead of preventing it.
Extending federal control of the city police department would require congressional approval, but Vance suggested the decision ultimately rests with Trump. “If the president of the United States thinks that he has to extend this order to ensure that people have access to public safety, that’s exactly what he’ll do,” he said.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged the militarized backdrop in the city as she attended a back-to-school event with teachers and staff. She said it’s important that children “have joy when they approach this school year,” which starts on Monday.
Those early overtures didn’t stop Trump’s executive order or his increasingly disparaging rhetoric about the city’s leadership. Bowser has been measured but directly critical of the federal operation, saying officers should not be wearing masks and arguing that the National Guard should not be used for law enforcement. “I don’t think you should have an armed militia in the nation’s capital,” she said.
Meanwhile, the skewer-everyone cartoon television show ” South Park,” which has leaned into near-real-time satire in recent years, this week made the federal crackdown fodder for a new episode. This year, the show’s 27th-season premiere mocked the president’s body in a raunchy manner and depicted him sharing a bed with Satan.

MOSCOW: Russia said on Wednesday attempts to resolve security issues relating to Ukraine without Moscow’s participation were a “road to nowhere,” sounding a warning to the West as it scrambles to work out guarantees for Kyiv’s future protection.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov particularly criticized the role of European leaders who met US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine that could help end the three-and-a-half-year-old war.

“We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work,” Lavrov told a joint press conference after meeting Jordan’s foreign minister.

US and European military planners have begun exploring post-conflict security guarantees for Ukraine, US officials and sources told Reuters on Tuesday. Lavrov said such discussions without Russia were pointless.
“I am sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, it’s a road to nowhere.”

NATO military leaders holding a video conference on Wednesday had a “great, candid discussion” on the results of recent talks on Ukraine, the chair of the alliance’s military committee said.
“Priority continues to be a just, credible and durable peace,” Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone wrote in a post on X.
A Western official told Reuters that a small group of military leaders continued discussions in Washington on security guarantees shortly after the bigger virtual meeting. After Polish officials said that an object that crashed in a cornfield in eastern Poland overnight was likely a Russian drone, Poland accused Russia of provoking NATO countries just as efforts to find an end to the war were intensifying.
“Once again, we are dealing with a provocation by the Russian Federation, with a Russian drone. We are dealing in a crucial moment, when discussions about peace (in Ukraine) are under way,” Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
Lavrov’s comments highlighted Moscow’s demand for Western governments to directly engage with it on questions of security concerning Ukraine and Europe, something it says they have so far refused to do.
Moscow this week also restated its rejection of “any scenarios involving the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine.”

‘Clumsy’ Europeans
Lavrov accused the European leaders who met Trump and Zelensky of carrying out “a fairly aggressive escalation of the situation, rather clumsy and, in general, unethical attempts to change the position of the Trump administration and the president of the United States personally ... We did not hear any constructive ideas from the Europeans there.”
Trump said on Monday the United States would help guarantee Ukraine’s security in any deal to end Russia’s war there. He subsequently said he had ruled out putting US troops in Ukraine, but the US might provide air support as part of a deal to end the hostilities.
Zelensky’s chief of staff, speaking after a meeting of national security advisers from Western countries and NATO, said work was proceeding on the military component of the guarantees.
“Our teams, above all the military, have already begun active work on the military component of security guarantees,” chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on social media.
Yermak said Ukraine was also working on a plan with its allies on how to proceed “in case the Russian side continues to prolong the war and disrupt agreements on bilateral and trilateral formats of leaders’ meetings.”
Lavrov said Russia was in favor of “truly reliable” guarantees for Ukraine and suggested these could be modelled on a draft accord that was discussed between the warring parties in Istanbul in 2022, in the early weeks of the war.
Under the draft discussed then, Ukraine would have received security guarantees from a group of countries including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — China, Russia, the United States, Britain, and France.
At the time, Kyiv rejected that proposal on the grounds that Moscow would have held effective veto power over any military response to come to its aid.