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TRUMP’S RHETORIC ABOUT DC ECHOES A HISTORY OF RACIST NARRATIVES
ABOUT URBAN CRIME  
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Matt Brown
August 12, 2025
AP
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_ “The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics
take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and
Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the
country.” _

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press
Briefing Room at the White House, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington, as
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, left, and Attorney General Pam
Bondi look on., (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has taken control
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D.C.'s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops
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deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the
extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety
crisis.

Even as district officials questioned the claims
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his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a
“historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime,
bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” His rhetoric echoed that
used by conservatives going back decades who have denounced cities,
especially those with majority non-white populations or led by
progressives, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside
intervention.

“This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our
capital back,” Trump promised Monday.

Trump’s action echoes uncomfortable historical chapters

As D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters
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for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into
neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To
some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians
used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and
neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and
justify aggressive police action.

April Goggans, a longtime D.C. resident and grassroots organizer, said
she was not surprised by Trump’s actions. Communities had been
preparing for a potential federal crackdown in D.C. since the summer
of 2020, when Trump deployed troops during racial justice protests
after the murder of George Floyd
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“We have to be vigilant,” said Goggans, who has coordinated local
protests for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law
enforcement could mean for residents’ freedoms.

“Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand
that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your
co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,” she
said.

Other residents reacted with mixed feelings to Trump’s executive
order. Crime and homelessness has been a top concern for residents in
recent years, but opinions on how to solve the issue vary. And very
few residents take Trump’s catastrophic view of life in D.C.

“I think Trump’s trying to help people, some people,” said
Melvin Brown, a D.C. resident. “But as far as (him) trying to get
(the) homeless out of this city, that ain’t going to work.”

“It’s like a band-aid to a gunshot wound,” said Melissa
Velasquez, a commuter into D.C. “I feel like there’s been an
increase of racial profiling and stuff, and so it’s concerning for
individuals who are worried about how they might be perceived as they
go about their day-to-day lives.”

[Mayor Brandon Johnson responds to an overnight shooting during a news
conference at City Hall in the Loop, July 3, 2025. (Ashlee
Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)]

Mayor Brandon Johnson responds to an overnight shooting during a news
conference at City Hall in the Loop, July 3, 2025. (Ashlee
Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)

[Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks during a news conference on
President Donald Trump's plan to place Washington police under federal
control and deploy National guard troops to Washington, Monday, Aug.
11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)]

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks during a news conference on
President Donald Trump's plan to place Washington police under federal
control and deploy National guard troops to Washington, Monday, Aug.
11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Uncertainty raises alarms

According to White House officials, troops will be deployed to protect
federal assets and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement
to make arrests. The Trump administration believes the highly visible
presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear
how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law
enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some
advocates.

“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take
root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown
cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,”
said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard
and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations
— from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice
protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who
remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.

A history of denigrating language

Conservatives have for generations used denigrating language to
describe the condition of major cities and called for greater law
enforcement, often in response to changing demographics in those
cities driven by nonwhite populations relocating in search of work or
safety from racial discrimination and state violence. Republicans have
called for greater police crackdowns in cities since at least
the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles
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President Richard Nixon
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the White House in 1968 after campaigning on a “law and order”
agenda to appeal to white voters in northern cities alongside
overtures to white Southerners as part of his “Southern Strategy.”
Ronald Reagan similarly won both his presidential elections after
campaigning heavily on law and order politics. Politicians, including
former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
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former President Bill Clinton
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cited the need to tamp down crime as a reason to seize power from
liberal cities for decades.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser
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local police “unsettling” but not without precedent. Bowser kept a
mostly measured tone during a Monday news conference but decried
Trump’s reasoning
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a “so-called emergency,” saying residents “know that access to
our democracy is tenuous.”

Trump threatened to “take over” and “beautify” D.C. on the
campaign trail and claimed it was “a nightmare of murder and
crime.” He also argued the city was “horribly run” and said his
team intended “to take it away from the mayor.” Trump on Monday
repeated old comments about some of the nation’s largest cities,
including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and his hometown of
New York City. All are currently run by Black mayors.

“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how
bad it is. We have other cities in a very bad, New York is a problem.
And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even
mention that anymore. They’re so far gone. We’re not going to let
it happen,” he said.

Civil rights advocates see the rhetoric as part of a broader political
strategy.

“It’s a playbook he’s used in the past,” said Maya Wiley
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CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

[Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee speaks to the crowd at Wilma Chan Park
before they march through downtown during a "No Kings" protest, June
14, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco
Chronicle via AP, File)]

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee speaks to the crowd at Wilma Chan Park
before they march through downtown during a “No Kings” protest,
June 14, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco
Chronicle via AP, File)

Trump’s rhetoric “paints a picture that crime is out of control,
even when it is not true, then blames the policies of Democratic
lawmakers that are reform- and public safety-minded, and then claims
that you have to step in and violate people’s rights or demand that
reforms be reversed,” Wiley said.

She added that the playbook has special potency in D.C. because local
law enforcement can be directly placed under federal control, a power
Trump invoked in his announcement.

Leaders call the order an unjustified distraction

Trump’s actions in Washington and comments about other major cities
sent shock waves across the country, as other leaders prepare to
respond to potential federal action.

Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement that Trump’s
plan “lacks seriousness and is deeply dangerous” and pointed to a
30-year-low crime rate in Baltimore as a reason the administration
should consult local leaders rather than antagonize them. In Oakland,
Mayor Barbara Lee called Trump’s characterization of the city
“fearmongering.”

The administration already faced a major flashpoint between local
control and federal power earlier in the summer, when Trump deployed
National Guard troops
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quell protests and support immigration enforcement operations in LA
despite opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom
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LA Mayor Karen Bass
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Civil rights leaders have denounced Trump’s action in D.C. as an
unjustified distraction.

“This president campaigned on ‘law and order,’ but he is the
president of chaos and corruption,” said NAACP President Derrick
Johnson. “There’s no emergency in D.C., so why would he deploy the
National Guard? To distract us from his alleged inclusion in the
Epstein files? To rid the city of unhoused people? D.C. has the right
to govern itself. It doesn’t need this federal coup.”

_Brown covers national politics, federal policy and democracy issues
for The Associated Press._

_Associated Press writer River Zhang contributed reporting._

* Washington DC
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* National Guard
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* Racism
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* Trump
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