When Trump Took Over DC, NYT First Ignored, Then Belittled Protests

Pete Tucker

Thousands of people marching against the military occupation of our nation's capital (Washington Post, 9/6/25) was not a news story to the New York Times.

Despite the late-summer sun bearing down, thousands of protesters marched towards the White House last Saturday carrying anti-Trump and Free DC signs. Many hailed from unions, activist organizations and religious groups. Two friends drove all the way from Illinois; “absolutely” it was worth it, they told the Washington Post (9/6/25).

Also at the protest was John Hanrahan, a longtime editor and journalist, and a former Post reporter who worked alongside Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Metro section—where he was a "third-string Watergate reporter"—until he refused to cross the Post pressmen’s picket line in 1975 (Esquire, 3/1/78).

Sunday morning, when Hanrahan picked the New York Times off his doorstep—yeah, he’s old school and still gets the paper edition—he didn’t see a single word or picture about the march. So late Sunday night, he wrote a letter to the editor lamenting the Times’ lack of coverage, even as other major outlets found the protest newsworthy.

“Not worth even a few column inches when thousands upon thousands of residents of a nation’s capital city stand up to protest against the ruling regime’s unwanted and unjustified takeover?” Hanrahan asked:

Would such an anti-authoritarian protest have gone unnoticed by “The Newspaper of Record” had it happened in Caracas, or Havana, or Moscow, or Beijing, or Tehran? The question answers itself.

'Only a few scattered protests'

A valuable New York Times story (9/6/25) about grand jury resistance to the military occupation dismissed widespread street activism as "only a few scattered protests." 

Less than eight hours after firing off his letter, Hanrahan scooped the Monday Times off his doorstep. Once again, there was nothing on the march. There was, however, a story (9/6/25) on how DC grand juries are rejecting charges brought amid Trump’s crackdown.

“In what could be read as a citizens’ revolt,” the Times reported,

ordinary people serving on grand juries have repeatedly refused in recent days to indict their fellow residents who became entangled in either the president’s immigration crackdown or his more recent show of force.

The Times story was good—as has been much of the paper’s coverage (8/12/25, 8/16/25, 8/20/25, 9/10/25) of Trump’s DC takeover—but its opening line didn’t sit well with Hanrahan:

In the three weeks since President Trump flooded the streets of Washington with hundreds of troops and federal agents, there have been only a few scattered protests.

DC has had more than a few protests against Trump's military occupation, and Hanrahan is in a position to know. Despite clocking in at 87 years of age, he’s been a regular presence at protests over the past month, including numerous ones “ranging from 500 to 10,000 participants,” he wrote in an email to FAIR.

Explosion of smaller-scale actions

The Nation (8/29/25) described how DC's night patrols "document the constitutional violations or brutality...so people can see the truths about the occupation that a compliant, largely incurious media are not showing."

“If a single massive protest could get rid of this man, it would have happened already, right? And so we have to think of different things,” Alex Dodds, co-founder of Free DC, told the Washington Post (9/6/25). “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.”

And DC has seen an explosion of smaller-scale actions in response to Trump’s takeover. Parents have organized “walking school buses” to ensure kids make it safely to and from school. Others have mobilized to protect the homeless. More impromptu gatherings have formed to thwart ICE agents from snatching people off the streets. And each night at 8pm, neighbors bang pots and pans in protest, while deeper into the night, teams of volunteers go on night patrols.

This multifaceted, coordinated response has been taking place, even as thousands of DC residents have taken part in more traditional protest marches--like the September 6 march that the Times ignored. To dismiss the vibrant grassroots resistance to Trump's occupation of DC as “only a few scattered protests" is a distortion that only serves to normalize authoritarianism.

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