Trump's DC Takeover is About White Supremacy, Not Crime – A Rant from DC

Summary

Podcast Summary

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Trump's DC Takeover is About White Supremacy, Not Crime — A Rant from DC

There Are No Girls on the Internet, hosted by Bridget Todd
Release Date: August 15, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this urgent and deeply personal episode, Bridget Todd delves into the Trump administration’s unprecedented federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s police force and deployment of the National Guard. Speaking from direct experience as a local resident, Bridget unpacks what these maneuvers mean for DC’s predominantly Black and Brown communities, critiques misleading narratives about crime, and highlights the broader national implications of these authoritarian moves. The episode is a mix of heartfelt testimony, critical analysis of media narratives, and a call to action for listeners.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why This is Personal, Not Just Political

• Bridget shares her lifelong connection to DC, calling it her true home.
  • Her late mother did residency in DC, she taught at Howard University, and most of her adult life has been rooted in the city.
  • Quote: “D.C. is where I have lived the longest and is where I will always return to because it's my home.” (03:47)
• Emphasizes that DC is more than just the seat of federal power; it’s home to 700,000+ residents with little political autonomy due to DC’s lack of statehood.

2. Explaining Home Rule and DC’s Unique Status

• Since the 1970s, DC has operated under “home rule,” allowing local governance but ultimate authority rests with Congress.
• DC residents lack voting representation despite paying federal taxes—hence, local license plates say “Taxation Without Representation.”
• Quote: “We don't have representatives who can vote in either the House or the Senate, even though we pay taxes just like every other American.” (06:20)

3. What Actually Happened:

• Trump announced a federal takeover of DC’s police (MPD) and mobilized the National Guard, invoking Section 740 of the Home Rule Act.
• Only allowed under rare, emergency circumstances and is limited to 30 days unless Congress extends it.
• Historic and unprecedented: “No president has done this before, ever.” (09:55)

4. Is This Really About Crime?

• Trump claims the takeover is to respond to “out-of-control crime.” Bridget dismantles these claims with local and federal stats:
  • Violent crime is down 35% since 2023; homicide, carjacking, and assault rates are at 30-year lows.
  • Quote: “Almost every stat that Trump threw out about crime in D.C. was a lie, misleading, or extremely cherry picked…” (11:12)
  • Personal reflection: “I go for walks by myself, I go out at night, and I feel safe because this is where I live. It feels safe to me.” (12:06)

5. The Power of Narrative Over Fact

• Discusses how a viral image of a bloodied tech worker ("Big Balls") fueled false perceptions about DC crime, amplified by Elon Musk.
• Points out the emotional weight of viral images compared to actual crime data.
• Quote: “It doesn't really matter if all of the stats, all of the data and all the evidence suggest, oh, crime is going down … whatever reality that piece of media affirms is the only reality that matters.” (15:55)
• Admits to crisis of confidence in facts vs. emotion in public discourse.

6. Why DC Is a Target: Retribution and Racism

• Trump’s actions are framed as punishment for DC’s liberal, diverse, and overwhelmingly anti-Trump voting record.
• The federal takeover is a pilot for similar interventions in other “Democratic, Black and Brown led cities,” like Baltimore and Chicago.
• Quote: “It’s not crime, it’s Black and Brown leadership. Trump hates it and wants to destroy it wherever he can.” (21:10)

7. Failure of Local Leadership & Limits of Appeasement

• Mayor Muriel Bowser’s response has been muted, with early actions to appease Trump (e.g., removing Black Lives Matter Boulevard, clearing out homeless encampments) failing to prevent the takeover.
• Critique that DC residents need vocal leadership, even if symbolic.
  • “It just feels like we don't have a voice championing us. And in a moment of crisis, that's really what you want…” (27:32)

8. On-the-Ground Reality: Policing, Chaos, & Disproportionate Force

• Massive, visible presence of federal law enforcement and the National Guard, sometimes in safe, affluent neighborhoods—seen as more about intimidation than crime prevention.
• Over 100 arrests since the federalization; numbers are in line with typical arrest rates but now involve military and federal agents for petty offenses.
  • Cites arrests for minor infractions: public marijuana use (decriminalized), open containers, bus fare evasion.
• Increased ICE presence and coordination, including raids and new executive orders for police to share info with ICE.

9. Criminalizing Homelessness

• Trump administration’s response includes forcibly removing unhoused people with unclear plans, risking mass incarceration.
• Quote: “Traumatizing people who are already extremely vulnerable and forcing them to move someplace without a clear plan.” (36:00)
• Critiques how funds spent on enforcement could instead easily provide housing.

10. Media Narratives, Conspiracy Theories & the Need for Accurate Info

• Warns against viral but false rumors (e.g., conspiracy of Trump "giving DC to Peter Thiel" to create a libertarian city).
• Urges listeners: “Amplify good information and resources, not rumors.” (41:32)

11. What’s Next? The Real Risks

• Outlines the possibility of a total revocation of “home rule,” where Trump appoints DC’s leadership directly, mirroring DC’s poorest, most neglected periods of governance.
• Refuses to cede debate solely to crime narratives; instead, champions cities as vibrant, vital sites of American life.

12. Love for Cities & Community Solidarity

• An emotional defense of city life—its challenges, culture, resilience, and vibrancy.
• Quote: “Our cities are not crime infested hell holes. Our cities are great. Our cities are awesome… Cities are part of how we understand America and how we have always understood America.” (45:50)
• Observes residents self-organizing to protest the occupation—“lines of DC residents lined up that self-organized to stand around and boo those people and make their displeasure known.” (48:33)
• Final rallying cry: “Times are tough, but cities are forever. Cities forever.” (49:50)

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Action Steps for Listeners

• Advocate for DC Statehood: Use your congressional representation; DC residents can’t.
• Support Local Organizers: Follow and support groups like Free DC (advocates for DC self-determination).
• Spread Accurate Information: Fight misinformation by fact-checking before amplifying viral stories.
  • “Trump has not taken over DC—he has taken over DC’s police. There is certainly a threat, but that has not happened.” (42:51)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “D.C. is where I have lived the longest and is where I will always return to because it's my home.” — Bridget Todd (03:47)
• “We don't have representatives who can vote in either the House or the Senate, even though we pay taxes just like every other American.” (06:20)
• “No president has done this before, ever.” (09:55)
• “Almost every stat that Trump threw out about crime in D.C. was a lie, misleading, or extremely cherry picked…” (11:12)
• “It doesn't really matter if all of the stats, all of the data and all the evidence suggest, oh, crime is going down … whatever reality that piece of media affirms is the only reality that matters.” (15:55)
• “It’s not crime, it’s Black and Brown leadership. Trump hates it and wants to destroy it wherever he can.” (21:10)
• “It just feels like we don't have a voice championing us. And in a moment of crisis, that's really what you want…” (27:32)
• “Traumatizing people who are already extremely vulnerable and forcing them to move someplace without a clear plan.” (36:00)
• “Amplify good information and resources, not rumors.” (41:32)
• “Our cities are not crime infested hell holes. Our cities are great. Our cities are awesome… Cities are part of how we understand America and how we have always understood America.” (45:50)
• “Times are tough, but cities are forever. Cities forever.” (49:50)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:34 – Bridget introduces the reality in DC and frames the episode
• 06:00 – Background: DC’s lack of statehood and power
• 09:30 – Home Rule explained, Trump’s police takeover detailed
• 11:30 – Crime statistics vs. political messaging
• 15:23 – Viral incidents and their emotional impact
• 21:10 – Retribution, racism, and cities as political targets
• 27:00 – Local leadership’s response and its limits
• 32:09 – On-the-ground descriptions of policing and daily life under occupation
• 36:00 – Criminalization of homelessness
• 41:32 – Media rumors, conspiracy theory debunking, and call for truthfulness
• 45:50 – Cities as American ideals, resistance to negative narratives
• 49:50 – Final rallying call for hope and community solidarity

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Tone & Language

Bridget Todd’s tone swings between passionate, personal, sardonic, and resolute. The language is at turns witty, direct, unfiltered (“old racist fuck like Trump”), but always grounded in care for her city and its people. The episode combines local reporting, policy analysis, and memoir, making it urgent, informative, and emotionally resonant.

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Summary Conclusion

This episode is a fiery, firsthand critique of the Trump administration’s actions in DC, contextualizing them within deeper American issues of race, representation, and democracy. Bridget Todd exposes the hollowness of “crime” justifications, lays bare the vulnerabilities of DC’s unique political status, and offers an impassioned defense of cities as the beating heart of progress and justice. The call: Know the facts, support DC statehood, challenge misinformation, and above all—stand together.

Transcript

[Bridget Todd]

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[Bridget Todd]

There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet. As some of you might know, I live in Washington D.C. our nation's capital, and when I'm not making this podcast, I also host a podcast about local DC news called CityCast DC. So this has been a pretty difficult week for the country, but especially a difficult time for my city because Trump announced his administration is taking over DC's police force and deploying the National Guard. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what that means for DC from the perspective of someone who lives here. There are obviously implications for the whole country from something like this. Trump himself has even said that this is just the beginning and he wants to do similar power grabs in cities across the country. But I really want to talk about it from my perspective as somebody who lives in D.C. and is experiencing the impacts of these recent changes. There are definitely some tech and media implications for the kinds of issues that we cover on the show, which I'll definitely get into. But mostly this just feels like an attack on my hometown, so it's pretty personal for me. By the way, if you hear sirens or helicopters while I'm recording, that's just my new reality now. So not much I can do about it, but I'll do my best. So this feels personal because, you know, DC is my home. I've lived in other places. I've lived in San Francisco and Brooklyn and a few other places, but DC is really where I'm from. My late mother, God rest her soul, did her medical residency here at Children's Hospital in dc. I taught English classes to undergraduates at Howard University. I've made lifelong friends here. I've worked a hundred different jobs here. I fell in love here, had my heart broken here. D.C. is where I have lived the longest and is where I will always return to because it's my home. My situation is a little bit unusual because DC has a reputation as a transient city, the kind of place where people move for a few years for a job or an internship or school and then leave. People move to D.C. and might not have a ton of investment in the city long term, or. Or they might move here and have no idea about DC's very complex history, which you really need to understand to truly understand what is happening right now with Trump's threats to dc. One weird quirk about DC is that people who aren't from here or don't live here, tend to really only think about it as a seat of national power. They sometimes forget that there's about 700,000 or so people who live here who endure all of these national political issues really playing out in our backyard, and yet who have less electoral power and less agency because we're not a state. And it's a really big problem. So where you live, if you're listening from the United States, assuming you don't live in D.C. like I do, decisions about how your state is run or how your local tax dollars are spent probably lie with your local and state leaders. But that is not really the case for me and other residents of D.C. we have this weird hybrid situation where there is some local control, but. But ultimately Congress has authority over everything. That same Congress that could not even be bothered to pass the city's budget before going on recess, causing chaos in every agency that has to plan for picking up garbage or fixing potholes or keeping the libraries and swimming pools open. And all of this is made worse by the fact that D.C. residents are essentially disenfranchised. We don't have representatives who can vote in either the House or the Senate, even though we pay taxes, just like every other American. We have less electoral power and less agency because we're not a state. Our license plates here in D.C. say taxation without representation. Kind of a tongue in cheek reference to the Revolutionary War era rallying cry against the British Parliament. A not so fun fact about DC is that DC residents only got the right to vote in presidential elections in 1961. So when people say things like call your representative or call your elected official to oppose xyz, here in DC we have no one to call. Our Congressional representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, cannot vote on bills being considered by the full House. So we don't really have a say or a voice, the same way that folks in other parts of the country do. So all of this background matters for how Trump has been able to threaten D.C. even before this week. He spent a lot of his campaign and first administration really just talking crap about my city. And finally, earlier this week, he announced big plans to take over D.C. he really likes to say that he has taken over D.C. but, you know, he's a serial liar, so no one should be surprised to find out that that isn't actually true. The background of this is a little bit complicated, but the quick and dirty version is that DC has had what's called home rule, or the ability for DC to govern itself since the 1970s, thanks to the Home Rule Act. So even though DC is not a state, our local government and leaders can still make decisions about what happens here in the District. When the Home Rule act passed, it was a win for local control and democracy, but it was also an acknowledgment by Congress that the minutiae of running a city is best left to the folks who live there. So, to be clear, as of today, home rule for D.C. still stands. It's still the law of the land. So if you hear folks saying that Trump has taken over dc, that's not exactly right. And that distinction matters. Trump has taken over DC's police, our local police force, Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD, but not the city itself. But even still, Trump just taking over mpd, our police force, is still very, very bad. So let's talk about exactly what's going on here in dc. So here's the basics of what's going on. On Monday, the Trump administration announced that they were federalizing DC's police force, the Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD. They also announced that the National Guard would be deployed in dc. Now, DC isn't a state, but it does have a National Guard that Trump and only Trump, has authority over. Trump is also sending in National Guard from other states into D.C. to do this, Trump evoked Section 740 of the Home Rule act, which allows for the president to take over MPD for 48 hours, with possible extensions to 30 days during times of emergencies. To do it for any longer than 30 days requires congressional approval, which, let's be real, I honestly don't think would be difficult for Trump to achieve. I cannot overstate how unprecedented this is. No president has done this before, ever. So all of this means that about 850 officers and agents took part in what they called a massive law enforcement surge across DC, with about 100 to 200 soldiers expected to be out on the streets at any given time. Why? Well, if you take Trump at his word, he says this whole thing is about crime. Honestly, I don't even really like to give a lot of credence to the claims about this whole thing being about crime, because anyone paying attention can probably see that that is not what this is about. So it is true that DC did have a spike in crime in 2023, but since then, crime has steadily gone down in DC. But if you watched Trump's rambling, sprawling press conference where he talked about everything from repaving D.C. streets to redoing the ballroom in the White House to trans youth in sports, almost every stat that Trump threw out about crime in D.C. was a lie, misleading, or extremely cherry picked to paint a portrait of crime being out of control in D.C. when it simply isn't. It's almost not even worth calling out all the different instances that he misled people. But here's just a few to give you a sense. So Trump said that crime was getting worse in D.C. that's a lie. A recent Department of Justice report shows that violent Crime is down 35% since 2023, returning to the previous trend of decreasing crime. That puts the District's violent crime rate at its lowest in 30 years. That report shows that when compared to the 2023 numbers, homicides are down 32%, armed carjackings are down 53%, and assaults with a dangerous weapon are down 27%. He also said that the murders in 2023 in D.C. reached the highest rate. This is me quoting him probably ever going back 25 years, but that they didn't know what that means because the data just goes back 25 years. And so when I watched this presser in real time, I was thinking, oh, I guess he's trying to say that, you know, we've only been collecting this data for the last 25 years. Before then we don't really have records. But then when I actually sat down to think about it, 25 years ago was the year 2000. Does Trump think that crime data was not being collected in the year 2000? It absolutely was. So that was just another lie. And if people know One thing about DC is that DC in the 80s and 90s, crime was genuinely quite bad. This was during the crack epidemic that hit D.C. very hard. The city's own crime statistics were, which we have from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, show that back then when the population of D.C. was smaller, there were much higher numbers of homicides. So not only is that all a lie, it's also a weird, obvious lie where when you hear it, you think, okay, sure. But then when you think about it for just a couple of seconds, you realize how strange and obvious and glaring of a lie that is. I almost wonder if Trump really does think that crime statistics were not being collected in the year 2000. And just anecdotally, I've lived here more or less my entire adult life. Crime ebbs and flows. It is part of city life. I understand that. However, crime in D.C. right now is not out of control. It just isn't. I go for walks by myself, I go out at night and I feel safe because this is where I live. It feels safe to me. Let's take a quick break.

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[Bridget Todd]

And we're back foreign. Now. I've heard a lot of people say that this entire thing is a response to the attack on Edward Korestein, also known as the former staffer in Elon Musk's Doge department. Big Balls. Big Balls was allegedly attacked on the street in dc. Thanks to Elon Musk, a one man misinformation super spreader. There has been a lot of inaccurate information about the facts of what exactly happened in that situation. So I'm not going to really get into that. However, this image of Big Balls bloodied on the streets of DC created a very visceral image of crime in dc. And I think this is the thing about crime, which is that it doesn't really matter if all of the stats, all of the data and all the evidence suggest, oh, crime is going down. If you have one visceral image of a bloody 19 year old or one video, one viral video of like a looted out CVS, this has actually caused a bit of a, I don't know, a personal crisis of confidence because as someone who has spent my entire career advocating for the importance of truth and facts and media, the whole thing just makes me wonder if we truly are like beyond facts, if facts simply do not matter anymore. The crime rate can be going down by every measure, but people still have an emotionally charged photo or a video and whatever reality that piece of media affirms is the only reality that matters. And I realized that I've really been trying to combat the truthiness. I know that's not a word, but allow me that of the emotions with actual facts. And it's not working because those facts just don't work anymore. It's been a whole thing I've been wrestling with. So anyway, back to Big Balls. So I totally get why people think that the attack on him is what sparked all of this. I've seen this framing online a lot that Big Balls got beat up by some girls and Elon Musk had to ask Daddy Trump to take over D.C. because of it. But I will say that Trump has been talking about taking over MPD for a very long time before Elon Musk was ever even in the White House. He referenced it some during his first administration, but for the most part back then he more or less ignored DC's local issues and then he really kicked it up a notch during his second campaign. He actually started out his second administration right when he was in office in January when with threatening to take over DC and MPD if our mayor, Muriel Bowser, did not make certain concessions, which I'll get into in a moment. He also threatened to take over D.C. when another former Trump administration staffer, Mike Gill, was shot and killed during a carjacking back in February. Trump made those same threats of taking over mpd. So big balls might have been a convenient timing or a good excuse to actually move forward at a time when Trump was eager to talk about anything other than his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein or. But I guess I would say I would push back a bit on narratives that suggest that big balls got attacked and that's why Trump is taking over mpd, because I don't really think it paints the full story of the fact that this has been a long time coming to anybody paying attention to the conversation that Trump is having about dc. So if it's not really about crime, then what is it really about? Well, these are my opinions. First, I think with Trump, the overarching theme is always punishment. Listen, nobody not votes for Republicans. Like D.C. does not vote for Republicans. Like if you've ever seen that map of who all voted for Ronald Reagan back in 1984, the entire map is just one big blotch of full solid red, which is so unusual. And there's just two splotches of blue where they voted for Mondale and not Reagan, Minnesota and dc. Right. And so rejecting Republicans has always been our thing in dc. And, and especially so for Trump. DC overwhelmingly did not vote for Trump. Trump did not even win DC's Republican primary. Nikki Haley did. We could not be making it any more clear that we do not like him here. And so I think that that's one big reason why you have Trump taking such a hostile stance against this city from day one, because we didn't vote for him, we don't like him. I think that that's also why you saw him start out his administration with these horrible attacks on federal workers. I think a class of people that he senses as being overwhelmingly educated and also overwhelmingly not for him. So I think the first and foremost thing with Trump is always going to be retribution. But I also think it is clearly about mounting federal takeovers, starting with Democrat run cities. And also, let's be real cities with black and brown political leadership and populations. The cities that he called out by name during his rambling press conference on Monday as places that he was looking to take over next were cities like Baltimore, Chicago, you know, cities that have big booming black and brown populations and Black mayors. It's just incredibly clear what is going on here. And it's not crime, it's black and brown leadership. Trump hates it and wants to destroy it wherever he can. And unfortunately, because DC is unlike any other place in the United States, and not being a state, Trump has a lot more authority here in D.C. than he would anywhere else in the country. How else do I know this is not about crime? Well, the Trump administration recently made drastic cuts to DC security funding. FEMA's Urban Security Fund cut funds for DC to 25.2 million from the fiscal year 2025 Homeland Security Grant program, which is only a little more than half of what D.C. received in 2024. Doesn't really seem like the behavior of an administration that is super worried about the crime in the District to almost half the amount of money that you spend on preventing crime in the District. And also, if you were genuinely worried about effectively combating crime in the District and not worried about, say, having big shows of military and police forces and have it be a big flashy thing, if you genuinely were caring about combating crime, you would probably not be using federal agents who are trained to combat things like organized crime and other kinds of federal concerns. Those are not going to be the people who are most useful as officers trying to stop the kind of crime that DC has, like walking the streets as beat cops. One of the points that our Mayor Muriel Bowser has made is that Trump bringing in federal officers and military personnel who don't know D.C. law, because why would they? They don't work here and are not trained in DC's community policing protocols. He is also bringing in military personnel. They are not meant to be dealing with civilians and walking a beat on the streets of dc, but that is exactly what they are doing right outside my apartment right now. I mentioned our Mayor Muriel Bowser. I feel like I should talk a bit about her. If you don't live in dc, you're probably like, who is this person? This is not a name that I recognize. I have been low key, kind of defending the mayor. If you heard me on the Cool Zone podcast, it could happen here. I've actually taken a little bit of heat for some of my defenses of our mayor. Listen, I have a lot of critiques about DC's mayor, just like anybody would of their political leaders. If you want to know my thoughts on Muriel Bowser, I'll be happy to tell you. However, the point that I have been making for the last few months is that Mayor Bowser is in a position that no other elected official in the country is in. She is navigating something that no other elected official in the United States has to navigate because she is mayor of a city that is not a state. She essentially has to navigate this public relationship with an unstable, lying, racist fascist in such a way that it will hopefully end with what is best for our city taking place. Which, in my defenses of her, I guess I basically just feel that we should own that. That is a reality. Right. And that's a complicated thing to have to navigate. During Trump's first administration, Bowser was really taking a defiant stance. She did things like painting Black Lives Matter outside of the White House, for instance. But this time around, we saw a very different public positioning from the mayor. She took this stance of appeasement and contrition with Trump very early, I suspect, in the hopes that they could play nice and Trump would just sort of ignore DC's local issues. When Trump returned to office in January, two of the early things that he demanded our mayor do was tear up Black Lives Matter Plaza Boulevard outside of the White House and remove encampments of unhoused people at Trump's direction, which she did very quickly. But none of that, none of that whole song and dance that she did of appeasing Trump and doing what he wanted her to do, avoided the outcome that we are seeing this week of Trump federalizing the police force. She had this strategy of appeasement and making concessions in an attempt to avoid this outcome. Although, to be clear, D.C. still has home rule for now, so that horrible, horrible outcome has not yet come to fruition. But I think it's a good example of why appeasing a fascist doesn't work. And it's disappointing that we have to keep learning that lesson over and over and over again. And I have to say I've been a little disappointed with the way that the mayor is responding to the takeover of mpd. She basically has been on record as saying this might be a good thing for the city to have more police and have military personnel walking around. This could be a good thing. Something to really note is that the first messages out of our mayor's office when this went down was that they were saying they were not going to be mounting any kind of legal challenge to what the Trump administration is doing in dc, because they did not think they would be able to legally challenge anything, because the Trump administration did everything by the book. That is pretty different from what we saw from Trump's actions earlier in the administration, when it seemed like they were just Throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick and what would be challenged in court. He did this takeover of DC's police force legally, to the letter, to the point where it was not able to be challenged at all legally, which is pretty telling. It wasn't until, I think, yesterday on some kind of a webinar about these changes that the mayor said anything really critical about what was happening. She called it a, quote, authoritarian push, but really barely mentioned Trump by name in any of her public comments. Now, it's possible that she might just be trying to further appease Trump to stave off further threats on DC's home rule, which, I don't know, maybe is a strategy, but in. In my heart, the way that this is coming off, to me, it just feels like we don't have a voice championing us. And in a moment of crisis, that's really what you want, whether that person can actually do anything. You do want someone who seems to be like they're. They have your back and they're advocating for you. And personally, I have not felt like that at all right now. The only thing I feel like we have is ourselves as each other, as organizers. I feel like our elected officials have kind of abandoned us. Both the mayor and the City Council have been pretty quiet on any criticism of this takeover. Our Congressional representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, has also kind of stayed out of it. She has a long history of being a civil rights activist, going back decades, who has really fought hard and championed DC's autonomy. However, she is also the second oldest member of Congress. And so there's lots of questions about whether or not we actually have the leadership that can support DC at a time when we clearly need the support and the backbone. And again, I get that some of this might be good strategy. I'm sure somebody out there listening is like, oh, maybe they're, you know, this is all part of their. Their strategy. But if I'm being honest, it just feels really shitty. Part of this might be my own emotionality, because this week has been a doozy. It is a doozy to walk around your city and see military personnel harassing people. It's a dooz to feel like you don't have a say in what's happening on your own streets, in your own block, in your own city. And so I want to own that. Like, this just could be just my own emotionality of the situation. I do think that even if it's meaningless posturing, I would have liked to have seen elected officials in D.C. who at least made me feel like they were standing up to Trump. And if, even if in reality there wasn't much they could do, if it was just words, it really made me realize even if words are just words, sometimes you want to hear the words. I don't know, maybe it sounds silly, but I was a little bit disappointed. Like you. You are looking for a message of strength and leadership. Like somebody's got this and then just hearing crickets doesn't feel great. And I do also want to own that. Unfortunately, the reality is that the mayor of D.C. has a lot less power and protection than someone like Gavin Newsom, who has two senators behind him when he took a defiant stance against Trump when Trump deployed the National Guard in LA earlier this summer. Even folks like JB Pritzker or Wes Moore, they're all governors of states and that statehood gives them a lot more protection and autonomy. And here in D.C. we simply do not have that. And I think when we talk about the importance of stuff like statehood, it is so easy to just get caught up in talking about it as a civil right rights issue or a racial justice issue or democracy issue, which it absolutely is. But statehood also really matters for how we are able to combat this kind of chaos and hostility. Otherwise, D.C. residents like me end up feeling like we are being held hostage by a madman. More After a quick break.

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[Bridget Todd]

Get right back into it. All of this just goes to show that D.C. needed full statehood yesterday. We needed full statehood before this, ever, before Trump was ever even in the White House. We've needed it since forever, and we don't have that. And until we have that, this kind of chaos that Trump has been able to unleash on our city is not going to end. And I want to talk a bit about what I'm seeing as a DC resident here on the ground, because things in DC are chaotic and grim. We've seen Border Patrol, ice, dea, FBI, and the National Guard walking the streets of dc. Anecdotally, I can say I have seen them in places that to me, really don't make a ton of sense. Like patrolling the super safe Georgetown neighborhood at 10 o' clock at night when it's essentially a ghost town. Or patrolling the National Mall at 2pm on a weekday. There was also an ICE raid at the Home Depot out in Northeast this week, too. The D.C. police put out an executive order saying that the D.C. police were now going to be coordinating with ICE so that even if they stop somebody, and that stop does not end with an arrest or anybody in custody, they would still be allowed to alert ICE about that person and their whereabouts, which I think gives you a sense of the kind of coordination they are building into all of this. Last night there was a huge display of force and arrests right on my block, which is essentially residential. I counted over a dozen police vehicles, including unmarked SUVs and Border Patrol pickup trucks. They arrested people who were just coming out of a grocery store. And a lot of these big shows of force have been around. Arrests for very low level offenses, things like people smoking weed in public, which here in D.C. possession of marijuana is decriminalized, or open containers like drinking in parks or fare evasions on buses. The kinds of offenses that it makes absolutely no sense to have FBI agents arresting people for. It seems like we now have a bit more information about the category of arrests that were made, and they can kind of make sense of some of the facts and figures and stats coming out of the White House about what they've been doing in D.C. this week. You know, they've been putting out these big statistics about all of these arrests that they've come into the city and been able to make this week. So far, according to my sources, in total, since this went down on Monday, they have made about a hundred arrests. However, that is about average for the amount of arrests that D.C. would have made without the Trump administration being in charge. So that means after all of this, they are not even really getting more lawbreakers off the streets. So, again, if this whole thing is meant to be about crime, which Trump says it is, what exactly is the point? As I'm recording this tonight, I've been reading up on updates about a checkpoint they set up on 14th and U Street, which is kind of a busy corridor with lots of bars and restaurants and shops where they've apparently been stopping every car just trying to drive by. I don't know what they're looking for, and honestly, they probably don't even either. I did an interview with a local reporter from the Washington Post who told me that the majority of the stops were for things like folks not wearing seatbelts or broken tail lights or having expired tags. You know, real violent crime. It just feels like a good old fashioned dragnet, which is meant to be illegal. And I think that tonight, Wednesday night, was really the first look into what all of this is actually going to look like in D.C. things like checkpoints, disruption, and a real general fear in citizens. I also saw an image of a block totally blocked off by about six police cars, all trying to make an arrest of one person. And oftentimes you have these intergovernmental federal level military personnel really just standing around. I think they're meant to be, I don't know, intimidating or something. They're just standing there. And I always wonder, like, how much money are we paying to pay these people to stand around in an empty neighborhood at 10 o' clock at night? I think the point of all of this is really to inflame tensions and have there be chaos on the streets. Not for nothing, but we're also in the middle of a pretty bad heat wave here in dc, so tempers are already hot. Now you've got law enforcement, law enforcement that are not necessarily trained on DC's protocols, some of whom are military and thus not even really trained on dealing with civilians. And my biggest worry is that all of this is going to result in somebody doing something stupid and the whole thing will turn into a powder keg. And I have to imagine that that is the outcome that Trump wants as well. I think that is the point of all of this. This is also a direct attack on the unhoused community here in dc. We have already seen horrible footage of unhoused people being taken away by police. I'm not even sure to where. Yesterday the White House said that they were going to start forcibly removing unhoused people and forcing them to go to either shelters, hospitals, or jail or face fines, which I don't know how fining somebody who is living on the streets works, but okay. The issue is DC does not have a ton of shelter beds, and not every unhoused person is going to want to go to a shelter. It doesn't make sense for every unhoused person to go to a shelter. I get that this has been an issue long before Trump ever got involved, but his solution is just a brute force removal of people. He doesn't really have a clear plan for where these people will go. My guess is that quite a few will end up in jail. A strategy that is not only incredibly expensive, but it's a strategy that has been proven over and over again to also be ineffective. And I think that is a big part of the issue here. D.C. is a city, and in any city, you're going to have issues like homelessness and crime. And it's just the reality of life in the city. Getting people housed takes time. It is a process. Just wanting to quickly move people who might not have anywhere else to go because they look unseemly, as Trump said, is not solving the problem. All you are doing is traumatizing people who are already extremely vulnerable and forcing them to Move someplace without a clear plan. And the sad thing is, with the money that we're paying to have federal agents take away unhoused people, we could probably house every unhoused person in dc. But again, it is not really about any of that. It is not about actually solving problems. It's about the show, the posturing. Okay, so that is my rant. If you're listening and you're not in dc, you might be thinking, what can people do? What can I do? You're thinking that because you're a good person, you're listening to this podcast. I appreciate it. So, as I have made clear, we do not have meaningful congressional representation in dc. So we need people who don't live in DC to be our voice to advocate on our behalf. So contact your representatives and advocate for full statehood for dc. Republicans like Mike Lee from Utah have introduced the Bowser Act. Yep. An act disparagingly named after DC's mayor that would strip DC of home rule. I don't have anyone that I can call to make my opinions known about how bad that is. So if you are listening, call your representative and advocate for the self determination of folks in dc. Also follow local organizations like Free dc. Free DC is an advocacy organization that is advocating for self determination for folks in DC. They've been around since the 60s, so very long history of doing good work in DC. I did an interview for CityCast DC with an organizer from Free DC and they told me they were very prepared for this outcome. They had a census was coming and they've been preparing for it for a while. And what they're focused on right now is really making sure that D.C. residents know their rights, know that they do not have to consent to certain interactions with police and running trainings on things like cop watching, you know, how to film and how to watch police out in the streets. Also, please make sure that you're sharing good, accurate information. This is a little bit tricky because I get the impetus for wanting to share things when you see them, if they, if they scratch a part of your brain, whether they're true or not, I totally get it. However, I think in times of crisis, what people need is facts. What people need is confirmation. And I've just seen a lot of people, people that I trust, people that I respect, playing a little fast and playing a little loose with the kind of information that they are amplifying right now. So I think it is incredibly important to be precise right now in this time of chaos and confusion and change. I have seen so much misinformation floating around about what is actually happening in D.C. right now. And I guess I would say that what is happening in D.C. right now is very bad. It is bad enough on its own, but Trump has not taken over DC. Trump has specifically taken over DC's police. There is certainly a threat of Trump taking over D.C. because we are not a state, but that has not happened. I think it is important, especially during times of confusion and crisis, to amplify good information and resources, not rumors. Trump and his fascist enablers, they want us scared, they want us confused, they want us to not know what the truth is and we don't have to help add to that kind of a climate for them. One of the narratives I've seen floated a lot is that Trump is going to essentially give D.C. to billionaire Peter Thiel. So the idea here is that Trump would sell or give DC to Peter Thiel to create a deregulated, so called Freedom City, which is a very constant talking point of people like Curtis Yarvin, who is this far right, pro authoritarian voice, who is very cozy with the Trump administration. I have seen this claim all over the Internet. I will just say this telling people that you believe this is going to happen is not a resource. What people need right now is facts and verified, substantiated information. And I just don't think it helps people to get on the Internet and potentially spread panic about something that just is not happening today when we are in a time of change and confusion and chaos already. I don't think that there's never any value in speculating about what's next. I think we should be keeping an eye on the future. But I have seen this thing where I think people are really keen to be the first to amplify a narrative or a, a claim that they think is going to get lots of engagement. That feels sexy and flashy, and I completely get that. However, people also need facts and resources, and I understand that that's a lot less sexy and a lot less flashy, but that's what actually was going to help people right now, and that's what people should be amplifying. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about what could be next, what could be coming down the line. So first, can Trump take over dc? Trump has said time and time again that he wants to revoke DC's home rule and have the federal government dictate how DC is run as a city. This would mean that DC would have no mayor, no city council, and the only people who would decide How DC Is run are Trump and a small handful of commissioners that Trump personally appoints. I think the last time that D.C. did not have home rule, it was three people. None of those people lived in D.C. in fact, the only person who lived in D.C. who could even potentially see the impact of their, of their leadership was the President who lived in the White House. So this would mean that all of D.C. services, public schools, social services, trash pickup, road services, D.C. public health, all of it would be run by Trump personally. To even get a road repaved in D.C. would require congressional oversight. And we have been through this once before. The last time that D.C. did not have home rule and it was run by the President and Congress, it turned out that nobody actually wanted to be in control of the minutiae and everyday issues of running a city. So guess what? They basically didn't. And D.C. was deeply neglected. It was not a good time for the city. And that is what Trump has been saying he wants to do. And the thing is, Trump hates cities, yet here he is clamoring to run one. And I think that is my big issue with all of this. I hate how people on the left, myself very much included, are kind of playing into Trump's narratives about cities and crime. I find myself being so reactive combating all of the different lies that Trump tells about our city being this bombed out, crime infested hellhole. That Trump, I think it's like he pulls me into playing his game where the only thing I can do is combat all of these lies and I'm not actually telling the truth of the reality that I know to be true about my own city. Our cities are not crime infested hell holes. Our cities are great. Our cities are awesome. Washington D.C. is a great place to live. People want to live in cities. If D.C. was not a good place to live, my rent would not be so expensive. People obviously want to be here. New York City is a great place to live. People want to live there. That's why the rent is expensive. Public transport, subways, buses, the metro are safe and good and people use them and rely on them because they make our lives better. Chicago is a great place to live. People go to these cities. People who don't live in these cities get on planes and get in cars and get on buses to visit these cities because they want to see them, because those cities are good. Millions of people choose to live in these cities every single day and keep moving there despite sky high rent, despite things like crime being a reality of living in a city because they want to live there. If you are an old racist fuck like Trump or a scared little boy like these pundits on Fox News who make a living talking about how terrified they are when they step onto the asphalt in a city, I can understand why being in a city might be unfamiliar and scary. But those of us who live in cities and those of us who like cities and those of us who respect cities see and understand how silly that is. Right wing lawmakers and right wing influencers from red states get on TV or get on the Internet and talk about how terrified they are to walk down the streets of D.C. a city where me and the kinds of people that they would probably denigrate as my blue haired, queer soy boy art school friends navigate every single day. Like, I thought y' all were supposed to be tough guys. So tough that you completely fall apart with fear when you step outside in the city that I navigate every single day of my life, we live in cities because we love culture, we love the strangeness of strangers, we love walking, we love the rush of trying to make it in a place that is hard. Yes, crime happens in cities, but crime happens everywhere. And I refuse to be drawn into a debate that begins and ends about arguing crime statistics, because this whole thing has never been about crime. It is and always has been about Trump denigrating cities as somehow un American. But our country was founded in cities. Cities like Philadelphia, New York and Boston by people who loved cities. Cities are good. Cities are part of how we understand America and how we have always understood America. How many movies, books and songs are about people heading out to the city in search of something good and something better. In that Velvet Underground song, Rock and Roll, it is a New York station that saves Jenny's life with the power of rock and roll from her town where nothing is happening at all. Like, I'm not going to sit here and let Trump rewrite the narrative that cities are bad when we know that cities are good and have always been good. No matter how many times Republicans want to howl that they don't. If you need any evidence of that, just look at real estate prices. So that is my rant about this whole thing. Honestly, it has been a fucking week here in D.C. i have barely slept. Things are not great here. But I love my city. Even in a time where I feel like it is tough. I don't know what's next for D.C. but this is still always going to be my home. And I know that I will outlast Trump here. You know, I know that. And I just think that even at a time where it feels like our political leaders and elected officials maybe don't have our backs in the way that we would like them to have, the one thing I do know is that I believe in us. I believe in the power of people. You know, I was telling you about how on 14th street they were had a checkpoint set up of military personnel taking people out of cars. They also had lines of D.C. residents lined up that self organized to stand around and boo those people and make their displeasure known. I believe in the power of people like that. And you know, I know that things are weird and tough right now, but sometimes that's really all you have. All we have is each other. And so yeah, times are tough, but cities are forever. Cities forever. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. You can reach [e-mail] you can also find transcripts for today Today's [e-mail] There are no Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer. Edited by Joey Pat I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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