Visiting DC during a National Guard deployment
If President Trump was to be believed, Washington is a city under siege. The reality was a lot more underwhelming.
One of the most notable shows of force in the second Trump administration has been the National Guard being deployed in major American cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Washington DC.
While some of the images of late night raids and people being detained have been terrifying, I want to take a moment to disseminate what daily life has been like in DC. For full context, I visited in early September and this doesn't account for any increased security in the wake of two National Guard soldiers being killed in a shooting in late November.
From conversations I had with locals and observations, there was definitely an air of anxiety as I'm sure those visuals lingered in the minds of many. I stayed in the NoMa neighborhood east of the central parts of the capital and visited between Union Market, closer to downtown near Mount Vernon Square, on the Mall (more on that in a future entry), and in Georgetown to the west. Soldiers were armed in and around Metro stations with long guns (and in one instance a long camera lens) but at least from what I saw they were largely just standing around. It was all optics and no bite.
I will add as an aside that it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime moment to photograph uniformed National Guard troops on the National Mall and to chronicle this historic moment with such stark visuals of soldiers interacting with tourists trying to take in the sights of the capital city.
Despite President Trump's claims to the contrary, it's hard to say that the soldiers' presence are making the city significantly safer. As of Dec. 5, there have been 22,734 instances of crime in the city according to DC's Metropolitan Police Department. That is down 16 percent year-to-date from last year which is pretty much flat with the 15 percent drop in overall crime between 2023 and 2024. Trump also falsely claimed during the late November White House Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony that DC "hadn't had a murder in six months." (At the time he made the statement, there were 62 according to the DC Police Department, now up to 117 as of this writing.)
I hope that this account can dissuade concerns that DC isn't safe to visit because of this crackdown, because for all intents and purposes it's still the same DC I've come to know and love.