This week, Donald Trump took over D.C.’s police force and deployed 800 National Guard troops to the streets of the U.S. capital. 

In addition to being yet another attempt to distract the media from his controversies and failures, the move is right out of the wannabe-authoritarian playbook and perpetuates one of his favorite longstanding lies. It can be difficult to know how to respond to yet another move like this: we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted by Trump’s latest circus, but his actions are set to curry support with his base, cause real damage to people on the street, and won’t actually fix any of the overstated problems. 

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Trump claims he will make D.C.’s streets safer, but there’s an important question to be asked: “Who will they be safer for?” It likely isn’t queer people and other marginalized people. 

Trump has decried the state of D.C. since retaking office, suggesting that there is a huge crime wave and an out-of-control homeless population. He has used these ideas to declare an emergency in the capital, which (through the never-used Home Rule Act) allows him to use the capital’s police for “federal purposes.” The police, along with the National Guard, will supposedly be used to “maintain law and order, protect Federal buildings, national monuments, and other Federal property.” While the machinations are different, the effect is notably similar to his efforts to deploy the National Guard to LA, where he claimed the mayor and governor were failing to protect the city.

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Tackling homelessness in the United States and reducing crime rates could be seen as laudable goals. However, Trump’s plans won’t help homeless people, and the crime statistics he is touting are either wildly misleading or entirely false.

As it happens, I was actually in Washington, D.C., for a weekend at the start of August (to see the fantastic queer musician Mal Blum). While Trump has been quick to claim that people don’t feel safe on the streets of the nation’s capital, what I experienced was very much the opposite. 

As anti-trans hate has spread through politicians and media outlets, I’ve felt less safe to be myself in public. Even at the grocery store, I’m thinking about how I dress and keeping an eye over my shoulder. And a large part of that is that I’ve been living in areas where I feel alone in my identity.

Walking on the streets of Washington, D.C., placed me in the middle of a vibrant group of different kinds of people. I felt comfortable dressing how I wanted and going where I wanted, doing it all at 1 a.m. if I wanted. A lot of that comes down to the people on the street: a diversity of people going about their lives and simply being who they are. I didn’t feel alone. But that was compounded by regular Pride flags on city light poles and from people’s balconies, supportive signs in shop windows, and even the rainbow decorations in Celebration Alley.

What Trump and his crew might really be afraid of is that very diversity that made me feel so safe in the capital. As we know from the “no cops at Pride” debate, queer people and police often don’t mesh well together, and it’s not unreasonable to suspect that with heightened police and military forces on the street, more queer people and other marginalized groups are likely to stay off the streets for their own sense of safety. The Congressional Black Caucus and other Black leaders have already spoken about their fears that the increased policing will affect Black people and other marginalized groups in urban areas.

Of course, all of my experiences in D.C. this month are purely anecdotal and won’t represent everybody’s experience of the city. However, my feelings are supported by the crime statistics and reports that Trump is ignoring and misrepresenting.

Trump claims that D.C. “has become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World. It will soon be one of the safest!!!” and that his actions will “essentially, stop violent crime in Washington, D.C.” But crime in D.C. is down from last year, with a 26% reduction in violent crime in particular. In fact, at the start of the year, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia reported that violent crime in D.C. had hit a 30-year low.

Did I feel safe in D.C.? Yes. Did I see homeless people? Also yes. But that is sadly common in any major city in the United States, and it had no impact on how safe I felt. It did make me angry, and it made me depressed about the state of this nation and the way that we ignore homeless people and fail to help them. But militarized police and National Guard members in the streets are not in any way going to help address this country’s homelessness problem.

Trump wants the National Guard to move encampments, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that they will be “taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services, and, if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.” Those shelters and the services they supply might do a lot of good, but those are not enough, and there are good reasons that people are choosing a tent under an overpass rather than the shelters. They know the shelters are there, and their reasons for not going have to be addressed. Putting people in jail because they don’t have a house is cruel.

The idea of moving homeless encampments is a common suggestion. But that doesn’t help people to get off the streets; it merely removes them from sight so that tourists and wealthy politicians don’t have to think about them. There are things that can be done to help the homeless population in a country: studies and programs have been set up to show that. But Trump doesn’t want to hear about that. He wants to play at being a dictator, and fearmongering about homeless people is just another way to achieve that goal.

That’s perhaps best exemplified by the fact that one of the tasks given to the National Guard is to protect D.C.’s monuments. There’s no sign of a threat to the current monuments, but that reasoning for the deployment will get the attention of his base, especially those who are still mad at statues of Confederate slave owners being taken down half a decade ago.

Trump’s actions in D.C., as well as the threats he is making to other progressive cities, are all built on one of the right’s favorite lies that he has been touting for over a decade: the idea that these cities have “no-go zones.” The idea simply being that cities across the globe, including London and Paris, have areas that people avoid and police are fearful to go to, either because of the high crime rate, or because of a supposed Muslim takeover with Sharia law. Rightwing pundits continue to push the myth despite there being no evidence to support their claims.

But that’s what all of this is really about. People like Trump thrive off of fear, and they’ll invent problems to promote that fear: we need a border wall to stop the Mexicans, immigrants are raping and murdering scores of people every day, the queers are going to trans your children and attack people in restrooms, and Haitians are going to eat your pets. 

For those who swallow those bigoted lies, it is very easy to feel unsafe walking down the street, and it can be hard for them to even exit their front doors. But those lies don’t represent any real danger: they create it in people’s minds and let their underlying prejudices do the rest. And that is exactly what is happening here, too. None of this is about solving any real problems or doing anything to help the people of the United States.

Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police and deployment of the National Guard is a horrifying abuse of power and a move that signals he’s pushing ever more to see how close to full authoritarian rule he can get. We need to push back against this, hard, especially as he seeks to maintain his control long-term. 

But we also need to remember the underlying issues he wants us to forget. His scaremongering is about activating his base and distracting from his tariff failures, his tax bill that strips down Medicaid and Social Security after he promised he wouldn’t, and, of course, his many connections to known child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his refusal to release documents in that case.

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