Trump's Troops Are Still Here. So Is Washington's Resistance.

You can learn a lot about a city by its street posters.

They appear between polished campaign signs and government notices, like an unofficial bulletin board where people say what they think when they don’t have much interest in saying it politely.

And right now, Washington D.C. appears to be talking.

On street lamps across U Street, not far from my apartment, there are images of Donald Trump emblazoned with the words: “Kiss My Ballroom.”

A few blocks away, in Dupont Circle, giant posters of Attorney General Todd Blanche have been plastered on a vacant building offering advice to passers by: “Ask Him About the Epstein Files.”

And on Capitol Hill, pranksters have put up “Missing Person” flyers targeting Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senator who hasn’t been seen since he disappeared from public view following a health emergency in June.

But the biggest message plastered across the city is one that perhaps resonates most with residents who are now living under the authority of Donald Trump and the camouflaged uniforms he has forced on the landscape.

“National Guard: I WANT YOU TO GO HOME,” it says, alongside Uncle Sam’s famous conscription image.

This week marked one year since Trump sent federal troops into Washington under the guise of a crime “crisis”. But what started as a deployment of 800 National Guards has since increased to 4,300 – nearly six times the original deployment.

The guards are now scheduled to remain in D.C. until January 20, 2029 — the end of Trump’s term — in an extended mission expected to cost taxpayers about $1.4 billion.

For some in the nation’s capital, this is the new normal. For others, it’s the normalization that worries them the most.

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I first came to Washington from Australia on a brief election secondment in 2020 — the year of COVID, the George Floyd riots, and the end of Trump’s first presidency. But somewhere along the way I fell in love with this wild, complicated place.

America gave me a new beginning after a heartbreaking divorce, and its capital gave me a front-row seat to history, a dream job as a correspondent, and a thriving community that became my home. So I stayed.

Which is why it feels surreal to now look out at my own neighborhood and see armed soldiers patrolling the streets.

They roam around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool thanks to the president’s botched renovation of the iconic landmark.

They stand on street corners in upscale Georgetown, looking bored out of their minds. A few weeks ago, they were hamming it up with dance-exercise participants at my local Malcolm X Park, bopping away to the sounds of 80s disco.

But while I oppose the deployment politically and philosophically, the troops themselves are another matter. Many are young. Many are friendly. Many would probably rather be deployed somewhere else, or at home with their families, instead of extended periods patrolling sleepy streets, raking up leaves, or, in some cases, picking up trash.

The politics of their presence has also pulled them into something more volatile. In the early parts of Trump’s takeover, National Guards were part of a broader show of force, walking alongside ICE agents as they terrified neighborhoods.

In one of many jarring incidents, federal agents tackled a Venezuelan food-delivery driver in northwest DC and took him away in an unmarked vehicle. As fear gripped the city, some migrant workers stopped taking public transport, closed down their local street stalls, or even avoided going to work altogether.

The deportation crackdown is not as prevalent now, but for many locals, the anger remains palpable. So too does the resistance, with protests taking place almost weekly, fueled by a coalition of grassroots groups.

Last month, for instance, hundreds of National Guards filled Malcolm X Park as Trump officials Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and Todd Blanche talked up the president’s “Make DC Safe and Beautiful” initiative.

As residents drowned out their speeches with blaring horns, sirens and whistles, one woman stood on the street corner where a group of guardsmen blocked the public from entering the park.

“How does it feel working for a pedophile?” she raged into her megaphone, over and over. “Does it make you feel good being where you’re not wanted?”

For some Washingtonians and activists, the troops have become a symbol of federal overreach in a city fighting for its own statehood.

D.C’s citizens, after all, are denied full representation in Congress. Its residents can elect a mayor and council, but Congress retains the authority to overturn their laws and meddle in their affairs.

It’s the perfect stomping ground for a president testing the limits of his own federal power.

One year on, the danger isn’t just a more militarized Washington. It’s a capital increasingly treated as Trump’s personal fiefdom, whose citizens are expected to accept whatever the White House decides next.

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