D.C. in the Bullseye
An addendum to the Blue City Warrior Visits Red America series
This is part of my series of essays on visiting American cities through a lens of current politics and history. Please subscribe to follow my work!
Last October, when my husband first invited me to join him on a trip to Washington, D.C. in late January, a wave of anxiety brushed over me. With the election looming, my eyes were on Wednesday, November 6, and imaging the sense of relief we were all going to feel when the Age of Trumpism was actually going to be over. But when he proposed visiting the Capitol City after the inauguration, I had to wake up to the fact that we might actually be facing Trump 2.0: The Sequel.
Indeed. That fear was now reality.
With each change in administrations and party control of Congress, Washington D.C. transforms too. Political appointees and lobbyists from one administration move out, and new ones move in. Restaurants come in and out of favor. With the backdrop of the historical architecture, federal buildings, museums and monuments that reflect almost 250 years of the American Experiment, the vibe of the city makes way for the new majority. Visiting D.C. right after the inauguration would provide a great chance to see the city at this pivot point.
Trump 2.0 arrives on the scene
We headed out east just over a week into Trump’s second term, which he started by rapidly putting his campaign rhetoric into action by issuing dozens of memoranda, proclamations, and of course, executive orders. While IMHO, most of them were all SMH-worthy, the most headline grabbing ones included: calling for an end to constitutionally protected birthright citizenship; terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government and private industry; establishing the Department of Government Efficiency and appointing his main campaign donor and the world’s richest person Elon Musk as its head; upending U.S. foreign aid programs; and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. (While many of Trump’s messaging documents are against laws passed by Congress, it will take lawsuits and court actions to work through the justice system before we know what will actually stick.) Concurrently, headlines were also tracking Trump’s efforts to fill out his cabinet with Senate hearings being held on a number of his most noteworthy nominees.
Outside of the District of Columbia, communities across the country were already showing stress from the administration’s early actions. In our northern and blue-ish state of Minnesota, members of the LGBTQ community were bracing themselves for how the campaign rhetoric against them was going to play out. And immigrant-run businesses immediately saw a decrease in traffic as members of their community were staying low, also bracing themselves. On Day 8, organizations across the country were put into a tailspin from the Trump Administration’s call for the freezing of legally executed contracts.
I had a front seat to the tailspin created when funding gets shut off when my husband’s organization’s funding was frozen. He runs a federally-supported program to help kids be successful in school. When the judge put the action on hold for just a few days, the reimbursement needed to cover staff salaries came through, and the crisis was averted. But only through the weekend. This whiplash against people who are doing work to improve lives for Americans with funding authorized by Congress secured through signed contracts was happening in communities across the country. Was this going to be the new normal?
So arriving in D.C. felt like arriving in a city that was about to be in the bullseye of a massive political and cultural shift.
History of D.C.: Taxation without Representation
Washington, D.C. is unique among American cities. It was established at the mouth of the Potomac River where Virginia (a Southern state) and Maryland (a Northern state) came together as a way to reflect national unity of the brand new federal government. But it is not of those states, instead it is a “federal district” governed by Congress. For years, Congress has delegated many of the day-to-day work of running the city to other entities, and at different times, it has established or allowed a modicum of democracy to various local governmental arrangements.
Currently, under the 1973 Home Rule Act, residents of the District of Columbia elect a mayor and a 13-member council. Yet, in the end, Congress retains ultimate authority on local legislative and public policy matters, including the right to review and disapprove most laws adopted by the directly elected mayor and city council. Additionally, because D.C. is not inside any state, its residents do not have directly elected representation within Congress. (They have been able to vote for President since 1964.) This does not sit well with many residents, who have long called for D.C. statehood. Thus, the “Taxation Without Representation” slogan on their license plates and city properties.
Another long standing moniker for D.C is “Chocolate City,” after the funk band Parliament’s 1975 song and album of the same name and in honor of D.C. becoming the first majority black city in the country in 1957. While the city lost that title with the 2020 Census, D.C.’s historical role as a center of Black culture and identity remains strong. It has also been home to a strong Black middle class, made possible in part by the federal jobs that fueled opportunity and economic stability for many Black families over the decades.
Visiting Capitol Hill
Today, like most urban cities in America, instead of being a majority of anything, D.C. is home to a widely and wildly diverse population. Outside, on the streets, there were people of all kinds coming and going – to museums, restaurants, work, bars, and places of worship. Subways were full of people peacefully sharing a common public space, even as they were strangers to each other. Churches were festooned with gender-inclusive flags, and posted handbills promoted upcoming events, from concerts to community meetings. It was a blue city paradise. But now with menacing clouds on the horizon.
Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, May 2025
Inside, the work of the new administration and Congress was underway. We attended coffee hours put on by each of our U.S. Senators from Minnesota - Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, both Democrats. At each of their events, they spoke about the funding freeze and its impact on the work of Minnesotans to help Minnesotans. They both encouraged the constituents in the room to be in touch with their offices so they could help, especially since they were not getting any information directly from the administration. Since the air crash between a passenger jet and U.S. Army helicopter had just happened the day before, both senators were concerned about that, too.
They also both spoke about their approach to the cabinet nominee hearings for the committees that they sat on. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Klobuchar was preparing for the hearing with Kash Patel, Trump’s controversial nominee to head the FBI. (“Controversial” for many reasons, in part because he once said that he wanted to shut down the FBI headquarters and turn it into a "museum of the deep state."). Senator Smith had Robert F Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s controversial pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services in her Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in a few hours. (“Controversial” for many reasons, including his childhood vaccine skepticism.)
As members of the minority party, both senators know that they are outnumbered on the committees. Yet, they were still going into the hearings with a sense of purpose. Their line of questioning was going to focus on bringing out as much truth as possible that may appeal to their Republican counterparts, particularly the chairs of their respective committees. The chairs are the Republicans most likely to want a qualified person in those positions, not just someone whose main prerequisite is loyalty to Trump. By now we know how it worked out, but at that moment, they still had hope that clear minds would prevail. (Within weeks, Smith announced that she was not going to run for another term in 2026, in part so she could focus on standing up for Minnesotans at this time, and not have to focus on raising money for a campaign.)
My ears perked up when both senators mentioned they had cabinet nominee hearings later that morning. What the heck, I thought. As long as I was already at the Senate Office Building, why not dip my toe into the scrum? So I joined the public line for a turn to sit in the audience for Kash Patel’s hearing in the Judiciary Committee. I got to witness Senator Klobuchar grill him. She was definitely representing me and my community as she asked him to go on record for saying some unsavory statements over the years.
On the way out of the building, I passed a couple of other committee rooms where hearings on Trump’s nominees were taking place. Lines of people were waiting for their turn to get a seat inside to watch history. In the hallway, a reporter was live on camera reporting on the hearings, telling the world that a couple of the candidates – Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence – had walked back some of their previous, more problematic statements.
In the world outside of the senate office building, attention was on the deadly crash between a domestic American Airlines flight to Wichita, Kansas and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River. At a news conference, Trump read a statement about how tragic it was to lose the 64 passengers and all members of the Army crew and that their families were in everyone’s prayers. Wow, he’s really reading the script right, I thought. And then in Trump fashion, he went off that script, and began to blame the crash on the supposed woke DEI policies of the Obama and Biden administrations.
And that was just the next volley in his white supremacist war against DEI and our diverse country, which had started the week earlier with his three executive actions against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
“You’re fired, no wait, you’re hired” hits the family
Come Saturday of our visit, we gathered with family who live in surrounding Virginia and Maryland. In addition to meeting one niece’s new baby, another niece reported on the goings on at USAID, where she has worked for the past 17 years. The destruction of the agency hadn’t reached the headlines yet, but her reports matched what was soon to be reported around the world.
She told us about a colleague who worked as a Gender Advisor who brought a duffle bag to work on that Friday, expecting that she would get the email notifying her that her job had been eliminated and that she should pack up her desk. Indeed, it came by the end of the day. (While I’m not exactly sure what a “Gender Advisor” does, we did talk about how useful it was to include pronouns in international work, since the names are often unfamiliar to American eyes and ears.) She also reported on how the many mixed and changing messages about which form, which process, and which deadline to use kept them scrambling.
Over the course of the weekend, she told us later, her office had been cleaned out and her position eliminated (“RIFed” in terminology that has now become mainstream). But wait! Soon after, she was deemed essential and ordered to come back to work (happy face), only to receive her official RIF notice a few weeks later (sad face).
A worker removes the U.S. Agency for International Development sign on their headquarters on Feb. 07, 2025 in Washington, D.C. as posted on yahoo.com news
The Storm Arrives
Even on the campaign trail, Trump talked of his desire to have the federal government take over D.C., which he has called “a filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation.” And now, weeks after our visit in the first two weeks of T 2.0, the storm has arrived in D.C. with even more ferociousness than T 1.0.
The first proverbial shoe to drop was Trump’s orders related to the federal workforce, and the impacts that will have on D.C.’s economy. Early headlines suggested there would be pressure on the area’s housing market because the new return to work orders would force people that had moved away from the city during the pandemic because they could work remotely now had to move back into commuting distance. Along with the influx of the new administration’s wealthier cabinet members, political appointees, and industry lobbyists moving to town, housing would be at a premium. Then the mass departures of thousands of federal employees, whether by resignation or termination, were announced, and the calculation changed. “For the District of Columbia[‘s economy], the federal government has always been a reliable pillar of stability,” Yesim Sayin of the DC Policy Center said to the New York Times. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”
Indeed, the economic threat to the city coffers is already being felt. The city’s Chief Financial Officer issued a report that forecasted a drop in revenue for 2025 based on the changing economic outlook due to the drop in the federal workforce and the reduction in income, sales, and real estate valuation that stems from that. Of course the courts are still weighing many lawsuits challenging many of the firings, but even so, the uncertainty impacts spending by individuals and businesses alike.
D.C. is especially vulnerable to the decrease in the federal workforce, because they have fewer tools to respond to their residents’ needs. Nearby Virginia and Maryland, whose residents and communities will also feel the fall out of staff cuts on their economies, have full powers given to states in our federal system of government. But in D.C., Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress now hold ultimate oversight of D.C.. And they are starting to use that power to impose their conservative desires on the progressive, diverse city.
Trump and Republicans in Congress also began to exert pressure on the city to comply with their vision of how the Capital City should be run. Trump’s rhetoric is often focused on how the city looks aesthetically, while Republicans in Congress are actually threatening a complete takeover. They’ve introduced a bill to revoke the 1973 Home Rule Act that allows D.C. residents some semblance of democracy on the municipal level. One pressure point that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser already acquiesced to was to remove the Black Lives Matter mural and rename the plaza at 16th and H. As Bowser explained it: “The mural [which was installed in June 2020 in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd] inspired millions of people and helped our city through a painful period, but now we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference.”
Black Lives Matter Plaza and street mural in Washington, D.C. Carlos Barria/Reuters
In addition to the Republican proposal to take away D.C.’s even limited democracy is the hit that Congress made to the city’s budget. In mid-March, Congress was furiously working to pass a continuing resolution budget bill that would fund the government (that is actively being demolished by Trump) for a few more months (to give them more time to prepare and pass the “big, beautiful bill” full of Trump’s budget and policy priorities). Deep in the depths of the continuing resolution language was a provision that would cut over $1B from the city’s 2025 budget. While the Senate immediately passed a bill to fix it, it has not yet of this writing been voted on by the House of Representatives. This leaves the city facing dramatic cuts in services like teachers and police officers.
Then, on March 27th, Trump issued the “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” Executive Order that even further exerted his will on the city. The EO creates a task force to increase the federal government’s role in deporting migrants living in D.C., levels of policing, and cleaning up the streets by, among other things, removing graffiti and homeless people from public places. Additionally, the EO addresses monitoring D.C.’s sanctuary city status and making it easier to get and carry firearms. As one former aide put it, the president has wanted D.C. to reflect “national pride, not local progressive policies.”
Disproportionate impacts
Even when the administration’s target isn’t D.C. and its residents specifically, many of its actions are going to negatively impact them disproportionately anyway. This is especially so with how the dramatic cuts in the number of government jobs, ongoing hiring freezes, and the attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs will shrink what has long been a path into the middle class for many Black workers.
It harkens me back to Woodrow Wilson, when in 1913 he, as the first Southern Democrat elected President since the Civil War, segregated the federal workforce. Prior to Wilson’s policy ordering workplace segregation, Black and white federal employees had worked alongside each other in integrated spaces for decades. At that time, Black men and women made up at least 10 percent of the federal workforce. As a result of Wilson’s order, “some departments adopted the policy with a vengeance.”
A group of federal employees wait for treatment at the Public Health Service Dispensary #32, which was opened in 1909 for the exclusive benefit of government workers in D.C. The federal workforce was integrated, though city facilities remained segregated. (Library of Congress and Public Health Service)
The result was not just about creating separate bathrooms and lunchrooms. Many department heads used the segregation order to exert economic and emotional harm on their Black employees through reassigning them to lower status jobs, and even into positions that were about to be phased out. Actions meant to humiliate them increased, including an order in the treasury secretary’s office requiring them to use only first names in correspondence with Black employees. Another shocking situation happened in the postal service, in which the sole remaining Black employee in one division was surrounded by screens – essentially a cage – so he was blocked from his white counterparts’ sight.
These policies and practices did not just impact the individual Black employees in 1913. They also had negative impacts on the economic well-being of their descendants and other Black families in the D.C. area. In addition to the order to segregate work places, the Wilson administration made it more difficult for Blacks to obtain a civil service job, including requiring all candidates to attach a photograph to their application to allow them to ascertain the applicant's race. A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “the Black-white earnings gap in the civil service increased by about 7 percentage points between 1913 and 1921–a big effect that increased the existing earnings gap by almost 20%.” “We were struck by how damaging the policy was on the careers of Black civil servants, even after Wilson left office,” Guo Xu, Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business that led the study, said.
Blacks didn’t regain their role in the federal workforce lost due to Wilson’s actions until World War II and afterwards, when the high demand for workers opened the doors back up for them. Since then, employment with the federal government once again had became a path to the middle class for D.C.-area Black workers.
Until Trump’s re-arrival to the White House that is. With Black people making up a larger percentage of the federal workforce than their share of the U.S. population (18.5 percent versus 14.8 percent), the cuts to the federal workforce will hit them at a higher level. Not to mention the hit the economic health of the region will feel with the decrease in federal employees regardless of race. Additionally, the anti-DEI rhetoric from the administration paints any Black employee as a “diversity hire”, putting them all at risk of firing, as was done with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown in February.
The full impacts of the Trump era on D.C. are yet to be seen. Our hearts are with you, D.C., and I hope to see you enter the pantheon of U.S. states very soon.
Selected Resources:
NPR, “All the executive orders Trump has signed after 1 week in office,” by NPR Staff
January 28, 2025.
The New York Times, “Trump’s Attempt to Freeze Grant Funding Leaves Nonprofits Reeling,” by David A. Fahrenthold, Nicholas Nehamas, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Apoorva Mandavilli, Feb. 4, 2025, updated Feb. 6, 2025.
Congress.gov, Governing the District of Columbia: Overview and Timeline, retrieved 4/24/2025.
Associated Press, “What we know about the deadly air crash between a passenger jet and a US Army helicopter,” by Josh Funk, March 27, 2025.
The New York Times, “Under Trump, D.C. Faces More Federal Control, Fewer Federal Workers,” by Campbell Robertson, February 20, 2025.
Washington Post, “Trump isn’t the first to upend the federal workforce because of race,” by Petula Dvorak, January 23, 2025.
Berkely Hass, “How Woodrow Wilson’s racist policies eroded the Black civil service,” by Morgan Foy, October 27, 2020.