Local and national Democratic politicians have condemned President Donald Trump’s move to deploy National Guardsmen to patrol Washington, D.C., and his attempted takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, which is all in the name of fighting a supposed out-of-control crime wave. But some of the loudest opposition is coming from D.C. residents themselves.
On Tuesday, Vice-President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller headed to Washington’s Union Station to meet with National Guard members (and buy them lunch at the station’s Shake Shack). But the group was greeted by an assembled group of protesters who heckled them throughout their visit.
Video from HuffPost’s Igor Bobic shows Vance, Hegseth, and Miller being heavily jeered as they left Union Station after the event:
Vance and Hegseth leaving Union Station, lots of boos pic.twitter.com/oRT9wOca8c
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) August 20, 2025
Inside, Vance claimed to reporters that the city has seen a significant cut in crime following Trump’s orders, alleging a 35 percent reduction in violent crime and a 50 percent drop in robberies in the past nine days, but the origin of his purported stats is unclear. “We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to allow our cities to be taken over by violence and by disorder and by chaos. You can actually do stuff. You can actually bring law and order to communities. You just gotta have the political willpower to do so,” he said.
Miller suggested Tuesday that the people protesting the Trump administration’s takeover are outsiders whose response doesn’t represent the true local reaction.
“All these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies? They’re not part of this city and never have been,” Miller said. “And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are Black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens for generations, and President Trump is the one who is fixing that, with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department, the support of the National Guard, and our federal law-enforcement officers.”
But members of the D.C. National Guard have been spotted in traditionally low-crime areas of the city like the National Mall and monuments. Troops are now expected to patrol several major Metro stations.
The boos were not the only moment of pushback in Washington this week. In a video shared by the Washington Post, a crowd of bystanders in Columbia Heights follow a group of law-enforcement officers, some of them masked. The people can be heard shouting, “ICE, go home!” According to the news outlet, some of the officers wore uniforms for Homeland Security Investigations and the Metropolitan Transit Police Department. As part of the federal takeover, the Justice Department has directed local police to support immigration-enforcement actions in the city, in conflict with D.C. laws that limit the department’s ability to cooperate with immigration agencies.
And last week, protesters appeared at a vehicle checkpoint HSI agents and D.C. police officers set up in a neighborhood, chanting, “Go home, fascists!” according to news reports.
Such scenes in D.C. reflect the findings of a recent poll. From Washington Post and Schar School, the poll found that 79 percent of city residents oppose Trump’s federal takeover, with 69 percent indicating they do so “strongly.” When asked if they thought the federalization of the local police and deployment of the National Guard would help decrease violent crime, 65 percent of residents said no, while 20 percent answered in the affirmative. Sixty-one percent of respondents said the appearance of more federal law enforcement in the city made them feel “less safe,” with 18 percent saying it made them feel “more safe.” The poll surveyed 604 adult Washington, D.C., residents from August 14 to August 17 and has a 4.1 percent margin of error.
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