Sixteen Days Into Trump’s Occupation of D.C.
When neighbors vanish, soldiers patrol grocery stores, and veterans burn flags in protest.
It has been sixteen days since Donald Trump, the sitting president of the so-called “land of the free,” seized Washington invoking a never-used clause of the Home Rule Act, deployed federal agents, and set the National Guard and ICE loose in our streets.
But I want you to remember something: The line doesn’t end with “land of the free” but with “home of the brave.”
So, now I must ask you — are you brave?
Are we brave enough to resist the slow normalization of authoritarianism? Brave enough to tell our stories out loud, before they are written for us? Brave enough to hear the truth beyond the ‘official’ narrative?
Typically, I would have some historical example for you, but frankly, I don’t have a historical precedent to compare for you right now. Because the history is now — unfolding in the streets of D.C., in the eyes of people walking past National Guard checkpoints to buy groceries, in the conversations whispered on the streets under the watch of federal police, and in the daily lives of parents explaining to their children returning to school from summer break as to why American soldiers with guns — M17 pistols — stand in front of their schools.
I am here to tell you not only what has happened in these days but some of their stories. In reading these, it’s important that you understand these are not headlines, but instead lived realities of others. And in this article what I can offer you is only a fraction of what has happened. It’s only a fragment of the truth, but a shard of something much larger.
“My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different. that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been.
The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.
And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
— Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
Military Boots Hit D.C. Streets:
On August 11, Trump didn’t just seize Washington’s police. He called in the soldiers. What began as 800 D.C. National Guard troops has now become an occupying force of more than 2,200 National Guard troops from states like Ohio, Mississippi, and Louisiana are pacing the streets of the capital.
The Guard’s orders are packaged as, “keeping D.C. safe and beautiful.”
That’s the line soldiers give when asked what their mission is. But in reality, it’s code for clearing out the visible poor and homeless — the very people abandoned by the system that created their suffering with many being veterans and former foster children — to satisfy Trump’s recent executive order branding them as a threat.
In a separate clip, the soldier gives the following number for the D.C. National Guard Public Affairs Office: 202-880-4267. I’d like to urge you to call and ask: What is the Guard’s mission in Washington, D.C.? Who authorized it? Under what legal authority are they patrolling alongside ICE? Put them on record. Make them answer.
You can also email the Joint Information Center at jtf-dcmediadesk@army.mil
For many of the armed soldiers there, their occupation is not because of ideological loyalty but simply boils down to, ‘I’m just following orders’ as justification. Yet history already settled that defense. The Nuremberg trials established that blind obedience is not enough. Soldiers have both the right, and the duty to refuse unlawful orders.
Service members (or families/friends) can call the GI Rights Hotline at 877-447-4487 if they believe they’ve been given unlawful orders. And if you are military or military adjacent you need to do this.
But as always, there is nuance. It’s not always as simple as refusal.
See, the military breeds secrecy and obedience. A Marine vet told me you can refuse only once before risking dishonorable discharge and possible even jail time.
But at the same time he assured me that the Posse Comitatus Act — which forbids federal military from performing domestic policing — is the cardinal rule of service members. He truly felt that if it really came down to it, a majority of the military would be on the side of the people.
In D.C. the tragedy is that Trump’s loopholes force them into a gray zone where principle collides with obedience. The guard is there under Title 32 Guard troops are federally funded but stay under state control, which means they’re not bound by the Posse Comitatus Act. That loophole also gives legal cover for law enforcement support such as detaining people until the police show up.
In other words, the Trump administration is skirting the very laws meant to protect civilians. That’s what they love to do — skirt the edge of legality — that makes their actions just ambiguous enough that Americans allow them.
The National Guards Collusion With ICE:
Sadly, at the same time as the soldiers came marching in, federal agents from DHS had moved in alongside them, shoulder to shoulder. Each had their assignment. ICE was there to sweep the streets, targeting anyone brown, anyone foreign-looking, anyone vulnerable. As of now, the exact number of ICE agents on the ground hasn’t been disclosed but it’s estimated to be hundreds.
There are many stories, but I want to share one with you that you need to know about. Talk about. Tell people about it. Do not let this be swept under the rug.
This is the (ongoing) Tragedy of Eric Montes.
On August 22, 2025, ICE agents arrested him in Columbia Heights, D.C. His wife had just given birth. She was so sick she couldn’t even stand, and Eric was out in desperation, trying to get the medicine that might keep her alive. Tears in his eyes, phone in his hand, trying to show agents proof of what he was saying. Proof that his wife had just given birth and he needed to get her help.
Content Warning: This video is incredibly hard to watch, but I implore you to do so, because we cannot lose our humanity, and pretend this is not happening.
In this video of his arrest, you can hear him pleading in broken English, “My wife can die, help me please.”
At the end of the video, one ICE agent says it all, laying bare the total lack of humanity: ‘If he is legal, we will bring him back. We just try to get ’em off the street.’
Read that again.
We’re talking about a woman and her babies life being on the line, but that’s fine, apparently, as long as the street looks clean for the cameras. Optics over lives. That’s the policy. Yet, the Trump administration advertises themselves as, “pro-life” right? Pro-life-my-ass.
These kidnappings by ICE — they all break my heart — but this particular one shatters me. Because I can’t tell you what happened to him after that video. I can’t tell you if his wife ever got the help she needed.
What I can tell you is that I spent hours scrambling, chasing every lead, trying to make sure someone reached her — her, and that newborn baby — before it was too late for either of them. I am writing this section with tears in my eyes.
So, where is Eric now? I don’t know.
He’s disappeared into the labyrinth. D.C. ICE field office first. Then maybe Maryland’s Howard County Detention Center. Maybe Farmville, Virginia. Maybe further like Aurora, Colorado, where human beings are stashed like shipping containers.
ICE keeps people off the books on purpose — stalling the paper trail so families and lawyers can’t find them. Just like the Nazis did during their “deportations,” moving human beings like cargo to obscure their trail before murdering them. And tell me how this is any different if Eric’s dying wife never got the help she needed?
God help us all.
I am begging you all — if anyone has an update on what happened to Eric, his wife, or his newborn child — please, please let me know. My heart hurts.
“D.C. is a War Zone.”
Open TikTok right now and try to search for D.C. protests. Or any protest really. You won’t find much. Videos are buried, taken down, or shadow-banned. People have resorted to calling them “music festivals” to trick the algorithm.
It feels familiar. When Trump first took office, the only way to organize online was to talk about “cute winter boots.” That phrase became a secret signal for resistance until the censors caught up.
And on the streets, the atmosphere is surreal. A man described opening his hotel door for the pizza guy only to find the National Guard waiting. He compared the city to Gotham, full of soldiers and shadows.
Others have been stopped, their bags searched with no explanation.
And somewhere in the chaos, a military vehicle — a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle — crushed a man in his car. Fourteen tons of steel meant for war, now rolling through neighborhoods. I cannot find confirmation of his current status, or if he even lived.
Still, people are fighting back. Veterans are leading sit-ins at Union Hall. Jay Carey, a decorated 22-year Army combat veteran, stood outside the White House and burned a flag in defiance of Trump’s new executive order criminalizing it.
He was right to call it unconstitutional. The Supreme Court said in 1989 that flag-burning is free speech. Yet for that act of protest, he was arrested.
The overall message is chilling. It does not matter how many years you wore the uniform, how many medals you earned, or how many wars you fought. This government will discard you the second you step out of line. Veterans are not honored; they are used.
And to the Guard now patrolling D.C.: remember your oath. It was to the Constitution, not to a man. Your duty is to protect America from domestic enemies like the orange one in D.C. and his cronies.
Now, as an update to this: Just yesterday, a judge ruled the order unlawful. But like everything else in this system, it now has to crawl through layers of appeals — courts stacked with Trump’s loyalists, many of them his former personal attorneys or close friends now wearing judges’ robes. And for the judges that do not comply? They get bomb threats, and their families doxed and harassed.
This is how it works. They commit illegal acts, double down on them, and then hide behind the courts — courts tilted in their favor, with a Supreme Court built by Trump and the Federalist Society to bless the crime as law in his favor.
Final Thoughts
And so here we are… sixteen days into occupation, sixteen days into the slow normalization of tanks on our streets and ICE vans outside our homes. A judge can call it unlawful, but the ruling will be dragged through courts already bent in Trump’s favor. This is the cycle: commit the crime, repeat the crime, then wait for the stacked judiciary to rubber-stamp it into permanence.
The lesson is not subtle. They want you to believe resistance is futile. They want you to forget the oath was ever to the Constitution. They want you to look away while neighbors vanish, while veterans are caged, while families are broken, until silence becomes complicity.
But history is not just written by conquerors. It is also written by those who refused. Those who chose to be brave when the streets themselves whispered fear. Washington, D.C. is a war zone but it is also a warning.
What happens here will not stay here. Will we let this be the blueprint for America?
So I ask you again: are we brave enough? Brave enough to speak, to act, to refuse? Because the future is not waiting to be written. It is being carved into the pavement of D.C. right now, under the boots of soldiers, in the cries of children, and in the silence of those who stand by. And the haunting question history will demand of us is simple: when they came, did we look away, or did we resist? If you’ve ever asked yourself what you’d have done in Germany during WW2 — this is it.
Brief Note From The Author:
Thanks for reading. I need you to know.. I’m not a think tank. I’m not a billionaire media empire with polished anchors and corporate sponsors. I’m a mom, a nurse and an investigative journalist piecing this together while my kids are at school, connecting and chasing the stories they would rather bury.
I’ll follow the paper trails of power and the human trails of suffering because they count on you being too tired, too scared, or too overwhelmed to notice. That is their strategy. But if you’re still here, you’re already part of the resistance. This work takes hours, it takes obsession, and it’s fueled by nothing more than ordinary people refusing to be quiet.
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But no matter what, thank you for being here. Because knowledge is power and that’s exactly what they’re trying to take from us. I won’t let them. Share. Talk about it. Educate others. I’ll be here doing the same.
Don’t be mistaken. These aren’t police. These are gestapo.
BREVITY IS ON THE RISE‼️🤘🏽 PROTEST‼️ MAKE IT CLEAR TO THE DOGSHIT ADMINISTRATION THAT AMERICA IS NOT OKAY‼️TAKE BACK YOUR POWER‼️