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The heart of Washington, D.C., pulsed with defiance on Saturday as tens of thousands of demonstrators surged down 16th Street toward the White House. It was the city’s first major organized protest since President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency and unleashed federal troops onto its streets. Banners waved and voices rose in unison at the “We Are All D.C.” march, a massive show of resistance led by a coalition that included Free DC, defenders of local self-rule, Democracy Forward, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Their message was clear: the federal occupation of the capital must end.
“Today, in defense of the people and communities living under a military takeover of DC, we join in sending a clear and peaceful message: the American people will not bow to dictators. We are in solidarity with our neighbors and Black, Brown, immigrant, and other communities targeted. We will march, we will resist, and we will peacefully protest,” Democracy Forward wrote in a statement on X.
With Trump vowing crackdowns in other Democratic-led cities as well, he appeared to threaten Chicago with migrant deportations in a social media post with an image that parodied the 1979 Vietnam war movie “Apocalypse Now.”
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” Trump said, converting a line about napalm in the Vietnam War to refer to deportations. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
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