For conservatives, certain American cities are also epithets. Those upset about changes in culture attack New York City. Those worried about the excesses of liberal policy blame San Francisco. Those angry about crime bring up Chicago. And everyone hates on Washington.
Those other cities are fortunate that they have a reputation outside of those attacks. Even if you agree with the criticism, you might also have warm feelings about bodegas or the Golden Gate Bridge or John Hughes movies.
But for most of America, Washington, D.C., where my family and I have lived for the last 16 years, is not a real place; it’s just a shorthand for the federal government — less a city than a synecdoche. And for too long, even those of us who like to see the government solve Americans’ problems and appreciate the work that gets done here have played along with it.
We’ve waved it off at family gatherings when someone went on a tear about the evils of Washington. We’ve overexplained: Sure, I live in D.C., but my heart is really back in Kansas or Oregon or wherever. And we’ve ignored it when President Donald Trump has called the city a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap” and a “nightmare of murder and crime” that is “disgusting” and full of “filth.”
Even if you agree with Trump's vision of government, you need to acknowledge it is hurting real people who live here.
Now, Washington — the real Washington — is paying the price. As Trump has begun firing thousands of federal workers and ending programs that supported thousands more in the nonprofit sector, the nation’s capital is being hit hard. Even if you agree with Trump’s vision of government, you need to acknowledge it is hurting real people who live here.
On my street alone, three different households have been affected by the cuts. These are hardworking Americans who could have been making a lot more money in the private sector but chose to take these jobs and make a life here because they saw it as a higher calling. For ideological reasons, you may think that the government shouldn’t be spending money on their particular jobs. That’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion.
But if these kinds of cuts were happening in any other industry in any other city, you would be more likely to spare a thought for the workers.
Imagine that a new CEO took over Walmart, the largest private employer in the U.S., with about 1.6 million workers, or about half the size of the federal workforce. Imagine that the CEO immediately began indiscriminately cutting tens of thousands of workers, including truck drivers, sales clerks and janitors, as well as people who handle logistics and accounting and partnerships, with no warning. Stores shuttered overnight; emails turned off without notice; greeters turned away at the door. Not only that, but this CEO’s new right-hand man had previously said that he wanted Walmart employees to be “traumatically affected” and have the public view them as “villains,” while his chief operating officer took to social media to crow about “deleting” their jobs.
You wouldn’t have to shop at Walmart, or even like the store much, to be appalled at the callousness.
This moment has been coming for a long time. It started when Ronald Reagan joked that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” It grew when future Speaker Newt Gingrich trained House candidates in the early 1990s to attack incumbents as creatures of Washington at every opportunity. By 2015, even the milquetoast Republican Gov. Scott Walker was vowing to “wreak havoc on Washington” as though it were the capital of a foreign enemy. By the time Trump was regularly calling federal workers just doing their jobs “the deep state,” it was already too late.
Democrats aren’t blameless, either. In a defensive crouch, they failed to defend civil servants when they were regularly tarred as “bureaucrats.” Sure, Barack Obama had some nice words for federal workers, but he also froze their pay to make a negligible dent in the deficit. Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s first attempt to gain control of federal workers and added new protections, but it’s now clear that he didn’t do nearly enough to shore them up from the threat they now face.
And it’s not just Washington. More than 80% of federal workers work outside D.C. and are also being fired or having their jobs threatened. They include park rangers, cancer researchers, food safety inspectors, air traffic controllers, veterans' nurses, bird flu experts and nuclear weapons safety specialists. Americans may not like government workers in the abstract, but we are going to notice when these jobs don’t get done.
Trump has said he wants to “take over” the district.
The Trump administration may not be done with Washington, either. Republicans in Congress have put together a proposal that would deny D.C. the ability to govern itself, while Trump has said he wants to “take over” the district. Congress already has the power to review legislation passed by the city council and control over the city budget, and the district already lacks voting representation in Congress. There’s literally zero need for this kind of heavy-handed federal control in a city already under lawmakers’ thumbs.
During the Biden administration, Congress debated the perennial question of whether to grant D.C. statehood. The measure passed the House for the first time in history, but died in the Senate. During debate, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas attacked D.C. as nothing but lobbyists and bureaucrats, offering up Wyoming as an example of a “well-rounded working-class state” because of its jobs in mining, logging and construction. Rep. Jody Hice argued, inaccurately, that it doesn’t have a car dealership.
But Washington is so much more than the capital. It’s the city that created the half-smoke, Mumbo sauce, the gin rickey and the jumbo slice. Its contributions to music range from Duke Ellington to Marvin Gaye and go-go music to the punk scene that produced Bad Brains and Fugazi. It has amazing Ethiopian restaurants, winding bike paths through Rock Creek Park and great bookstores. To Trump it may be the swamp, but to residents it’s the DMV, the District and Chocolate City.
As Trump declares war on Washington, it’s worth remembering that it’s a real place filled with real people, and these attacks are doing real damage to it.
