By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Across the country, Americans are watching Washington not as the symbolic capital of a democracy but as a stage where power is being rearranged in real time. The resignation of D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith, the deployment of National Guard units and federal troops into the city, and the quiet but relentless expansion of the U.S. Park Police form a single portrait. It is the portrait of a federal government reshaping the meaning of public order by placing its own hand at the center of it.
The Park Police were once a specialized agency assigned to guard monuments and national treasures. The Trump administration has now set them on a different path. Internal records show a push to double the force in Washington, accompanied by a declaration that the agency should become “the premier law enforcement agency in DC, capable of keeping DC safe regardless of inaction by MPD or inaction by the DC City Council.”
“The administration is on a deliberate hiring spree to exploit the U.S. Park Police’s jurisdiction and turn it into a tool of the President for him and his ideological extremists to impose their will on the streets of D.C.,” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, along with Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Dick Durbin, and Ron Wyden, wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
The senators laid out the details that the administration did not volunteer. They noted that the Park Police are being hired through a rushed virtual process with $70,000 bonuses. “There is no psychological testing or physical fitness testing,” the senators wrote. “In fact, applicants are allowed to submit a ‘self-attestation’ in place of an in-person physical fitness test.”
The ACLU, long before the troops reentered the District and before the chief stepped down, warned that a second Trump administration would seek to expand federal policing, encourage aggressive tactics, and roll back oversight. Their analysis described a future in which the federal government would move into cities under the pretense of restoring order while operating from a different motive entirely. It warned of a political project that could deepen racial disparities and use federal law enforcement to exert ideological force.
Interior officials counter the criticism without apology. “It is disgraceful, though not surprising, that the next evolution of the Defund the Police movement is coming from sitting Democrat Senators who are seeking to cut our U.S. Park Police force and risk rising crime in D.C.,” a department spokesperson said.
The senators argue that none of these explanations addresses the core reality. They wrote, “There is no evidence of an uptick in crime on park service land or increased threats to national monuments. This haste in both a hiring spree and waiving of critical testing and standards are clear signs that the administration is hijacking this federal police force for its own authoritarian purposes.”
