Terms of Engagement – From Cherry Blossoms to Checkpoints

Archon Fung: You are listening to Terms of Engagement. I’m Archon Fung, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Stephen Richer: I’m Stephen Richer, former Maricopa County Recorder and now Senior Practice Fellow in Democracy Great. So we are back for our weekly series and we’re live. So don’t forget to put the comments in the chat.

Archon Fung: So today we’re going to talk about what’s unfolding in the District of Columbia. Last week, to address crime in the nation’s capital, the Trump administration declared a crime emergency and either deployed forces to help DC’s district police force or to take it over, depending on how you look at it. Additionally, the administration deployed National Guard troops and federal agents to patrol the city. And in the latest news, four states so far, West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, and Mississippi have pledged to send hundreds more of their respective National Guard troops to DC. Interestingly, the Republican governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, has said that he will not send Vermont National Guard to the city of DC. He thinks it’s inappropriate.

Stephen Richer: I’m back. Apparently, you can’t have your own YouTube live stream up while you’re also talking about it because then you hear a feedback. Who would have thought?

Archon Fung: Well, now you know. Now we know. All right.

Stephen Richer: Well, fantastic. I actually had the privilege of being in D.C. this past week, and I was there for Liberalism in the New Century Conference, and it was a talk about small-L liberalism, about democratic norms, and about governance and democracy. And while there, I was visiting for the first time the African American Museum, which was created American History Museum, right? African American History Museum, which I think was only created about like eight or so years ago. It’s new. And it was disgustingly humid. But while I was walking around in shorts and a T shirt, I noticed some people who had a lot more clothing on and that of course, was our uniformed men and women of the National Guard, who are there on the National Mall. And so we are, of course, going to talk about today whether that’s a good thing, whether that’s a bad thing, whether that’s a thing of significant importance or whether that’s a thing of less importance.

And to join us in this conversation, we have Juliette Kayyem. And Juliet is the Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security here at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. You might see her on CNN, where she is a national security analyst. she is also a regular contributor to the atlantic and she has held various positions in both private sector and in the public sector including at the department of homeland security last but not least she has published a number of books some of which have some interesting titles such as security mom an unclassified guide to protecting your home and our homeland And the devil never sleeps learning to live in an age of disasters. So, Juliet, thank you for your patience with my technical difficulties. But come on in. So great to see you.

Juliette Kayyem: I was doing the same thing. So I had to turn off YouTube. So I was I was I was going to watch it live. But so so hopefully you hear me. OK, great to be here. Thank you. Great.

Archon Fung: And just before we get started, I should note that all of us, all three of us, are speaking as individuals and not on behalf of Harvard, the Harvard Kennedy School, or any part thereof, as our institutional neutrality policy requires.

So I thought I would start things off by asking each of you why you think the National Guard and other federal troop deployment is happening. There’s the stated reason to control crime. There’s the precipitating event, which is evidently the assault of Edward Coristine, also known as Big Boys, by two fifteen-year-old assailants.

Juliette Kayyem: It’s actually Big Balls, but nice try. Big Balls, yeah, Big Balls. I think you meant to say that, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t say it.

Stephen Richer: Archon has such a pure brain and it just replaced it. Well, we can’t miss this opportunity to say it.

Archon Fung: Right. It could be that with LA, the DC deployment is meant to prepare for other cities. We’ll talk about that later in the show. It could be elevating law and order as a political issue, which may be good for Republicans, but bad for Democrats. Maybe to distract from the demands for Epstein records disclosure. I kind of think an element of it is just military cosplay. The base likes MMA, the base also likes guys walking around with body armor and ceramic plates. What do you guys think?

Juliette Kayyem: Well, I don’t think there’s any operational or policy reason for this. And remember, D.C., there’s two different things going on that distinguish it. Oh, look at my balloon. Sorry about that. That distinguishes it from L.A. You have a National Guard deployment in D.C., and because of the contours of D.C. ‘s status, it’s essentially just the deployment of of National Guard, you’re not really talking about the federalization process that we had in L.A., where essentially Trump took the National Guard away from Newsom and then federalized them. But you have a sense.

So that’s one distinction. The other is the federal law enforcement deployment, which we really, which was essentially at one stage trying to take over the DC police is now some weird hybrid They’re going to work together. And that’s FBI, ICE, this thing called HSI, Homeland Security Investigators. So you have this just like sort of onslaught of federal apparatus in D.C. It’s a little bit easier to do so in D.C. because of its status. So there’s nothing… I mean, just two quick things. There was no reason for it. If you just look at the data in terms of where D.C. was, there was nothing about… It was going down and there was nothing about a crime spree that would have justified thinking of this as a kind of emergency or exception to home rule that that D.C. generally enjoys.

The second is piece of it is. That there’s no end game. And so you wouldn’t normally in a real in a real crisis, you would only deploy federal resources when you knew what the mission was. There’s no mission here. The mission is, therefore, you know, to basically like what you said, cosplay, terrorize, make people nervous about what Trump may do next. But if all those things are the real mission and I get the distinction between deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles because California is a state has its own control over the National Guard. It’s not subject to the same control of the federal government that D.C. is.

But to Archon’s question, why now? Because cosplay would have existed two months ago, DC being a large urban area with a significant amount of crime, even though it’s declining, was true two months ago. Was it as simple as President Trump just got this idea in his head about a week ago and said we should do this, or somebody dusted off a policy paper and just said we should do this? What do you guys think? I mean, I do look at the timing in terms of two things. One is, of course, the Epstein. I have been trying to figure out what the trigger would have been. Maybe it’s the attack on Big Ball as a DOGE guy. But this was ready to be launched. And so I do think part of it is a distraction. I think the other is very importantly is is Trump is wildly unpopular. I know it’s hard for people on the left or progressives to see it because we are people are losing and lots of bad things are happening, but they’re not idiots. And what they need to do to ensure he has support, but also because they worry about next year’s elections is they need to make sure that the base gets its meat because they’re not getting the non base.

I mean, when you look at how independents feel about in particular immigration, but also the economy. And so this is just a good way. You know, this this is not just about immigration. uh force it’s also about force against a black city I mean let’s just not like the the racial component of this is real and I’m getting all sorts of weird stuff I apologize to everyone I’m thumbing out myself so

Stephen Richer: Your computer thought it was a good point but like yeah.

Yes, dc is a racially diverse city so are almost all major urban areas that also happen to have large amounts of crime, whether it’s St. Louis, whether it’s New Orleans, whether it’s Detroit, some of them in cities that are run by Democrats, some of them in states that are run by Republicans. And so my hesitancy, though the internet and many commentators have ascribed a racial motive here, my hesitancy is just find me an urban area that isn’t a significant percentage Black. Now, people did point out, he said San Francisco instead, or excuse me, he said Oakland instead of San Francisco, where you could have said that. So I think that gives it a little bit of credence, but I’m still, I guess I’m not sold on that point.

Archon Fung: So I want to steelman. Ezra Klein, I think made that phrase popular in his podcast, steelman the argument from the administration’s point of view. Right. So it is true, according to a DOJ report from January, that crime in D.C. is at a thirty-year low. But it’s also true that a lot of people in D.C. are worried about crime. In a twenty twenty four survey, sixty-five percent of D.C. residents thought crime was a very serious problem. Both of you have lived in D.C. I bet when you lived there, there were parts of D.C. that you didn’t you know, weren’t crazy about walking through at night. And so and in the initial deployment, I think Mayor Muriel Bowser was a little bit equivocal. There was like some points where I thought she was kind of grateful for the additional resources, maybe kind of. And so if there’s additional law enforcement resources, sixty-five percent of residents think crime is a serious issue, something should be done about it, why isn’t this a good thing to do?

Stephen Richer: Yeah, so I think that that’s, probably the right instincts by Mayor Bowser, because you don’t wanna be reflexively anti-law enforcement. You don’t wanna say there’s no problem with our city. And I think that some Democrats found themselves in the difficult position of almost having to say, no, we have the right level of crime right now, which many from like a cost benefit standpoint like you can make a calculus but that just doesn’t sound good like to the public the right level of crime is is zero even though yeah we realize why that not necessarily be um so I do think that but I do think the means matter I think the law matters obviously and I think whether or not these people can be effective is another question that a lot of commentators have asked Is the National Guard equipped to be doing the type of policing that we’re talking about? Is the FBI equipped to be able to stop a carjacking? Because that’s not their day-to-day, and that’s not what basic training gets you ready for. And so, you know, I…

Well, I understand sort of the impulse of Mayor Bowser to say like, you know, come on in, send us more bodies because we’re understaffed because D.C. police has had a hard time recruiting. I guess it seems like she’s been subsequently sort of Wondering if that’s as good a thing as it may be at first. I see. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think the I mean, I think that’s right.

Juliette Kayyem: And I think that the deployment or the ask by the Trump administration to send additional National Guard resources from red states like all of it to me is this is all. a signal about what’s going to unfold in the year ahead. There’s no, let me just tell you about the, you know, the law enforcement or the, you know, I used to oversee the National Guard as a state homeland security advisor. They are not trained for this. At best they can do what we call presence patrols, right? So you put them on a corner, you say, here we are, and maybe that’s what the mayor wanted. And you just keep people who might otherwise be doing the carjackings or the muggings from feeling a little bit nervous that they’re being watched. Right. So you could get that. Maybe that works. But. I don’t understand. There is no jurisdictional basis, for example, for FBI. Right. They have no legal ability because they they they investigate and stop federal crime. So a mugging on the street, as far as I know, is still not a federal crime. And so it’s not even clear that just it’s clear that there is a mismatch between the deployment of those resources, even if I take it in good faith and. what they want, what Trump says they want them to do. B

ut I also go back to the limiting principle here. You normally deploy additional resources to state and locals when, normally when they ask for it. So you get a much more cooperative effort than we’ve seen in LA or DC. Or when the mission is clear. And this is why I, you know, I don’t think like we’re in a, you know, we’re heading. I mean, I think that there’s autocratic elements to everything Trump does. But I do worry about this. because if there’s no limiting principle, then we’re just, by the time of the next election, just gonna have lots and lots of troops on the street. We don’t know what that might mean for civic engagement, democratic engagement, nor what Trump might want to do with them during an election. And this is what pisses me off about the Republican governors. I mean, the Vermont governor did the right thing, But they have no obligation to send their their their National Guard. And and you just keep waiting for one of them, any of them to say no to him because you know that it will be more over time and that the mission will increase and that the numbers will increase. So saying no to President Trump is not good politics within the Republican Party. Yeah, yeah. This may come as a surprise to you. Yeah. No, but even for governors, right. No, I know. I know your story.

But I don’t know what the polling is on this. I do know. For example, on the immigration stuff, this sort of heavy handedness doesn’t go over very well, that people, independents in particular, don’t like it. And in a weird way, you start to see a, I don’t wanna say we’re unified, but you do start to see a more cohesive immigration policy between Democrats and Republicans. in that most people don’t like the open borderness of Democrats, which I accuse. I think the Biden administration, despite what they said, was wrong on their policy for three and a half years until they got it right. And most Americans don’t like grabbing people off the street or telling Haitians who have been here for twenty years under temporary protective status that they have to go. So you start to see a coalescence. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s going to be true for this. It’s just not. At best, they look bored. At worst, something very, very bad is going to happen. Yeah. You know, for people who care about crime and even low level crime. Yeah. It’s kind of a hard public discussion to get into because you think, oh, well, more people on the street, more troops on the street. That ought to be good. But people who think about policing know it’s just a much more complicated thing to address.

Archon Fung: So there was a I used to study policing in a past life. Yeah. And there was an experiment in Kansas City in nineteen seventy four and they divided the city into three parts. They doubled patrol in one part. They kept it the same in another part and they eliminated all patrol in the third part. And there was zero effect on either crime or the fear of crime. And this was a revolutionary study because every police chief from nineteen forty five on thought, oh, the best thing we can do is drive around in cars. Turns out, you know, the common wisdom is it doesn’t really do that much. And so what you got to do is start working with communities and social service agencies and churches, which Boston has done. And last year, there were twenty four homicides in the whole city. It just takes like a lot of hard work. That’s hard to explain. That’s not quite as sexy as the guys walking around with assault rifles. But that’s what you got to do if you’re serious about it. Yeah. I forgot that that’s what your dissertation topic was, was policing, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s come full circle.

Stephen Richer: You went down to democracy and now, unfortunately, it’s full circle. So I thought the point about the mission that Juliet made was important. And in some ways, Los Angeles is less alarming because there was an implied understanding that National Guard was being called for an exigent moment. And that as soon as people cleared the streets, as soon as Waymo stopped burning, that the National Guard would probably be taken out. But here there isn’t an incident. There isn’t a protest. It’s just for general policing of a city. And we’ll see if that extends. I think the DC home rule charter allows for the president to take control for thirty days in the case of an emergency. And a lot of people have been saying, one, what’s the emergency that prompted this? But two, will this really be done in thirty days? And what type of victory is the president going to be able to declare in thirty days? And if no victory, then will he just leave them there? And then I think we start asking those questions about what type of chilling effect does this have on future No Kings protests on the National Mall if they’re out there in cities during the twenty twenty six midterm elections? I mean, I don’t know if we would have as significant a No Kings protests if there were National Guard around those protests.

Archon Fung: I think that’s a great point. A local local news in D.C. did an analysis of OpenTable reservations and eating out is down thirty percent after the federal deployment. So my question to you, Stephen, as an election official, is if we see National Guard and federal troops in blue cities in twenty twenty six in November, fifteen months from now, will voting be down thirty percent just like it is in restaurants and eating out? Well, weirdly, it might drive up vote by mail, which, of course, President Trump yesterday said he wants to get rid of.

Stephen Richer: So this goes back to the conversation we were having yesterday, Archon, which this really is 4-D Chess then at that point. Yeah.

Juliette Kayyem: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I, I mean, I saw that too, about, you know, down and, and, and get it, uh, uh, and it may, it may be back up by now. It may be just a sort of reactions. It was something bad. And also they’re bored and they’re not doing anything. I mean, everything I’ve seen in pictures and stuff is you’ll, you’ll see on, on X, like one little moment of interaction, but for the most part, they seem to be walking around the mall, you know, checking out girls running. I mean, literally every single picture I’ve seen on X is like they’re turning their head. You know, a bunch of guys.

I hate to say these aren’t so bad after all. Yeah, exactly. So so I mean, it’s so I do. But I once again, like it there. What is the the limiting principle for this? Because if we keep lowering the floor, you know, you sort of say, oh, it’s a. joke or this is just cosplay. And I say it too. I’m not saying that it’s wrong. But at some stage, you sort of wonder, like, you know, right, is he just eight steps ahead of all of us. And then in October of twenty twenty six, you know, there’s a there’s a killing in D.C. that would have happened anyway. And there is a massive deployment and there is talk. I think it went away, but I’m not sure there is talk. Maybe maybe it’s settled of arming the National Guard, which is just. so inappropriate and unlikely to do anything good and more likely to do stuff that’s bad. But again, it’s this limiting principle. It’s like, what’s the mission? I mean, one hopes that you wouldn’t deploy military abroad without a mission, but we don’t know what that mission is. He knows someone who got beaten up. And the beating, and I will be honest with you, the narrative of that assault, which apparently is the justification for D.C., is the subject of many queries that have gone unanswered.

So I’m always wary how the Trump administration seems to find a narrative that fits their policy decision. And I await more than the White House telling me that one of their people got beaten up.

Archon Fung: Yeah, so on the public narrative part, that may be our policy, but when it starts to play is how it plays out in social media and in the news. And so I wanted to play a clip now, Sarah. So this is a clip of two things. One is a guy throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal officer and getting arrested. And then immediately after that is the actual arrest, which follows his own offer to turn himself in. So Sarah, if you could play the sandwich guy.

Okay, now this is a clip from the White House posted on their X account.

Stephen Richer: Coming down. So, you know, body armor and assault rifles and dip gives me the warm and fuzzies as much as any other red-blooded American. But that does strike me as a little bit of a disproportionate response. What do you think?

Juliette Kayyem: Yeah. Yeah, okay. No, go ahead. I hadn’t seen – I actually had not seen the second one, so I have to catch my breath. Go ahead.

Stephen Richer: So one – The guy, the dude wearing the pink pastel polo throwing a Subway sandwich at a guy who’s just doing his job. It’s a doofus move. He shouldn’t have done it. I have no problem with him being punished on some level. totally disproportionate totally I know a little bit about law enforcement and if somebody’s willing to surrender themselves come in for something that clearly wasn’t terribly violent in nature you know I’ve heard people say subway actually bakes its bread on site and it’s always pretty soft and so it wouldn’t have been too hard against the body armor but um you know coming in with a SWAT team yeah and then and then sort of the the glorification of it in social media clips uh the new u.s attorney for the district of dc also talking about it It’s just that’s not the pursuit of justice. That’s the that’s the pursuit of sort of celebratory gratuitousness.

Juliette Kayyem: Yeah. And I will say that we are starting to hear of grand juries. I mean, it’s hard not to get a grand jury indictment, at least in a couple of these similar type cases where it was either immigration or something like this, that they’re not coming back. The D.C. is going to start to find itself very difficult to find. grand juries or juries willing to play this BS. Cause that’s all it is. He, he did something stupid and he was probably, and he was egged on the, the, the police officer was under no threat. Even if he believed he was, he knew he wasn’t soon after and, and these things happen and that’s what penalties are for. And that’s what turning yourself in is for. I have to say that I saw that and I, and I, I don’t, I mean, maybe it’s catering to, uh, you know, the sliver of people who think that that looks good. It did. It looked really stupid. I mean, this, let me, the guy opens the door and then do you notice how they cut? Like, they’re not going to show you that he probably is like carrying a white poodle. Yeah. You know, and drinking, uh, you know, a Mai Tai and he’s like, Oh shit. You know, okay, here I am. You know, sorry. Oh, sorry. Um, but, um,

So anyway, I have to say, but this is the kind of, these are the images and the narratives they want, but they’re, and they will continue to do that. They just love this stuff. So not only the dystopian nature of busting someone’s home down, though, but then like that’s exactly what we were going for. Great. This seems dystopian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re going to put it out on X.

Archon Fung: OK, so we’re just about out of time, but I wanted to leave with a final clip and then both of you can have a reaction to it. This is from this is kind of taking off Juliet’s earlier point. And the question is, is this kind of thing coming to a city? near you.

James Comer: We have people mugging people at all hours of the day and it’s out of control. So the president had to send in the National Guard. And I think that you’ve seen just in the last twenty four hours a huge decline in crime. And we’re going to support this. We’re going to support doing this. in other cities if it works out in Washington, D.C. And again, it’s unfortunate, but we spend a lot on our military. Our military has been in many countries around the world for the past two decades, walking the streets, trying to reduce crime in other countries. We need to focus on the big cities in America now, and that’s what the president’s doing.

Archon Fung: So over under, are we going to see this in other cities in the next six months, whatever year? What do you think?

Juliette Kayyem: From the party that brought you states’ rights and, you know, not overarching government, this is precious of Comer. There is crime. There’s crime in rural areas. There’s actually more crime per person in Arkansas and in South Dakota than there is in California. I mean, come on. Crime has existed, but this has nothing to do with crime. And the… The total negation of apparently the theory that drives conservativism, which is a separation of states and the federal government, is beyond hypocrisy at this stage.

Stephen Richer: So process matters. It is meaningful to me if it’s called by the governor rather than the president of the United States. But no, I don’t believe that. I believe this will be done. I don’t believe this should be done. What we should be doing is cultivating a deeper appreciation for good policing and good officers. We should be increasing pay. We should be increasing training if we want to address this problem. process for this problem.

But we should not be putting people who are militarily trained in military uniforms in the street. But yes, I think we’re going to see we’re going to see more of it because it’s it’s it’s red meat now and it’s affiliated with Trump. Wow. OK, so expect more. And if there’s more, we’ll be talking about it more.

Archon Fung: So as promised, we never talk for more than thirty minutes. That’s us at time. As a reminder, please send suggestions to info at ash.harvard.edu.

Stephen Richer: And I want to thank Juliette, and I want to thank all of you for putting up with a few of our technical snafus today. We’ll get those worked out. I know I will on my end, but I just really wanted to see myself while talking, so you’ll have to forgive me. All right, we’ll see you next week. All right, and special thanks to our production team.

Archon Fung: Oh, thanks, Juliette. Special thanks to our production team, Sarah Grucza, Colette Anton, and Courtney Carter DeJesus for organizing and producing the show. See everybody next time. Thank you.