Trump’s National Guard in DC, the Smithsonian purge, and the new authoritarian playbook

Washington D. C. just got a preview of what a centralized, leader-first state looks like in practice. The president seized temporary control of the Metropolitan Police Department, then placed National Guard troops on the streets of the nation’s capital. The move was framed as law and order, the effect was unmistakable, a federal muscle flex against a local populace and its elected officials. This is not normal American federalism, it is the normalization of domestic militarization, the opening act for a government that wants obedience, not oversight.

Parallels to 1930s Nazi Germany are not about costumes or slogans; they are about method. Authoritarians do five things early and often: they control the streets, purge neutral bureaucracies, rewrite public memory, regulate what children learn, and target vulnerable minorities to consolidate power. The United States still has independent courts and a free press (barely), yet the direction of travel is clear.

The following is a brief rundown of the Trump administration’s blatant attempts at authoritarianism to date. It is my sincere hope that I do not have to amend this list in the future, but I am not holding my breath.

Control the streets, then the story

When soldiers appear where civilians live and protest, a line is crossed. In Washington D. C., the White House announced hundreds of National Guard troops and a federal takeover of local policing. Supportive media spun it as long-overdue, critics called it an authoritarian power grab, residents were left to live under the optics of force. You do not need to believe every press release to recognize the pattern, the central government is asserting coercive control in a city that is not allowed full self-governance, and it is doing so on the president’s timetable and terms. That is a method, not a one-off (Reuters, 2025; The Guardian, 2025).

Purge the nonpartisan state

The civil service exists to outlast presidents, which is exactly why strongmen try to bend it. The White House resurrected and expanded Schedule F, a category that lets political leaders reclassify policy-influencing civil servants and remove them for insufficient loyalty. Federal unions warned of purges, watchdogs mapped the risks, and the administration celebrated the chance to “drain the swamp.” Authoritarians in the 1930s called it coordination, the German word was Gleichschaltung, the outcome is the same, a bureaucracy filtered for faithfulness to one man (White House, 2025; OPM, 2025; NTEU, 2025).

Rewrite memory, police the museums

History becomes a weapon when a government decides which stories are allowed to breathe. In March, the president ordered federal history sites and museums to deliver “uplifting” narratives, and this week the White House sent a letter instructing the Smithsonian to submit exhibits, social posts, and educational materials for review to remove content deemed divisive. That is a direct political intervention in curatorial judgment and scholarly independence, the twenty-first-century version of a ministry of culture, complete with deadlines and the language of national “unity” (White House, 2025; AP, 2025; Politico, 2025).

Capture the classroom

If you can standardize what children are taught, you can standardize what citizens believe. The “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” order directs agencies to craft an Ending Indoctrination Strategy and threatens federal funding for districts that do not comply. Legal analysts have already outlined how this chills curricula far beyond the culture-war headlines. Authoritarian governments have always known the straightforward arithmetic here, shape the syllabus, shape the future electorate (White House, 2025; Jackson Lewis, 2025; CBCF, 2025).

Target a minority, call it protection

Another pillar of the method is creating an internal enemy and promising to protect the majority from them. The administration’s order on gender-affirming care for minors instructs federal agencies to halt support and funding, while broader LGBTQ health protections and data efforts have been rolled back. In the 1930s the targets were different, the tactic was the same, define a group as a social contagion, then regulate them out of public life under the banner of safety and order (White House, 2025; Seyfarth, 2025; KFF, 2025).

Reward allies, punish critics, bend the law

Healthy democracies insulate prosecutors from the president. The Justice Department’s internal guardrails against politicized prosecutions have been weakened, the Public Integrity Section sidelined, and staff exoduses reported in units that defend administration actions in court. This is not an obscure administrative reshuffle, it is the quiet part of authoritarian consolidation, when the law becomes a tool for friends and a cudgel for enemies (Reuters, 2025).

Strip pluralism from the state, call it merit

The administration nullified federal DEI programs and signaled that grants and contracts should align with the president’s priorities. The rhetoric is merit, the result is a narrower, more exclusionary state that treats equal opportunity efforts as ideological threats rather than civil rights obligations. Authoritarians do not usually announce that pluralism is over, they defund it, then claim virtue for the savings (White House, 2025; Harvard Law School Corporate Governance, 2025).

Why the 1930s comparison belongs

No analogy is perfect, and the United States is not Weimar Germany, yet the logic of power at work is historically familiar. Control public space, purge neutral expertise, regulate memory, command the curriculum, identify an internal foe, and weaponize law. The goal is to replace horizontal checks with vertical loyalty. When troops police residents, when curators answer to politicians, when career officials serve at the pleasure of the leader, the line from a liberal democracy to a dictatorship starts to blur.

The antidote is not performative outrage; it is institutional stamina and civic work. City leaders can litigate the federal overreach into local policing. University and museum boards can adopt hard pledges for curatorial independence. School districts can publish transparent curriculum processes and invite community review without ceding content to political edict. Congress can codify civil-service protections that survive elections, and state attorneys general can challenge federal rules that punish cities for refusing ideological compliance. Citizens can keep receipts, support local journalism, and vote like memory matters.

Democracy does not die in a single announcement; it erodes through a sequence of perfectly legal steps that change who decides what truth looks like. The sequence is now visible; the question is whether we interrupt it.

References

Associated Press. (2025). White House orders Smithsonian content review.

Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF). (2025). PDF briefing on Ending Radical Indoctrination order.

Harvard Law School — Corporate Governance Forum. (2025). Analysis: President Trump Acts to Roll Back DEI Initiatives.

Jackson Lewis. (2025). Analysis: Indoctrination and school choice—from the EO.

Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). (2025). Overview: Trump executive actions impacting LGBTQ health.

National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). (2025). Schedule F information.

Politico. (2025). White House announces Smithsonian review amid Trump's cultural reckoning.

Reuters. (2025). How Trump defanged the Justice Department’s political-corruption watchdogs (investigation).

Reuters. (2025). Trump takes over DC police in extraordinary move, deploys National Guard to capital.

Seyfarth. (2025). Executive Order on Health Care Access for Gender-Affirming Treatments for Minors.

The Guardian. (2025). National guard begins deploying on DC streets after Trump police takeover.

U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). (2025). Guidance on implementing Schedule F.

White House. (2025a). Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions within the Federal Workforce (Schedule F executive order).

White House. (2025b). Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History (March order).

White House. (2025c). Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling (executive order).

White House. (2025d). Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation (gender-affirming care order).

White House. (2025e). Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.