Both the New Yorker and the New York Times have published articles in the last few days about the DC resistance. Both admit that it’s a bit of a disappointment so far and so these are really stories about things that haven’t happened yet. The market for mass marches in the street opposing Trump exists already among New Yorkk liberals even if the reality hasn’t caught up with it yet in Washington.
This New Yorker story published Saturday makes clear it’s not happening.
It is true, as some commentators have noted, that Washington has not yet seen a mass protest against Trump’s show of force. The resistance the city has mounted is, in some ways, a microcosm of the resistance to Trump that has been launched nationally over the last few months: intermittent, lacking in robust leadership, especially from the Democratic Party, and perhaps disillusioned by the fading impact of large-scale demonstrations such as the 2017 Women’s March.
Still, in a Washington Post poll conducted last week, eight in ten D.C. residents said that they opposed the federal takeover of the local police and the presence of troops in the streets. And, if you drive around the city, there are plenty of signs of that disapproval. People are filming ICE arrests and confronting the agents, who are often masked and drive unmarked cars, about what they are doing. My neighborhood Nextdoor listserv, which is normally filled with recommendations for plumbers, pictures of pets, and a certain amount of handwringing about property crime, was now studded with warnings about ICE sightings around town. Fans of the local women’s pro soccer team, the Washington Spirit, spontaneously broke out into chants of “Free D.C.!” at a game last week. A Banksy-style graffiti image of a figure hurling a sub sandwich started appearing all over town—a tribute to Sean Charles Dunn, a thirty-seven-year-old former Justice Department employee who had thrown one, from Subway, at federal officers stationed on a street corner.
It’s sort of sad, really. The hero of the DC resistance is a guy who threw a sandwich. And someone has made Banksy-style art of this noble act and is posting it around the city. Behold: The RESISTANCE!
WP says the DC sandwich thrower has become a ‘resistance icon’ in the city. Includes photo of a mural which you will agree is not at all what the sandwich-throwing incident actually looked like. pic.twitter.com/Qc3w0cPPQf
— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 21, 2025
The NY Times put three authors on basically the same story which was published today. This one is more optimistic about what might happen.
…the recent deployment of hundreds of often masked federal agents and hundreds more National Guard troops have brought many Washingtonians a sense of shared purpose: outrage.
“We are not against fighting crime,” said Tony Guardad, a 49-year-old construction worker, who emphasized that he is not against the police. “But we are against boots on the street, and we don’t want to feel like we are in North Korea.”…
When Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, strolled through Union Station on Wednesday to pose with guardsmen at a Shake Shack, they were met with epithets and jeers.
“You’re an embarrassment to Ohio,” someone in the crowd shouted at the vice president, a reference to his home state. It was one of the tamer insults.
I wrote about Vance’s visit to Union Station here. Go watch the videos. There were a handful of people shouting stupidly at Vance while most people just took out their phones. By the end of the visit, the booing seemed to be coming from one guy. It was a mass resistance of maybe half a dozen.
Halfway through the NY Times story the authors admit that mass protests just aren’t happening.
To be sure, many Washingtonians have been going about their business without taking to the streets. Nadine Seiler, a 60-year-old activist from Waldorf, Md., lamented the “perpetually low turnout” at protests, reflecting the desire of protest organizers to always want more participants.
“Whether it’s fear or something else, people are just not coming out in the numbers we need them to,” she said.
Anyway, you get the idea. The liberal media in New York really wants to make this happen but so far it’s pretty lame. Can they whip DC residents into a resistance fury? They are surely going to try. And what will that accomplish? It will make for good stories in these same outlets.
Who knows, maybe some combination of community organizers will generate another “No Kings” march in DC to oppose the National Guard. But for now it seems mostly like wishful thinking. At the moment the best they’ve got is a guy throwing a sandwich at a cop.
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Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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