The Uniform of Humiliation – how Trump sends the National Guard to pick up trash, militarizes the capital and turns the judiciary into his tool

In Washington, armed National Guard soldiers patrol, heavily equipped, as one knows from crisis regions. Yet amid the machine guns and combat boots, a scene is revealed that could hardly be more grotesque: the same troops who are officially supposed to “secure” the capital are picking rubber gloves off park benches and hauling trash bags through the streets. A video proudly released by the D.C. National Guard shows the soldiers on this “mission.” What looks like a harmless beautification campaign is in truth a symbol of humiliation: the transformation of citizens into objects of military order and the instrumentalization of soldiers as the president’s cleaning crew.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth justifies the move with a sentence whose bluntness is revealing. He said he had ordered the arming of the troops in the capital because it meant they were “capable of defending themselves and others.” It is the banal packaging of a historic taboo break: the militarization of American streets. Meanwhile, the Pentagon avoids any answer to the question of why the National Guard is suddenly marching through Washington with assault rifles. The official rules of engagement speak of the use of force “only in the event of an imminent threat of death or serious harm” - but the reality is that a president secures his political power through the martial image of armed troops at home.

It fits the pattern. Donald Trump has for years taken aim at democratically governed cities. Chicago has always been his favorite target of contempt. Time and again he conjured up the image of a city in a state of war, compared it to Afghanistan, promised in 2017 to “send in the feds.” Today the statistics show the opposite: shootings are down 37 percent, murders down 32 percent, overall violent crime down more than 22 percent. Experts like Kimberley Smith of the University of Chicago Crime Lab attribute this development not to militarization but to investments in prevention, in tackling the causes of violence. But Trump ignores the numbers because the backdrop of “failed cities” is politically useful to him.

When asked whether he would also be willing to send National Guard troops into Republican-run cities with high crime rates, Trump only replied: “Sure, but there aren’t that many of them.” A sentence that conceals the truth: that it was never about security for him, but solely about humiliating political opponents. The absurdity becomes even sharper in the schools of the capital. On the first day of school, Mayor Muriel Bowser warned of the consequences of the massive ICE presence in D.C. Parents would no longer send their children to classrooms out of fear of raids. “Leave our kids alone,” Bowser said, striking a nerve. While armed troops patrol the streets, mothers and fathers fear that the way to school will become a nightmare for their children. This is the climate Trump creates: fear instead of safety, threat instead of trust, militarization instead of community.

At the same time, the judiciary is forming into a willing helper. The conservative Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, have in recent decisions sharply admonished lower courts to stick to the line of the highest court - a line that almost consistently falls in Trump’s favor. Even in cases where his administration blatantly defied rulings by federal courts, the top justices stood by his side. Gorsuch wrote in a ruling that lower courts “are never free to defy the Supreme Court.” It sounds like a legal footnote, but is in truth the confirmation of a system in which the president breaks the rules and the Supreme Court grants him its blessing afterwards. Liberal justices such as Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson denounce this “Calvinball jurisprudence” - a game without fixed rules in which Trump always wins.

While Washington is trapped in this mix of militarization and judicial manipulation, the dispute reaches the next stage: Baltimore. Democratic Governor Wes Moore calls on Trump to finally visit the city, to take note of the progress made in crime reduction and urban renewal. Trump reacts as usual: with insults, with the threat to cut federal funds for the reconstruction of the Key Bridge, and with the claim that Baltimore is a “crime disaster.” Moore strikes back sharply, saying publicly that Trump only wants to distract from the “Epstein files.” In doing so, he voices what many think: that each of these diversionary maneuvers is part of a strategy to cover up his own scandals.

The result is a picture that is unprecedented in its contradictions. A capital where soldiers pick up trash while patrolling with rifles. A government that makes children into targets of intimidation. A president who ignores numbers and instead declares entire cities to be enemies. A Supreme Court that buries the separation of powers. And a political culture that subordinates everything to the purpose of securing its own power. It is the uniform of humiliation, in which the National Guard picks up rubber gloves from park benches while at the same time parading through Washington as a show of force. It is a symbol of the state of America in 2025: a country besieged from within by its own president, a country that makes its children afraid and turns its institutions into weapons. A country sinking in the trash of its power games - and sending the soldiers who were supposed to protect it to clean up.

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