An attack in the heart of Washington - and a president who fuels the fire

Washington was full of people on Wednesday afternoon preparing for the long Thanksgiving weekend when suddenly sirens tore through the streets, ambulances drove across stopped lanes, and a police helicopter circled over the National Mall. Only minutes earlier, two members of the National Guard from West Virginia, who have been patrolling the capital since August on behalf of the president, had been shot a few blocks from the White House. Everything happened in the middle of a heavily visited tourist area near the Farragut West Station, where uniformed personnel have been standing guard for months on behalf of the government. What was later described as a targeted attack struck the already overstressed atmosphere in Washington like a bolt of lightning.

The sequence of events was quick, brutal, and hardly comprehensible for those who witnessed it. According to police, the shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, came from a side street, immediately raised his weapon, and opened fire on the two soldiers. Initial findings indicated he acted alone. At least one of the soldiers returned fire before colleagues from the area and officers from police departments, the Secret Service, and the Metro Transit Police overpowered the attacker. The perpetrator himself was shot and survived, while others were critically injured. The two guardsmen lay bleeding on the sidewalk as first responders tried to stabilize them. A helicopter landed directly on the National Mall, only a few hundred meters from the scene of the attack.

In the first messages from West Virginia it was even said that the two soldiers had died. The governor published a corresponding post on X and then walked it back twenty minutes later, explaining that they were receiving "conflicting reports". The damage was done nonetheless. Angry comments, speculation, misinformation: everything spread instantly across the networks. Later, Mayor Muriel Bowser and FBI Director Kash Patel publicly confirmed that both soldiers were still alive but in critical condition.

The debate that followed would have been fierce even without this confusion. Because this attack struck Washington at a time when the National Guard itself had become a political flashpoint. In August, Trump placed the local police under federal command, declared a state of emergency, and brought troop contingents from eight states into the capital. The move was legally disputed, politically explosive, and a deep warning sign for society. The government justified the approach with allegedly "out of control" crime, while opponents saw it as an attempt to place the capital under a quasi-military regime with permanently deployed soldiers. The legal dispute has been ongoing for months; most recently a federal judge ordered the withdrawal of the troops but suspended the enforcement for 21 days to give the government time to respond or appeal.

So now an attack on two of these soldiers - and a president who was on his golf course in Florida when the shots were fired. Within a short time, Trump posted on his platform. He wrote that the perpetrator, "the animal", as he called him, would "pay a very high price". It was exactly the type of language Trump repeatedly uses to inflame the mood instead of calming it. At the same time, he declared, "God bless our great National Guard", and assured that he stood "as president and with all in the president's circle" at their side. Minutes later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth initiated the next stage: on Trump's orders, 500 additional soldiers are to be sent to the capital. According to the latest overview, 2,188 National Guard members are already deployed there.

JD Vance on the shooting in Washington, D.C.: "I want everybody who is a person of faith to say a prayer for those two National Guardsmen ... it is a somber reminder that soldiers ... are the sword and the shield of the United States of America."

For Washington, this attack is a shock, but not one without precedent. Almost casually, observers recalled the long line of incidents that have taken place near the White House over the years - some bizarre, some dangerous. A stranger who simply walked into the screening room during World War II to watch a movie with Franklin D. Roosevelt. A man in a karate suit who entered in 1978 with a knife hidden in a Bible. A pilot who crashed his small plane into the presidential residence lawn in 1994. In recent years, vehicles repeatedly rammed into barriers, in one of the latest cases driven by a young man who later admitted he wanted to kill then-President Biden and admired Hitler. In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, hundreds gathered at the gates of the White House, throwing bottles and stones, prompting the Secret Service to take the president to the bunker. And in 2014, a man armed with a knife surprisingly managed to penetrate far into the building. All of these cases now fade behind the impression of shots fired at uniformed soldiers who were supposed to show a federal presence.

But as frightening as the attack on the two guardsmen is - especially once the mayor declared it was a targeted attack by Rahmanullah Lakanwal - the incident also highlights the political imbalance into which the country has drifted. The permanent presence of the Guard was not a consensus but a manifestation of a deep conflict. For months, soldiers have patrolled train stations, street corners, tourist hotspots. They stand at checkpoints, monitor traffic nodes, clear trash, secure sporting events. It is an image many in Washington never imagined: soldiers from West Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, or the Dakotas in the Metro stations of the capital, day after day, week after week. The duration of the deployment stretched beyond the original mandate when in early November around 160 members of the West Virginia unit voluntarily extended their stay until the end of the year while the rest returned home.

The longer the troops remained, the harsher the political fronts became. The District's attorney general, Brian Schwalb, sued the federal government because he considered the ongoing deployment unconstitutional. He repeatedly criticized that the capital must not become a permanent deployment area for the National Guard. After the attack, he said that violence must be "condemned quickly and clearly" and called what happened "heartbreaking for the city and the entire country". He emphasized that the Guard members are volunteers, people with jobs, families, daily lives - not soldiers intended for years of domestic deployments.

Others expressed themselves similarly. Senators from various parties voiced their dismay, some asking for prayers, others using the situation to highlight the work of the Guard. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, praised the "heroic work" of the troops who are "on duty around the clock" to secure the capital. Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma said society reaps the consequences when "you demonize law enforcement", while his colleague Mark Kelly from Arizona reminded that the families of these young men were now living in fearful uncertainty while they were supposed to prepare for the holiday.

Employees of the Department of Corrections arrive at George Washington University Hospital to take Rahmanullah Lakanwal into custody.

All this happened while the traces of the attack were still visible in the capital: police barricades, shards of glass, hectic activity by investigators from various agencies. The Secret Service, ATF, FBI, local police, Metro Transit Police - they were all on scene. Many of them reviewed surveillance footage from the area, interviewed witnesses, including a nurse who heard two shots and later said she had been scared for the first time in her life, standing so close to a crime scene. No one openly spoke of an "atmospheric disturbance", but between the lines one sensed how politics, city life, and security conditions were moving in a dangerous alignment that Washington long knew but rarely experienced in this form.

In the evening, as authorities compiled their first confirmed findings, there was hardly any clarity about the motives of Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Investigators searched his contacts, asked about background, checked whether the attack was politically motivated or directed against soldiers as representatives of the state. All that was known was this: Rahmanullah Lakanwal approached the two guardsmen deliberately. He raised the weapon before anyone could react. That was enough to unsettle not only the city but the country.

In this heated climate, Trump decided to escalate militarily once again. The order to deploy 500 additional National Guard members appears as a reflex to violence - not in the spirit of de-escalation but as a signal that his administration remains unwavering in its intention to turn Washington into a stage for permanent security operations. Defense Secretary Hegseth conveyed the decision from the Dominican Republic, where he was at the time. It shows how routine the military presence has become for the Trump administration, even if lawyers in the background are already working on a possible reversal.

The political charge of this deployment is enormous. Since summer, when Trump first took control of the local police, there has been fierce debate over whether the president crossed a historic line. Never before had a president deployed a state's National Guard against the will of that state's government on its own streets - and Trump did exactly that shortly afterward in California. In Washington, the approach was somewhat different in degree but hardly less problematic legally. The capital has a special status, but it also has its own clearly defined powers. That the federal government floods it with uniformed troops who take on tasks from patrolling to trash removal appears to many as a slide into a new form of state control.

The attack only intensifies this debate. While some see the reinforcement as a necessary response, others warn that more soldiers could increase the pressure and further militarize the city. A tragic event thus becomes a political catalyst. Late in the evening, a tense calm returned. The streets were not empty, but they felt like they had exhaled. Around the Farragut West Station, soldiers still stood guard, suddenly looking vulnerable in their uniforms. Behind them flickered the light of a police barrier. At their feet, the wet pavement reflected the spot where blood had lain only hours earlier.

For the two young men from West Virginia, it is now about survival. For the city, it is about something larger: the question of how far a president may go, how long a capital must live in a state of military exception, and what it means when violence erupts where everything is supposed to be under control. What remains is a day that exposed the political and human conflicts of these months in a single moment. And a president who sends more soldiers instead of de-escalation. Washington will have to live with it - but it will not forget this Wednesday.