Along the National Mall this afternoon, under brilliant blue skies with dry air. It was the kind of blissful summer-weekend moment that would usually bring throngs to the capital, its monuments, and its museums. Not now. (All photos by Deborah Fallows.)
Deb and I have been away from our home in DC for a long time. So on return we felt an obligation to see what it looked like in the downtown areas (like Union Station) that Donald Trump and JD Vance have declared so catastrophically unsafe.
This post is a slideshow, to share some snapshots of what we learned today. Which we would have had a hard time imagining if we had not seen it ourselves.
-Background for those who know DC: This morning we took the Red Line Metro to Union Station. We walked from there to the Capitol. Then we walked the full length of the National Mall, to the Lincoln Memorial. Then past the under-construction Federal Reserve Building and the State Department and the World Bank, to Farragut Square. Then we took the Red Line back. These are explicitly not the high-crime areas of DC. But they are where Trump and Vance have deployed troops and ranted most about hellscape and danger.
-Background for anyone, anywhere: There has rarely been a more beautiful summer day in Washington. Bright blue skies. Temperatures in the low 80s. Clear and dry air, rather than the usual August-in-DC atmospheric swamp.
And practically no one was there to witness or enjoy it.
Some illustrations:
This is where JD Vance said he was so terrified. Lots of bright stores were open. But on a summer weekend afternoon, hardly any customers. We talked with an Amtrak conductor who told us that traffic had been “slow.”
More touching was the scene at the “Rail Market,” set up for local vendors in the station’s main hall every Saturday. You can see what their business was like.
Imagine the effect on stores, restaurants, hotels, condos, gift shops, tour guides, drivers, event-planners, real-estate people, and every other part of the economy in DC.
On this whole trek across monumental DC, we saw exactly two military-style vehicles. As opposed to the fleet that Trump, Vance, and Hegseth had posed with and salivated over a few days ago.
Those two vehicles were humvees, parked at opposite ends of the plaza outside Union Station. Here is what one of the two looked like:
When we asked National Guardsmen whether the vehicle had been brought in from another state, like their own unit, they said No. It was from the DC National Guard. Another Guardsman we spoke with (not shown in the photo above) told us that the previous array of armored vehicles had been considered “too aggressive,” dictating a switch to the two humvees. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, who made that decision.
Apart from those at Union Station, we saw no other military equipment of any kind through the rest of the trek.
At various points along the walk, we saw small clusters of National Guard troops—usually three or four standing or walking in a group, only one time this larger assemblage, along the National Mall:
The groups we saw included men and women. The overwhelming majority of them were white, followed by Latino. They did not appear to be armed. They had their names visible on their uniforms. We never saw them approach or challenge anyone. Mainly they seemed to be trying to stay out of the general public’s way.
We spoke with a number of Guard members. All of them we dealt with were polite, open, and engaging. We introduced ourselves by saying we lived in DC, and asking where they were from. Most of those we met were from South Carolina; another unit was from West Virginia. We asked about their home towns, most of which we had visited and had contacts in. I didn’t think to ask them what their day-jobs were, apart from the Guard. None of them volunteered any larger political views.
I did ask quite a few of them how they felt about being deployed on the Mall, one of the lowest-crime zones in DC. None seemed to resent the question. They replied with some version of, Just doing our job.
Here was the main exception, just outside Union Station.
We also saw a group from the Poor People’s Army who had staged a march earlier today.
The most stunning thing about these hours of walking was how empty these usually thronged public sites were. Here was a sample vista of our Capitol. If you look very closely, you can detect two four human beings in this image. [Update: I had missed two of them.]
Here is the National Gallery. The guard welcomed us heartily when we came in.
Here is the Lincoln Memorial:
And here was the view from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Washington Monument and the Capitol, along the Reflecting Pool.
In August, 1963, more than 200,000 people crowded into this same space to hear Martin Luther King Jr. give his “I have a dream” speech. I have been here countless times, in all seasons, over the years. I have never seen it so empty.
Washington DC has always attracted visitors from around the world. This time a strikingly high proportion of the voices we heard were speaking a language other than English. The American visitors were the ones who have been scared away.
This was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, on one of the loveliest days we have ever enjoyed here. This is what we saw. This is what scare tactics can do.