The Democratic National Committee, which held its summer meeting Monday through Wednesday in Minneapolis, was virtually silent on President Donald Trump’s military takeover of Washington D.C. and his plans to deploy the National Guard in cities across the US.
On the opening day of the conference, attended by some 400 elected officials, Trump signed an executive order expanding his moves to military dictatorship beyond his August 11 police-military takeover of Washington D.C. He authorized an online portal to recruit ex-police, ex-soldiers and vigilantes for deployment in Washington and “other cities,” a paramilitary force under his personal control.
The order also instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to create a specialized unit within the D.C. National Guard to put down civil unrest and to ensure that every state’s National Guard is trained and available for rapid nationwide mobilization. This means the creation of a standing military-police force at the president’s disposal, ready to be unleashed against protests, strikes and political opposition anywhere in the country.
On Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a further tightening of the Trump administration’s grip on the nation’s capital with his department’s takeover of management of Union Station. The transportation hub, located near the Capitol, connects regional trains and buses to the Metro subway system and is a key link in the rail system along the East Coast and nationally.
Troops and military vehicles have been posted in and around the station since President Trump’s August 11 takeover of city policing. White House officials held a news conference there last week that was repeatedly drowned out by protesters. Duffy said the direct government takeover would bring “better security.”
The DNC did not even propose a resolution on these police state moves, although the meeting considered a total of 19 resolutions on various issues. There were various rhetorical flourishes from officials attending the meeting, for the most part characterizing Trump’s police state measures as a diversion from the Epstein scandal, inflation and social cuts and tax breaks for the rich contained in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” As is typical of the Democratic response, there was no clear warning of dictatorship and no appeal for popular resistance.
Representative Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said: “Donald Trump’s economic policies are failing, the Epstein files scandal continues to linger, and his public support is dwindling. It’s no wonder he seeks to distract the American people.”
It was all laid down to Trump’s personality, in order to conceal the class forces behind the drive to dictatorship and its main target, the working class. But as the World Socialist Web Site stated on August 26: “Trump is acting on behalf of a financial oligarchy, which is breaking with constitutional forms of rule.”
The statement went on to explain that American capitalism’s debt crisis is such that the oligarchy intends to resolve it by gutting the core social programs of the 20th century—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—which account for nearly two-thirds of the federal budget. This requires an unprecedented assault on the working class, which is to be driven into poverty. Trump and the oligarchy he represents know that such an assault will provoke an explosive eruption of working class resistance. Hence the pre-emptive erection of a police state to prepare savage and bloody military repression.
The near-silence and lack of any serious opposition from the Democratic Party—or any other official institution of bourgeois rule—is not accidental. As the August 26 WSWS statement explained:
This basic class dynamic also explains the role of the Democratic Party. While there may be disagreements over Trump’s methods, both big business parties accept that drastic changes in social policy must be imposed at the expense of the working class. The differences are tactical. On the central question—who will pay for the deepening crisis of American capitalism—there is no disagreement.
This was on full display Wednesday when Muriel Bowser, the Democratic mayor of Washington D.C., gave a press conference. She praised what she called the “federal surge” for bringing down carjackings, said she was “strategically using” federal resources (i.e., the police and military occupation) and pointedly said she had spoken to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the president. In other words, her administration was not merely staying silent but was fully collaborating in the imposition of martial law conditions in the city.
The Democratic Party’s complicity with the drive to dictatorship at home is complemented by its rabid support for the imperialist war against Russia in Ukraine and its backing of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. The DNC meeting defeated a resolution calling for the suspension of US military aid to Israel.