“The federal government is hunting for a justification to eliminate key bike lanes in the nation's capital, sources say — and if the feds are able to push that controversial agenda through, some fear it could set a disturbing new precedent for federal interference into active transportation projects across the nation.” 🤬

#Transportation #BikeLanes #ActiveTransportation #FederalGovernment #DCStatehood #CityPlanning #UrbanPlanning #UrbanDesign #TransportationPlanning

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2026/01/26/the-talk-of-d-c-rumors-flying-that-trump-wants-to-undo-bike-lanes-in-capital

The 51-minute “Free DC” chant at today’s Washington Spirit game.

The District is under military occupation. Congress still legally has the ability to overrule the local government. There is no voting representation in Congress. There’s a reason the license plates say “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”.

DC statehood now.

#FreeDC #NWSL #WoSo #WashingtonSpirit #DC #WashingtonDC #DCStatehood

D.C. has its issues, but armed soldiers from other states won’t solve them

After a week and change of wondering when a trip in or out of the D.C. would treat me to the sight of President Trump’s Aug. 11 decision to summon National Guard troops from the rest of the nation to serve as political props around the District, a Bikeshare commute for an event Tuesday provided visible proof: soldiers walking around Lafayette Square.

They were picking up trash.

Going to Union Station Friday afternoon provided a few more reminders: five soldiers, armed with pistols, standing on the upper level of Metro Center (one flashed a thumbs-up for a news photographer), and three outside Union Station, outnumbered by veterans under a tent with signs reminding current servicemembers of their duty to the Constitution.

I asked the three where they were from: Louisiana. After a bit of banter about the weather, I said I hoped they could get home to their families soon.

That’s not because I think the D.C. has crime1 solved–although it is down significantly across the city–but because soldiers are not the way to solve it. Law enforcement is not military service, those two professions have profoundly different missions and rules, and U.S. law has long prohibited using soldiers as cops for sound reasons.

The governors of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia who sent National Guard units to the District should know this, because multiple cities in their states have higher crime rates than D.C. If deploying armed National Guardsmen and women in urban areas helped stop murders, those governors would have done it already with a much smaller travel budget.

But sending a large contingent of soldiers carrying weapons into D.C. in particular does something else: advertise the president’s ability to treat my neighbors across the Potomac as subjects. While it seems clear that Trump broke the law when he sent National Guard units into Los Angeles without the permission of California’s government, the law expressly gives the president control of the D.C. National Guard, with zero input allowed to the District’s government.

Trump may think this show of force makes me nervous. If so, he’s wrong. It makes me angry. And it makes me even more convinced that the only way to end the abuse of power that Congress has also repeatedly enjoyed at the expense of the taxpaying people of D.C. is statehood for the people of D.C.

#DC_ #DCStatehood #DistrictOfColumbia #militarized #NationalGuard #statehoodNow #TrumpNationalGuard #TrumpOccupation #Washington