Trump’s DC police takeover echoes history of racist narratives about crime | AP News

President Trump said he was declaring a public safety emergency, taking over the DC police and calling in National Guard troops to fight crime and tackle homelessness in the nation’s capital. Some DC residents are reacting. (AP Video: River Zhang)

By  MATT BROWN Updated 8:30 AM PDT, August 12, 2025

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has taken control of D.C.’s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety crisis.

Even as district officials questioned the claims underlying his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” His rhetoric echoed that used by conservatives going back decades who have denounced cities, especially those with majority non-white populations or led by progressives, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

“This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump promised Monday.

Trump’s action echoes uncomfortable historical chapters

As D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters Tuesday, for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action.

April Goggans, a longtime D.C. resident and grassroots organizer, said she was not surprised by Trump’s actions. Communities had been preparing for a potential federal crackdown in D.C. since the summer of 2020, when Trump deployed troops during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.

“We have to be vigilant,” said Goggans, who has coordinated local protests for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law enforcement could mean for residents’ freedoms.

“Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,” she said.

Other residents reacted with mixed feelings to Trump’s executive order. Crime and homelessness has been a top concern for residents in recent years, but opinions on how to solve the issue vary. And very few residents take Trump’s catastrophic view of life in D.C.

“I think Trump’s trying to help people, some people,” said Melvin Brown, a D.C. resident. “But as far as (him) trying to get (the) homeless out of this city, that ain’t going to work.”

“It’s like a band-aid to a gunshot wound,” said Melissa Velasquez, a commuter into D.C. “I feel like there’s been an increase of racial profiling and stuff, and so it’s concerning for individuals who are worried about how they might be perceived as they go about their day-to-day lives.”

Uncertainty raises alarms

According to White House officials, troops will be deployed to protect federal assets and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests. The Trump administration believes the highly visible presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some advocates.

“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.

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Concept for discussion: Replacing HTTP Signatures with Bearer Tokens for ActivityPub Federation

Curious what other people think about this idea. What if federation security was re-worked to use target-assigned bearer tokens to authenticate GET/POST requests? This would remove the need for complicated signing schemes and reduce system load under heavy traffic bursts (as no cryptography is required).

A basic implementation could look like this:
1. When instance A (a.example.com) first attempts to federate with instance B (b.example.com), a POST request is made to a dedicated registration endpoint. (for discussion, we'll say it's https://b.example.com/activity-pub/register-instance). This request includes fields necessary for verification, including the source domain name, target domain name, and a securely-generated verification token. Other metadata could be included to allow instance B to selectively allow/prohibit federation based on other criteria, but this is optional.
2. Instance B makes a POST request back to a dedicated verification endpoint on instance A (for discussion, we'll say it's https://a.example.com/activity-pub/verify-registration). This request must include the target domain name and verification token provided in step 2.
3. Instance A checks the verification token (and verify that it matches the target domain name) and return a successful value. The verification code must be invalidated after this call!
4. Instance B, after verifying instance A's request, returns a securely-generated federation key back to instance A. This federation key is a bearer token used to authenticate all requests from instance A to instance B. This key must be unique to instance A!
5. Instance A completes the original request with the Authorization header set to Bearer {federation_key}.
6. Instance B receives the request, detects the federation key, and checks it against the list of registered instances.
7. If the key does not exist or A has been defederated, then a 403 Forbidden error is returned.
8. If the key is expired or revoked, then 401 Unauthorized error is returned. Upon receiving a 401 error, instance A should start over from step 1 to re-authenticate and complete the request with a new token. This process should not be repeated for recursive failures!
9. If the key is approved, then a 200 OK response or 202 Accepted response is returned, and A can consider the request as successful.

Advantages versus HTTP Signatures:
- No cryptography requirements.
- Simple logic, no edge cases around HTTP query parameters or header order.
- Equally effective for all request types.
- Keys can be easily revoked or rotated.
- Supports authorized fetch and defederation use cases "by default".

Disadvantages versus HTTP Signatures:
- Breaks the actor model - instances are required as a first-class concept. (but really, the actor model is basically dead already. you can't even federate reliably without a WebFinger server, at minimum.)
- Requires multi-request "handshake" before communication. (but this is already required in practice, since a signature can't be validated without first requesting the signing actor.)
- Out-of-band protocol - communication can't happen over ActivityPub / ActivityStreams because this is a prerequisite to authenticate any request. (but again, we already require WebFinger and some software requires NodeInfo for full support.)

So, what are your thoughts? Good idea? Bad idea? Did I miss something? Please let me know, I welcome replies here!

#ActivityPub #AP #Federation