July 3 Friday roundup

In the latest podcast episode, I talk about the Trump administration getting the flowchart of oppression backward, and how we can take advantage of that error to keep them from shutting down democracy altogether. You can watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple, Spotify, and elsewhere. If you’d like to check out the links in the written version, you can read Tuesday’s post.

This morning, I headed down to the National Mall to see the “Great American State Fair” that seems to be doubling as a political event for Donald Trump. You probably already know that the greater DC area, along with much of the Northeastern U.S., is in a heat bubble right now. Temperatures downtown hit a hundred degrees by midday today, with the humidity making it truly unbearable to be outside in the sun.

A week ago, I’d been on the Mall with a friend, going to the Hirshhorn Museum before walking with her from there to Union Station on her way out of town. We were both horrified by all the fencing blocking passage or views in almost every direction, the enormous military presence, and the low-altitude jets flying overhead at regular intervals. Even crossing the Mall felt like trying to make a convoluted airport connection in a police state.

***

The scene kept coming to mind again in the days that followed. I remembered that my first evening on the National Mall for the Fourth of July took place in 1986, the summer after my freshman year at college. Beyond a memory of feeling like an excited child and an independent adult all at the same time, I don’t recall that first year particularly well.

But the next one is lodged more clearly in my memory. At that time, the drinking age for beer and wine in the District was 18, which happened to be my age. I went to Dixie Liquors, which sat just blocks from campus (what a terrible name for any DC establishment) and bought a bottle of wine. A friend and I picked out a block of cheddar cheese from the Safeway up the street and a loaf of fresh bread from a bakery.

We bundled our rations and a blanket into a backpack and walked down to the National Mall, as far as the Washington Monument. Except right by the Capitol Building, there were no security checkpoints, fences, or barricades. No National Guard, no jet flyovers. The two of us didn’t need much room, and we sat right on the slope leading up to the monument itself.

It was a beautiful evening. The sky went dark; the fireworks began. By then, we were both a little drunk. A minute or two before the finale, the smoking husk of one explosive fell out of the sky onto my bare calf.

The incendiary device had cooled on the way down, leaving me the tiniest of injuries, more like a scrape than a burn. After the show ended, we gathered our things and dissolved into the night alongside everyone else.

Reading about the corruption dogging this year’s event, I couldn’t help grieving for what had really been a community celebration for the city and the country alike. In past years, many people who lived in DC showed up, even as many more came from out of town and across the nation. In an era of a tremendously higher crime rate than exists today, anyone could come up and wander on and off the mall at will. My husband recalls helping some people decades ago, as they carried a battered couch from their apartment down onto the Mall, in search of a deluxe viewing experience.

***

I saw several writers describing how desolate and miserable the fair turned out to be this week, but I didn’t want to assume that what I’d seen with my friend on June 25 represented the final form of the spectacle as a whole. So I girded myself to go back down this morning, despite the heat, and find out what the experience was like now.

Dana Milbank’s column a few days ago for NOTUS about having his pen taken away on entry served as a good warning not to bring much along with me if I wanted to get through security. (I certainly wouldn’t be bringing a bottle of wine or a couch.) The metro’s orange line brought me straight from Falls Church in Virginia down to the Smithsonian stop on the National Mall. I carried only ID, a credit card, my phone, and the lone bottle of water the government had agreed to allow each individual coming into the fair.

The train was half-full, which is unusual heading into the city on a summer weekend, let alone a Fourth of July weekend—let alone the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. What struck me visually on the trip and when I rode the escalator up onto the Mall was that everyone I saw was white. The city is incredibly diverse, and I can’t recall ever seeing an all-white crowd before (even for the Trump 2025 inauguration, a cold day in hell that I also covered for this newsletter).

On the Mall a line had formed, stretching for a hundred feet or so before bending left toward some barricades, where people snaked their way back and forth to get to security.

It was already broiling, and the line took more than twenty minutes in the open sun to get through. Just as I reached the bend that let me off the main drag, twenty or more members of the National Guard passed by, walking single file past us along the walkway toward the metro.

They seemed to be coming on or off their shift as a group, but they definitely weren’t marching or performing. The people in line, however, began to clap. Soon, everyone was applauding and calling out “Thank you!”

Even odder was the applause that erupted spontaneously when a single jet flew overhead. Later, another pilot would zoom back and forth and do aerial stunts. But the first one was just flying above us, to great acclaim despite the noise.

It further underlined that all these people were from out of town. Most of the locals I know aren’t happy about the constant presence of the National Guard wandering the city and roughing people up, being far from the DC sites their governors intended to send them to, or standing around pretending that military occupation for no reason is normal. And people are likewise tired of the jets that have been flying nonstop at all hours, making the city feel like a war zone.

Don’t get me wrong—the U.S. is at war this very minute, with Iran. Maybe in some other situation, it would be good to be reminded of the harm and costs of that. But it didn’t feel like that’s what these barricades and fences, the security, the jets, the National Guard, and the rest are all about. They weren’t hardening the capital against any actual threat—they’re there to police everyday Americans.

I passed the Fox & Friends booth and the exercise station where, even at 10:30 am, the staffers had hidden from the sun, wisely sitting in the shade well away from the equipment. People greeted me in friendly ways in the state pavilions, but few of them seemed to have come from the states they were representing. Though many people used it to get out of the sun, the enormous “Faith & Family” pavilion straddling the hot field seemed like more of a provocation than a refuge.

After an hour, I decided to leave. It took me fifteen minutes to find an exit—I finally sneaked out an unmanned back way marked for exhibitors. Heading toward the metro again, I met a protester named Mark. Hoisting a poster over his head, Mark was suffering from the heat and covered in sweat. I asked why on Earth he came out alone on a day like today.

“I’m worried,” he said, “that we’re getting to a place in when we can no longer bring up differing opinions and politics—when it won’t be allowed or safe to do so.”

Soon after I left, the fair was closed to the public for the rest of the afternoon, with the heat said to be too dangerous for events to proceed as planned. If I hadn’t been there myself to see, I might have wondered if the White House had just wanted to mask the poor attendance today.

But even before the announcement was made, I’d posted on Bluesky that I didn’t think the area was safe for most humans until at least 6pm. And I meant that literally. So I’m guessing medical authorities weighed in with a stronger and more authoritative advisory than mine.

On the ride home, I was thinking of the concentration camp for immigrants at Delaney Hall in Newark, where the air conditioning and even the ventilation has failed this weekend. The detainees there are suffering the same 100-degree conditions that prevailed on the Mall. But where they’re held, an exit is much harder to find, and always guarded.

It occurred to me that the Trump administration is draping the city more and more in the visual trappings of a concentration camp. But for now—for those of us not in places like Delaney Hall—it’s half metaphor, half threat.

Wandering around the sterile, blasted empty stage set, I’d found myself grieving previous Fourth of July celebrations that at least made some feeble attempt to celebrate the dream of the country living up to its democratic ideals. I also lamented the loss of one more site where community could take shape organically, where fences, walls, and barricades had no place.

This was the most brutal heat I’ve seen during my decades in the metro DC area. Honestly, I would stay home Saturday night. But if you’re in town and are determined to see a Fourth of July show, you can experience a more real DC, with at least a little less police-state drama, by heading to the fireworks display at Anacostia Park.

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