100% intended, they want DC to suffer, they want it to feel hostile to everyone who lives there or goes there. The Republican ideal is for cities to be places where everyone is afraid of getting kidnapped or shot by roving gangs of masked bandits working in cahoots with the police.
And then what?
Actively building Biff's Timeline.
please take this data with some caution. The data they are using from last year was during our Restaurant Week (Aug 12-18 2024) which has an incredibly high number of reservations via open table. 2025 restaurant week starts tomorrow and we need to see that data to really compare
I 100% believe that we in DC are being cautious and are going through a really horrible time and that reservations are in fact lower, but the data points comparing Aug 15 2024 and Aug 15 2025 are under very different circumstances
last year that week was restaurant week. it's this coming week this year. I would wait and see on this one
Yep. Same with drops in restaurant traffic, street vendors' sales, etc. in L.A. after Trump's stunts here began.
Do a lot voters live in cities or no?
Trump is hell for any economy he involves himself in.
The tyrant Dong Zhuo has declared martial law in the capitol?! What are the enunichs doing
Every Trump action seems "designed" to disrupt the US economy. From destabilizing the labor market by disrupting the flow of temporary (low cost) workers, disrupting tourism both internal and external, displacing ten of thousands of government workers and, of course, his inflationary tariffs.
Disrupt = destroy
He wants to turn the cities into theme parks of America Lite for tourists from Podunk.
Yes and No. What Trump & Minions really want is to seize control of the country and make DC their exclusive high-end playground. But until then, yes - they want ppl to think that Trump has already taken over. When he’s actually quite limited in his power - when the courts/Dems are doing their jobs.
well, they generally already are, if they don’t actually live in a city.
Is it possible this is something less than a masterstroke of political genius.
Want to know what's next in DC? You don't need to look far. open.substack.com/pub/controla...
Is attendance up at Trump’s private club?
Cities are blue because people are there. Get the people out. Problem solved
back to the future 2’s alternate 2015 really is their goal, huh
“Cities are the engines of our economy,” and what they’re doing is gonna stack nicely with “let’s add a 20% tariff / tax on everything,” and “let’s decimate the immigrant workforce and plummet housing demand”
#ETTD
They reconstituted COVID as masked goons.
Roving bands of masked people carrying weapons of war does tend to take one’s appetite away.
Along with every other abuse, it’s a form of election interference.
They want to buy up the properties for them and their cronies.
One of the leading intellectuals of the antebellum south made the unironic claim that paved roads were degenerate because they allowed the lowborn to easily travel beyond their demense.
They want cities to be Potemkin villages. For the rich to swagger around the gilded Nazi architecture and waited upon by enslaved minorities.
This isn't coming out of my ass. This is similar to how cities operated in the antebellum south: A playground for rich planters where they could indulge in a garden of earthly delights secure in the knowledge that they were predestined for salvation by virtue of their race.
Donald trump is the successor to Jefferson Davis. He's not the 47th president of the USA, he's the 2nd president of the Confederate States of America
Basically to take away all the good parts of living in a city. Restaurants and museums and libraries and arts, all the stuff that has been drawing people to cities away from rural misery for centuries.
More unemployment as well. Phase 1: federal workers Phase 2: hospitality workers Phase 3: ??
And simply, they just want to punish and own the libs
My husband & I went out for dinner last night (reservations made well before this “national emergency”) and I made sure he drove us since he’s a clean cut white guy and I’m ambiguously ethnic enough to possibly check a few different boxes if some a-hole manning a checkpoint wanted to be unpleasant
Checkpoints? Man, if that's not some Syrian bullshit... Oh my goodness, this has got to stop!!
I’ve never thought twice before about going out in DC, a city we’ve lived in for the last 17+ years. Last night was literally the first time (maybe 2nd counting J6) that I’ve been even kind of worried about my safety in this city
It is all performative.
This is what they want, but we don’t have to agree. DC residents are showing up and showing us what more of us will need to do. We can only take back our democracy if we act, each of us as best we can.
They want to bring back the 70s and 80s and if that means supplying the superpredators federally they'll do it!
There goes tourism
