The sight is as surreal as it is chilling: National Guard troops in camouflage fanning out across Washington, D.C., not in response to war or natural disaster, but under the direct order of President Donald Trump. Tourists strolling the National Mall now share sidewalks with armed soldiers and federal agents, a spectacle that critics say resembles the opening chapter of authoritarian rule rather than a crime-fighting initiative.

Two weeks into Trump’s “federal takeover” of the nation’s capital, questions grow louder by the day. What exactly are these 800 National Guard soldiers, flanked by ICE officers, DEA agents, and U.S. Park Police, supposed to be doing? Attorney General Pam Bondi boasts that her forces arrested 68 people on Saturday night — but the Metropolitan Police Department averages that many arrests in a single day without help. Over two weeks, Bondi claims 300 arrests have been made. By the MPD’s own averages, that figure would be closer to 900 without federal intervention.

“It’s not about policing,” one city official said bluntly. “It’s about intimidation.”

The intimidation is evident in where Trump’s troops are deployed. Instead of targeting D.C.’s high-crime neighborhoods, they patrol bustling nightlife corridors and tourist centers, ticketing residents for public drinking, marijuana possession, and broken taillights. Business at bars and restaurants has reportedly dropped by a third compared to the same period last summer. Trump, once the self-proclaimed champion of small business, is presiding over a crackdown that suffocates the city’s economy.

Still, the most alarming development is not the wasted resources, but the escalation. Over the weekend, Republican governors from South Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio pledged to send up to 750 of their own National Guard soldiers to back Trump’s operation. Mississippi joined soon after, promising 200 troops. None of them are trained in urban policing. Some may now be armed.

The historical echoes are inescapable. Commentators have noted the irony of South Carolina’s involvement — it was the first state to secede in 1861 and its attack on Fort Sumter ignited the Civil War. Others recall Ohio’s National Guard firing on unarmed students at Kent State in 1970, killing four.

Jeff Sharlet, a journalist who has chronicled the rise of Trumpism, calls the moment a “slow civil war.” On social media he warned: “Armed troops from red states descending on a blue city is just a few inches — or maybe one exchange of gunfire — short of a civil war’s opening stages.”

Some scholars push back on the civil war framing, cautioning against fatalism. “We are not close to a civil war,” said Anjali Dayal, a professor of international politics at Fordham University. “But we are perilously close to a mass casualty event because of the undisciplined nature of irregular security forces and an extremely armed civil society.”

Trump, for his part, has made little effort to disguise the political theater. He insists crime is “out of control” in the capital, despite the city’s statistics showing crime is dramatically down. His allies in conservative media amplify the message nightly, while his critics warn that Trump is conditioning Americans to accept the sight of federal forces patrolling Democratic-led cities.

The risks extend beyond the Guard units themselves. Trump has already pardoned nearly 1,600 individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection. Many of them are affiliated with far-right militias. Now, these men walk free while Trump invites soldiers from red states into blue urban centers. It is a combustible mix.

Historians note that “slow civil wars” rarely announce themselves with clear battle lines. Instead, they build through intimidation, sporadic violence, and normalization of armed force in civic life. “We’re in our years of lead,” Sharlet said, invoking a phrase used to describe political violence in 1970s Italy.

The deployment in Washington may not yet be a war. But it is an unmistakable escalation — one that makes a mass casualty event in the heart of the capital more likely than at any time in modern memory.

Trump’s gamble is as transparent as it is dangerous: to prove his strength, he is willing to put soldiers in the streets of an American city, daring his opponents to call it what it increasingly resembles — the opening moves of authoritarian rule.

For those who remember the promise of democracy, the sight of armed troops in Washington is more than intimidation. It is a warning. And it may be the first flicker of a fire the nation is not prepared to face.