There's a darkness' Distress in Washington as Maga seizes control

It was an audience more accustomed to stifling a cough. But when they spotted the vice-president, JD Vance, taking his seat at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Thursday night, the concertgoers erupted in unrestrained boos, jeers, and shouts of "You ruined this place!"

- David Smith

The noisy protest exemplified the culture clash taking place in the US capital. It came in the same week that work began to remove a giant Black Lives Matter mural near the White House, a top political columnist quit the Washington Post newspaper, and a spending bill passed by the House of Representatives sought to impose budget cuts of $1.1 billion (£850 million) on the District of Columbia (DC).

Compounding it all, with Elon Musk's so-called "department of government efficiency" (Doge) slashing the federal workforce, some residents fear that Washington could go the way of Detroit half a century ago: a city that loses its principal industry and goes into a downward spiral.

"Everybody feels the atmosphere is toxic here and you can't get away from it," said Sally Quinn, an author and journalist. "People are so distraught and so down and in despair."

The Republican lost last year's presidential election in DC to his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, by 86 percentage points.

As in other arenas, Trump's second term is more direct and intentional than the first, and includes the cultural equivalent of precision airstrikes against the liberal residents of Washington.

Last Monday, crews started work to remove a giant yellow "Black Lives Matter" slogan painted on a street one block from the White House. The DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, had ordered the painting and renamed the intersection Black Lives Matter Plaza in June 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Its erasure five years later exposes how vulnerable DC is now that Trump is back in the White House and Republicans control both houses of Congress.