As National Guard troops and federal officers swarmed Washington, D.C., in August, sent by President Donald Trump to confront what he declared a “crime emergency,” members of the city council expressed their outrage. Janeese Lewis George, who represents a northern ward with many immigrant residents that was immediately crawling with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, reported in November that her constituents “call me every day overwhelmed and terrified by the increased law enforcement presence,” adding, “This city is occupied.” At-large councilmember Robert White called the takeover “a dangerous political stunt.” His counterpart Christina Henderson worried that vehemently criticizing the invasion—which Trump justified by pointing to the District’s unique, not-quite-sovereign political status—would further endanger home rule in the city, but agreed nevertheless that the administration was relying on a “manufactured emergency.” Yet to Gregg Pemberton, the leader of the local police union, the intervention was “a drastic but necessary step.” The problem that had required it, he argued in a Washington Post op-ed published less than two weeks into the federal blitz, was none other …