DC Trump’s police takeover has a surprising victim: restaurant reserves

DC restaurant reservations fell last week, down 16% on Monday – the day it invoked the DC Home Rule law – 27% Tuesday and 31% on the same days in 2024, according to OpenTable. Wusa, a local television channel, was the first to report on the news.

Washington, DC, is one of the few American cities to see a drop in catering reserves in August compared to last year, according to Opentable. Before Trump’s police take control, DC had improved booking figures for 11 consecutive months on one year on the other, according to Wusa.

This makes this August all the more striking. August is generally the slowest month of the year for restaurants in Washington, while corners of the congress and families go on a last minute vacation.

“There has always been the expectation that reservations are falling in August,” said Shawn Townsend, president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Washington restaurant association, who noted that university moves and family trips are major seasonal factors. “But the additional visibility of federal agents and troops in the streets cannot be ignored – this contributes to slowdown.”

At the same time, warned Townsend, it is still too early to say to what extent the decline is directly linked to Trump’s policy, because the mobilization of the federal forces only started in mid -week.

Ariel Pereira, an Osteria al Volo server, an Italian restaurant in DC, said Fortune He “absolutely” saw a drop in guests. He estimated that only 40% of the dining room is seated, while the restaurant is generally at full capacity.

However, he did not know if he should assign this to the recent takeover, or because of the children who return to school.

Reservations have also dropped over the past two weeks in the neighboring city of Baltimore, according to open data. However, the decline is much lower: the reserves dropped by less than 10% each day, except on August 17, which showed a 19% drop.

Trump, meanwhile, painted a different image. On Monday, sitting next to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the president told journalists that he thought that restaurants are more crowded than they have been for a long time.

“The press says:” He is a dictator, he tries to take over. No, all I want is the security of our people, “said Trump. “But people who have not released dinner in Washington, DC, in two years, and restaurants have been busy than they have been for a long time.”

Even if the crime at DC fell to a 30 -year -old hollow this year, Trump deployed last week 800 troops of the National Guard as well as hundreds of federal agents to rage against the city. Governors of the GOP states on August 16 are committed to sending 750 additional soldiers. According to the White House, officials have since arrested around 300 people, more than 40% of whom are undocumented immigrants Washington Post.

Trump’s move met with significant reactions from residents, hundreds of people going to the streets to protest against the “hostile takeover” on August 16. Protesters also gathered to demonstrate against the curfew of young people posed by the DC police, which prevents adolescents under 17 from meeting in large groups in a popular meeting area.

Some DC residents support the move.

“I am happy that Trump will ask his department to take control of the police service. I think it’s necessary, I think we will have some results,” NBC Washington Leroy Thorpe told NBC.

Cheryl Watson, another member of the group, concluded, adding that “children are uncontrollable”.

Other residents have reported strangely empty streets and “itinerant patrols” that disturb them.

“There is no crime crisis at DC,” Rosa Brooks, a former DC Metropolitan Reserve police officer, told NPR.

“It is the territory of the police state, the territory of the police state of the Republic of banana,” she said.