Nationwide Guard troops formally reported for obligation within the nation’s capital immediately, right here to hold out President Donald Trump’s order to deal with what he calls a “crime emergency” in D.C. The president’s surprising transfer that federalizes the town’s Metropolitan Police Division has one big-name movie star chef up in arms.
José Andrés candidly condemned the president’s unprecedented determination to ship within the Military’s Nationwide Guard to the identical metropolis the place he opened his first restaurant, Jaleo, over 30 years in the past. “I’m proud to run a enterprise and lift a household right here,” wrote Andrés, in a Monday evening social media submit that’s since gained over 50,000 likes. “D.C. doesn’t want federalized troops…it wants leaders who respect our elementary founding ideas of democracy, dignity, and respect.”
Throughout his White Home press convention on Monday morning, Trump claims D.C. has been “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” in addition to “drugged out maniacs and homeless individuals.” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser bit again hours later, saying crime “isn’t simply down from 2023 — it’s additionally down from 2019, earlier than the pandemic,” and violent crime itself is at a 30-year low.
The restaurant trade stood in solidarity with Andrés and his assertion on Instagram, with supportive feedback flowing in from Delaware’s positive eating spot One Coastal and California chef Emily Brubaker, the just lately topped winner of NBC’s “Sure, Chef!” cooking present he hosted with Martha Stewart.
The worldwide humanitarian and cookbook writer, whose namesake hospitality group at present runs over 30 eating places across the globe, has a storied historical past with the Trump administration that goes again a decade in the past. After the then-presidential candidate made inflammatory remarks about immigrants, the Spanish American chef pulled his deliberate restaurant inside his Trump Worldwide Resort. (The 263-room, clocktower-topped resort alongside Pennsylvania Avenue NW later flipped right into a Waldorf Astoria and welcomed his luxe Bazaar by José Andrés in 2023.)
Whereas different native cooks aren’t saying a lot proper now, at the least one D.C. restaurant is brazenly endorsing the anti-Trump discourse. Miami-born Pikio Taco, the hip Mexican spot positioned in Dupont’s Generator resort, is internet hosting a last-minute comedy present on Thursday, August 14 to learn “two native organizations who’re doing crucial work” within the area: Free DC Undertaking and Migrant Solidarity Mutual Support Community.
Free DC hosted an informational Zoom assembly at 10 a.m. immediately to speak about its grassroots marketing campaign. Over 600 individuals had been break up into breakout teams to brainstorm methods to impress communities in every of their D.C. wards. One in style plan is to distribute Free DC advertising supplies to eating places and different companies that they’ll show in and out.
Throughout his White Home briefing on Monday, Trump tried to justify the federal takeover by reciting a metaphor his actual estate-developer dad used to say.
“Once you stroll right into a restaurant and also you see a grimy entrance door, don’t go in — as a result of if the entrance door is soiled, the kitchen’s soiled additionally. Similar factor with [D.C.]. If our capital’s soiled, our entire nation is soiled.”
The 800 troops on the town had been instructed they are going to be deployed right here for about six weeks, till Thursday, September 25.
The timing couldn’t be worse for D.C.’s restaurant scene, which already experiences a stoop in gross sales this time of 12 months when lots of its residents go on trip.
The troops will very a lot be on the streets in the course of the bi-annual Metropolitan Washington Restaurant Week (August 18-24), when greater than 350 eating places throughout D.C., Maryland, and Virginia provide prix fixe offers to spice up enterprise. It stays unclear how the Nationwide Guard’s patrolling presence will influence parking and clients’ want to dine out.
Final evening round dinnertime, hours earlier than the Nationwide Guard arrived, streets appeared significantly sparse – even for a summer time Monday evening in D.C.
