Depending on who you listen to, President Donald Trump’s decision to seize control over law enforcement in Washington, DC, is either an authoritarian menace or a farce.

The authoritarian menace case is straightforward: Trump is (again) asserting the power to deploy the National Guard to a major US city, while adding the new wrinkle of federalizing the local police force based on a wholly made-up emergency. He is, political scientist Barbara Walter warns, “building the machinery of repression before it’s needed,” getting the tools to violently shut down big protests “in place before the next election.”

The farce case focuses less on these broad fears and more on the actual way it has played out. Instead of nabbing DC residents who oppose the president, federal agents appear to be aimlessl

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