|
 |
Hey Bulwark fam, I’m back from Puerto Rico, and yes, seeing Bad Bunny’s show was a truly special moment. But let’s get down to business with today’s issue. Trump’s military farce and tough-on-crime fever dream in Washington, D.C. is having real impact—on the local economy, as restaurants struggle to stay afloat. So much for his supposed business acumen!
–Adrian
 |
BY DONALD TRUMP’S TELLING, WASHINGTON, D.C.’s restaurants are doing great. And, naturally, it’s all because of him.
“Friends of mine are going out to dinner,” Trump told reporters Monday, claiming that his deployment of federal forces brought unaccustomed tranquility to the streets of the nation’s capital. “They haven’t gone out to dinner in four years, they were petrified. Half the restaurants closed because nobody could go because they’re afraid to go outside. Now those restaurants are opening, and new restaurants are opening up, it’s like a boomtown.”
Hold up. We’re supposed to believe that “half the restaurants” in the city were closed? Because Washingtonians were cowering at home, peeking through their blinds? Famed chef and humanitarian José Andrés fired back in a tweet:
 |
Andrés is right. Trump’s deployment of 2,300 National Guard troops and 500 federal law enforcement agents has hurt foot traffic, chilled business, and made people cancel trips and nights out. It is slowly choking the life out of Washington, D.C. restaurants, which were still struggling to gain their post-pandemic footing just as Trump returned to town and started firing tens of thousands of their customers.
Shawn Townsend, head of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, announced that the city’s annual Restaurant Week is being extended because of the business-dampening effects of Trump’s actions, noting that “reservations were down in restaurants pretty significantly” the week after Trump launched his federal takeover. Data from OpenTable shows restaurant reservations down 24 percent from last year’s Restaurant Week, the New York Times reported.
But numbers tell only part of the story. In interviews with restaurant owners, chefs, and workers, another picture emerged: that of small businesses being harmed by a president who was elected because of his purported business acumen; of a man whose obsession with appearing tough on crime now threatens to sabotage urban economies across the country.
“People used to say Washington is recession-proof. Today Washington is a recession magnet,” Immigrant Food cofounder and “Restaurateur of the Year” candidate Peter Schechter told me. “We’re back to a very pandemic-feeling city. There are fewer people going to work, fewer people walking around, fewer cars, reservations are down, events have been canceled.”
Schechter has four locations in the D.C. area. While the businesses there were experiencing harm from Trump’s crackdown, he noted that the macro impact was more nuanced. Not all events were being canceled outright, he explained. Some were being relocated to the Immigrant Food location in Virginia across the river, where the belief is immigrants will be safer than in D.C. proper.
The realization that Trump’s crime crackdown in D.C. is really an anti-immigrant roundup has impacted other restaurants in the nation’s capital. The Tex-Mex breakfast taco shop La Tejana, which is owned by a Rio Grande Valley native, closed for two weeks. On the eve of its Friday reopening, the owners posted a statement on Instagram mourning the changed climate for immigrants and business owners:
As we prepare to reopen we are painfully aware that the city we left just two weeks ago has transformed into something completely foreign to the DC we know, love, and are proud to call home. The federal occupation has created a climate of palpable fear that is being felt in every corner of the city and in particular the restaurant industry. Hardworking people on their way to and from work (you know, the ones who make up the backbone of the entire local economy) are getting snatched up and detained.