"WASHINGTON, D.C. — Bobbi Stevenson Bauer loves her flowers. The Arlington, Virginia, resident often travels to downtown Washington, D.C., to visit the Enid A. Haupt Garden at the Smithsonian and the U.S. Botanic Garden, two of the many tourist destinations that are situated along the National Mall. So she has a good sense of what is typical for tourist traffic this time of year.
“I haven’t seen it this empty since Covid,” she reported during a recent visit. “It could just be that it’s the end of [the summer] tourist season, but it feels almost eerie. The most noticeable difference [recently] is that now [some of] the National Guard are carrying rifles, not the small arms announced earlier.”
In mid-August, President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to D.C. to purportedly “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” sending hundreds of soldiers to areas across the city including the Mall, Union Station, subway stations, and other places. In response, critics have pointed out that the capital city’s violent crime rate has been dropping significantly in recent years—hitting a 30-year low in 2024—and accused the president of having political motives for drawing negative attention to a Democrat-leaning city. The president has since suggested that similar deployments will soon happen in Chicago, New York, and other cities.
Since January, the Trump administration’s decisions regarding NPS, particularly a 24% reduction in its workforce, have led to shuttered visitor centers, deferred maintenance, and understaffed areas, as well as widespread concerns about longer-term impacts on the park system. In D.C., the primary issue seems to be that the military presence may be keeping visitors away from the city's beloved monumental core. And when people do congregate on parkland, it tends to be in protest."
Kim O'Connell reports for National Parks Traveler September 3, 2025.
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