After saying just last week that the National Guard troops deployed to Washington would not be carrying guns, the Pentagon on Friday admitted what we all knew was coming—of course they will be carrying guns. 

It was always inevitable that President Donald Trump would seek to ratchet up the pressure on the residents of the nation’s capital, who he loathes for being insufficiently white, insufficiently conservative, and insufficiently in thrall to his cult of personality. Part of how you know this was a foregone conclusion is that the administration isn’t even pegging the reversal to any particular incident. Nope, just a vague statement from a Pentagon official saying that “members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our Nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training.”

The New York Times, ever eager to give the administration the benefit of the doubt that it never deserves, said that “it was not clear whether the troops would be armed as they walked through the city, or simply store their weapons in their vehicles, which would not be a significant change over their current status.”

Dunno, paper of record. It seems pretty clear what’s going on here. 

This time around, the administration isn’t even bothering to say this is necessary because the situation is particularly dangerous, discarding the meager fig leaf it used when deploying troops to Los Angeles. In fact, the announcement that the troops are going to carry guns comes on the heels of Vice President JD Vance running around declaring that things are so much safer already. On Thursday, before the announcement about arming troops, Trump declared that “Everybody’s safe now. Everybody feels safe.”

While Republicans might be babies who are always terrified of their own shadow and therefore need armed troops around at all times—looking at you, Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin—people who actually live in D.C. were fine and understood that crime has plummeted.

Trump has made no secret of the fact that he sees what is happening in D.C. as a proof of concept, with plans to occupy other blue cities in a similar fashion. “We’re going to make it safe, and we’re going to then go on to other places, but we’re going to stay here for a while.”

The only reason to arm the troops in D.C. is to continue to treat the residents of the nation’s capital like federal subjects to be, well, subjugated. While Vance is boasting of how safe everyone feels, while Donald Trump Jr. is spewing unhinged fantasies of “hardened leftists” saying that being occupied by federal troops is a “wonderful thing,” the view on the ground is quite different. Day cares aren’t taking kids on walks for fear they will be attacked by Trump’s roving gangs of ’roided-up masked agents and day care staff have stopped showing up for fear of the same. Restaurant reservations have also plummeted, despite what Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says. 

The city isn’t safer. It’s under siege, and that’s exactly what the administration wants. Of course they were always going to bust out the guns.