Despite what national authorities may tell you, Washington, D.C. is not a dangerous city. On August 22nd, this fact was apparently not of great concern to the nation’s commander-in-chief, who federalized the D.C. National Guard and sent 2,200 National Guard members to the city. This was carried out on erroneous grounds that the nation’s capital had the “fourth-highest homicide rate in the country,” and that the homicide rate had “reached the highest rate probably ever.” It is upon the backdrop of this federal disregard for the truth that citizens of D.C. — as members of D.C. juries — have taken a stand against what they see as the illegitimate state authority, and a military occupation.
The People’s Rejection
In three known cases brought against D.C. residents physically resisting members of the National Guard, D.C. juries have engaged in jury nullification, or the acquittal of a defendant despite evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant violated the law. It is, in essence, a stance put forth by a jury that the law does not represent a moral reality, and that the state is no longer in its right to punish even a guilty person. This pattern comes in stark contrast with the President’s orders for prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., to “throw the book” at D.C. arrestees. As the federal government attempts to press down its boot, D.C. juries are using jury nullification to mount their own resistance.
Jury nullification is an especially unique mode of resistance by the people of D.C., as jury nullification is as legitimate and enumerated a legal process as prosecution by the state and a fair trial (unlike methods such as mass protest or civil disobedience). It is wholly consistent with the structure of the American legal system: just as a judge is vested with the authority to determine sentencing, a jury of peers holds the responsibility of determining the guilt of their fellow citizen. It is also wholly consistent with the principles of government on which the founders depended when they crafted this nation. Verily, this dispute over the National Guard’s deployment, between civil society and the federal government’s authority, is not without precedent: we celebrate an identical moment in history with extravagant fireworks, lyrics of Miley Cyrus, and perhaps your uncle’s barbeque every single year.
Locke and the Founding Fathers
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”
These familiar remarks from the founding document of the United States, though authored by one Thomas Jefferson, were not original proposals of his, nor uniquely relevant to the time in which he wrote them. Rather, they are derived from the philosophy of John Locke. Locke lived in a time when Britain was torn by the question of the absolutist monarch’s power and where the government derived its authority from. His answer — one we’d consider common sense in the modern day, but that was radical for 17th century Britain — was that the government derives legitimacy only through the consent of the governed, and on specific terms. The state is obligated to justly protect the natural rights of its citizens, in return for the authority and legitimacy it holds. When the state drifts into the imposition of injustice, Locke posits that there is a grievance held on the part of a dyspeptic people that must be addressed, whether through incremental restitution, or full blown revolution.
There may not exist a more poignant modern embodiment of Locke’s aggrieved people than the people of Washington, D.C. The city of over 700,000 essentially lacks enfranchisement, with no representation (that is, representation with voting capabilities) in Congress, despite having a greater population than that of the state of Wyoming. It’s been the site of a 224 year old statehood controversy, one that has only escalated in recent years, with the potential of 2 new D.C. senators being a dream of Democrats and an existential threat to the Republicans. Thus, in 2025, D.C. is the one place in the nation that can incontrovertibly be described as under occupation.
In America, when such a dispute between government and people arises, the people have time and time again turned to jury nullification. In colonial America, juries utilized jury nullification on a Lockean basis to protest British laws such as the Navigation Acts and the Conventicle Act. A full-blown revolution against British rule was soon to follow. In the antebellum North, mobs stormed courthouses trying runaway enslaved people for violating the Fugitive Slave Act, rescuing these runaways from a return to slavery. When these mobs were in turn prosecuted for obstruction of justice, juries would refuse to convict them, morally rejecting a reprehensible law upholding chattel slavery. Less than two decades later, the nation was plunged into the Civil War. Jury nullification today, then, is an ominous warning of what is to come if the American people and government continue to diverge so drastically in their conceptions of reality.
These principles form the basis of the dispute between the citizens of D.C. and the federal government. Regardless of whose stance on crime and what constitutes a state of emergency is correct, it stands true that Americans do not agree with the terms of the federal government’s occupation. Recent jury nullification in D.C. in response to the deployment of the National Guard represents a Lockean rejection of illegitimate state action. It is the people’s last recourse against what they see as a momentarily tyrannical, unjust government. Their acquittals suggest that ordinary citizens, not federal prosecutors, are taking on the role of arbiters of justice when they believe the government is overstepping its legitimate authority.
Begging the Question
It is not my intention to lambast the National Guard’s action in D.C. or run to the defense of the federal government. I offer an alternative aspect of this dispute that may be the object of your disquietude. There should be an inherent cause for concern when such stark dissonance as we see now arises between the government and the people the government has a duty to rule and represent. This deepening divide is indicative of widespread mistrust of the government, and of the obscurity of widely agreed upon truth. We must ask not only what reaction is reasonable on the part of Americans, but further question the morality of ongoing government action.
There are various sources to which today’s scarcity of truth can be attributed. In a general sense, the story of the American 21st century has been unwavering political polarization. Since 2012, 91 percent of U.S. Senate elections have been won by candidates representing the party that won that state’s most recent presidential election. Voters and candidates alike coalesce to the party program, and to the “version” of the news, narrative, and rhetoric that shares this coalescence. This has created conditions where it has not been infrequent for the American public and American politicians to hold to quite different interpretations of plain reality.
I argue, however, that the dispute that has sprouted D.C.’s Lockean protests is a bit different. It has arisen from the current presidential administration’s plain disregard for what the rational agent may consider to be true or accurate. If it fits the administration’s policy agenda, D.C. and Portland can be “burning” to the ground, all while residents of these cities experience life as they always have. AI-generated content regularly posted on the president’s social media blurs the line between what can be considered a “joke” and an accurate statement by his office. When the government makes a habit of putting narrative over truth, the people on the ground come to be suspicious of what should be a reputable, legitimate institution. They come to sympathize with the theories of Locke, rather than more moderate theories of government such as the popular theory of John Rawls, who urges obedience even in the face of some unjust laws.
Faux Patriotism
This modern-day reemergence of Lockean defiance is uniquely offensive to an American presidential administration which has sought to emulate and associate with the Founding Fathers of the United States more so than any regime in American history, than any sitting government in the world. For the Trump Administration to find itself on the tyrannical side of a Lockean dichotomy is rather damning for the faux-patriotic image it tries so desperately to present.
What this dichotomy reveals is that the Trump Administration and MAGA movement’s claims to represent a true, historical America of small government and free market capitalism are in a truer sense just tenets of right-wing populism and neoconservatism. There is nothing “small” or unintrusive about a government that appropriates armed soldiers to serve the function of law enforcement so that a nativist immigration policy can be implemented in full effect. An administration that touts its “America first” agenda, that dismantles diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and removes “anti-American” imagery from Smithsonian museums and national parks cannot claim to represent the ethos of the American experiment when it must be fought with the same tactics and philosophies the Founders used to fight British tyranny.
Though the Trump Administration hides the ideological items on its agenda in the aesthetics of patriotism, it is in no way emblematic of the revolutionaries who established the United States. The political ideology of the Founding Fathers was indisputably rooted in Locke’s classical liberalism, in the very same principles of the consent of the governed and the right of a people “absolved from any farther Obedience” to seek rectification that D.C. juries take hold of through jury nullification.
To the Governed
Jury nullification is a valid expression of the people’s discontent, and their concerns are intellectually grounded in the philosophy of John Locke. It is not a reckless or uninformed form of protest, but rather a truly commendable and grounded act of defiance. Its utilization in 2025 echoes that familiar, 249 year old moment which we annually idolize. By comparing modern day jury nullification with the methods of the founders, we may see how the current presidential administration has grown uncomfortably similar to that tyrannical government which the founders vehemently rejected.
Whether the government has truly overstepped its authority, and how you should respond, is for you to decide.
Featured Image Source: Posterazzi
