Fencing Off Protesters From the White House is a Weird Way of Doing Democracy, But OK!

The visual abomination that was the White House UFC Arena just last week may no longer be standing, but one need not look much farther to see more instances of uglification via Trump’s vanity projects in Washington. The ongoing ballroom-hopeful is still a heaping mess of nothing, the East Wing is depressingly just a pile of rubble, and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool—which the president was hoping to make into “American flag blue”—has somehow fermented on plans to turn into a sickly algae green. Alas, it appears Trump’s still not done with trying to execute every metaphorical attack on democracy that he can think of—and most recently, he proposed fencing off Lafayette Square, a park near the White House that’s been used by protesters since the early 1900s. Because… darn those pesky First Amendment rights!

According to three sources who spoke to the Washington Post on Wednesday with knowledge of the plans, Trump wants to erect a permanent fence on two sides of Lafayette that can shut access between the public park and the White House whenever a “security risk” is at hand. While the park has been cordoned off by temporary fences before—such as during Trump’s first term, when Black Lives Matter protesters gathered at Lafayette in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, though they were then attacked by federal agents—a story that generated a lawsuit that was eventually dismissed in 2024. Per the sources, various officials across different parts of the government—as well as the Secret Service—have been pushing for something more permanent.

But Lafayette, for decades, has been one of the most effective and commonly used spaces for demonstrations, namely for its positioning directly north of the White House. This started in the early 1900s, when Alice Paul, a suffragette from the National Women’s Party, led the first picketing campaign on the lawn. A little more than a decade later, during the first World War, it was then used by veterans and their families to demand President Herbert Hoover to give them their service bonuses. And following attacks in Selma, Alabama, it became a space for Civil Rights protests in 1965. Around that same time, it became where LGBTQ+ picketers fought against the deterioration of their rights. 

Maybe all this should come as no surprise, given the administration seems to want to launch us back to the 19th century, a time of firing squads, tradwives were wives, and when everyone was dying of measles. But well… I’m getting real sick of this timeline.

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