The GW
HATCHET
August 18, 2025 Vol. 122 Iss. 3
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904 • ONLINE AT GWHATCHET.COM
GW forms student loan task force as federal aid rollback looms GIANNA JAKUBOWSKI ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
ARJUN SRINIVAS
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
JERRY LAI | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
D.C. National Guard troops patrol Union Station on Thursday.
Foggy bottom leaders, advocates slam Trump takeover as federal troops saturate city BRYSON KLOESEL
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
One week into President Donald Trump’s historic move to federalize D.C.’s police and deploy the National Guard across the city, Foggy Bottom leaders lambaste the move as unlawful as advocates scramble to relocate homeless residents amid escalating citywide arrests and encampment sweeps. Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act for the first time in history last Monday, federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department under a declared “crime emergency” — a move that has led local and federal law enforcement to make more than 300 arrests as of Sunday evening. Federal law enforcement presence in Foggy Bottom has remained sparse, with around
800 National Guard troops concentrated in D.C.’s tourist and nightlife hubs, but neighborhood leaders are decrying their city’s takeover as retaliatory and unprecedented. While Foggy Bottom has largely escaped federal scrutiny as troops focus on areas like the nearby National Mall and the U Street corridor, federal and local officials have cleared at least four homeless encampment sites near campus in Washington Circle and L Street. The sweeps displaced at least four unhoused individuals and removed at least seven tents, bypassing the city’s usual protocol of providing a seven-day notice before clearing encampments. D.C. Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Behavioral Health officials urged unhoused individuals living in Foggy Bottom near the Kennedy Cen-
ter, the E Street Expressway and Virginia Avenue to move their tents on Wednesday and Thursday, Street Sense reported. District officials cleared another encampment with seven tents near the I-66 ramp earlier in the day Thursday. Tameyah Ingraham, an outreach worker for homeless aid organization Miriam’s Kitchen, said she went to three encampments on Thursday, encouraging residents to relocate to shelters to avoid arrest by federal officials and helping residents gather their belongings. She said some of the organization’s donors have also helped finance residents staying in a hotel. “We are here to soften the blow and try to encourage them to relocate, so that they won’t go to jail,” Ingraham said. Ingraham said Miriam’s Kitchen did not know how
many encampments the federal government planned to clear or when. “It’s just been popping up everywhere,” Ingraham said. Rachel Pierre — the director of DMHHS, which oversees the city’s homeless services — said the agency has the capacity to assist people law enforcement evicts from encampments. She said the federal government led the evictions, and DMHHS was only there to support unhoused residents and ensure they knew their options for relocation. “Our job is to make sure that people know if they want to come in, they can come in,” Pierre told The Hatchet. “We have the capacity to meet the needs of anybody, and that’s what we’re giving the word out to make sure people know.”
GW launched a task force to assess how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s $307 billion cut to federal student aid will impact graduate enrollment and pinpoint safe private loan alternatives — one of its first formal responses to higher education policy shifts under the Trump administration. The task force will meet throughout the fall semester to identify how students, particularly at the graduate level, can safely engage in the private loan market as universities brace for stricter federal student borrowing limits and the termination of the Grad PLUS program next July, Vice Provost for Enrollment and Student Success Jay Goff told the Faculty Senate Tuesday. Goff’s announcement, delivered at a special senate meeting titled “addressing challenges facing the University,” comes as schools nationwide grapple with the termination of a graduate student loan program credited with fueling a decade-long rise in graduate degrees and programs. The creation of the student loan task force follows the passage of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this summer which includes a provision that will phase out the Grad PLUS program next July and appears to be one of officials’ first steps to alter University policy in response to the new federal administration. The Grad PLUS loan program, introduced in July 2006 during the Bush administration, allows graduate students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance, minus any other financial aid received. But Republican lawmakers earlier this summer moved to terminate the program on July 1, 2026, and set new federal borrowing limits. Graduate students will now be capped at $20,500 in federal funding a year, with a $100,000 lifetime borrowing limit, or $50,000 a year with a $200,000 lifetime limit if they’re in a professional school like medical or law.
See LEADERS Page 5
See STUDENT Page 4
MPD sweeps unhoused encampments in Foggy Bottom
Anti-Trump protesters flood DC streets to decry federal takeover
TYLER IGLESIAS
ELIJAH EDWARDS
SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
Local law enforcement, at President Donald Trump’s directive, cleared four unhoused encampment sites near Washington Circle and L Street late Friday morning after federal officers failed to sweep the sites Thursday night. The sweeps, conducted by Metropolitan Police Department and Department of Public Works officers, cleared at least seven tents and evicted at least four unhoused individuals from encampments at 22nd and K streets, Washington Circle and K street and 26th and L streets. The clearings come after two separate groups of federal agents arrived to evict residents near Washington Circle Thursday night, three
days after Trump federalized the MPD and deployed 800 National Guard troops and other federal agents throughout the city, in part to clear unhoused encampments. At 10:54 a.m. on Friday, University officials issued a GW Alert notifying the community of urgent police activity at Washington Circle. Some D.C. residents posted photos and videos of the officers and multiple garbage trucks around the Washington Circle area around the same time on X. About six MPD agents monitored each of the three Washington Circle encampment sites as DPW officials cleaned up the areas using a garbage truck at each location. At about 11:12 a.m., the trucks and MPD officers left the areas of the three Washington Circle sites.
JERRY LAI | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Metropolitan Police Department officers clear tents at an unhoused encampment by Washington Circle Friday. WHAT’S
INSIDE
NEWS After officials hit Jewish Voice for Peace at GW with another round of University sanctions, the group has disaffiliated from GW. Page 2
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
RYAN SAENZ
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Hundreds of protesters marched from Dupont Circle to the White House on Saturday, opposing President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department and deploy hundreds of National Guard troops across the city. Protesters gathered at around 2 p.m. in over 90 degree heat with signs reading “Trump Must Go Now,” “Refuse Fascism” and “Free D.C.,” before marching over two miles to the White House, where speakers condemned the Trump administration’s historic move to assert federal control over D.C.’s police department. The demonstrators, equipped with whistles, megaphones and tall orange banners that read “We refuse to accept a fascist America” in both English and Spanish, called for Trump to remove National Guard troops immediately and to return control of the city’s police force back to local officials. The protest — organized by Refuse Fascism, which antiTrump protesters founded in the wake of the 2016 election — comes amid the Trump administration’s intensified efforts to crack down on crime in D.C. through federal intervention. Trump on Monday invoked Section 740 of D.C.’s Home Rule Act for the first time in history, which allows the president to assume federal control of the police under “conditions of an emergency nature.” Trump
OPINIONS The editorial board argues that in response to a federal probe into campus antisemitism, GW must outline its priorities. Page 6
KAIDEN J. YU | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Demonstrators march from DuPont Circle to the White House Saturday, protesting President Donald Trump’s deployment of federalized troops in the city.
also deployed 800 D.C. National Guard troops to assist police as he promised to “rescue” the city from violent crime, despite violent crime dropping 35 percent in 2024, reaching a 30-year low for the city. Emma Sherman, a rising sophomore majoring in political science, said she attended the Dupont Circle rally and participated in the march from Dupont to the White House because she wanted to be with the D.C. community as Trump exerts his control over the city. She said she stayed in D.C. over the summer and was shocked by Trump’s takeover of the MPD because she believes Trump is lying about the state of crime in the District. “As we walked the streets, there were fellow D.C. residents just there cheering us on, recording us, hyping us up,” Sherman
CULTURE Catch a glimpse into what motivates the orientation leaders guiding new students through their first days at GW. Page 7
said. Following a brief rally in Dupont Circle, the crowd — which had grown to several hundred protesters — began marching down Connecticut Avenue around 2:45 p.m., flanked by MPD officers on bikes and escorted by MPD cars closing intersections as protesters moved toward the White House. Demonstrators chanted demands for the Trump administration to remove National Guard troops from the city, protect immigrants and “release the Epstein files.” The only National Guard troops present during the demonstration were stationed on Constitution Avenue outside the gated entrance to the White House’s South Lawn. Protesters surrounded the handful of troops and their armored vehicle and chanted “Trump Must Go.”
SPORTS Meet the basketball alums and current player taking the AmeriCup tournament by storm in Nicaragua. Page 8