White House to Protesters: ‘Get Off My Lawn!’

From morning ‘til night, people assemble in President’s Park, the plaza between the White House and Lafayette Square. School groups in red MAGA caps cheese for photos. So do tourists, from every corner of the globe. Americans make long pilgrimages to the White House in order to stand outside and shout their piece at the office itself. Washingtonians jog across the pedestrian avenue in the evening. The so-called “Kremlin Annex” protest is still going strong, 12 weeks in and counting. One protester held her vigil there for 35 years.

The stretch of President’s Park running along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House is one of the best and most necessary public plazas in the country, a forum for American ideas (and selfies). But a new rule proposed by the National Park Service would all but prohibit civic gatherings outside the White House, spontaneous and planned alike—limiting the White House sidewalk so severely that it would cease to be a plaza at all.