More than two months have passed since the Capitol building was overrun by an angry mob seeking to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College, yet Capitol Hill remains a fortress, surrounded by 5,000 National Guard troops standing behind razor wire and barricades. Washington, DC, more closely resembles the capital of a third-world regime than the home of the United States government.

The Democrats seem to like it this way, and for the foreseeable future, that’s how it’s going to stay.

This week, the Department of Defense, at the behest of the U.S. Capitol Police, extended the National Guard deployment in Washington to May 23. The force will be reduced to 2,300, cutting the Guard presence in half, but checkpoints will remain in place, and plans are being drawn up to deploy mobile fencing and create a “quick reaction force” to be at the ready 24 hours a day.

The mob that rushed the Capitol on January 6 has been continuously leveraged by Democrats to push for a veritable police state in Washington and beyond. First, they used it as an excuse to impeach Donald Trump a second time. After that shamelessly unconstitutional sideshow, they then argued for a massive military presence for Joe Biden’s inauguration, with the 26,000 National Guard personnel at the Capitol vastly outnumbering the event attendees. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called upon the Guard to remain until March 12, surrounding the Capitol and giving off the appearance that a military junta had just taken place. Maybe it had.

As the end of the Guard deployment approached, scuttlebutt arose of a QAnon-led mob planning to descend on the Capitol on March 4, under the supposed belief that Trump would be inaugurated president on what was the original Inauguration Day. Congressional Democrats talked up the threat incessantly, and Pelosi ginned up the drama by giving the House the day off “for their own safety” — time they used to share their faux fear and rage on social media over a mob that never materialized.

Regardless of the validity of the claim, the Democrats played it to the full. The direct result was the request to extend the Guard presence, much to the surprise of many troops currently deployed in Washington.

The Capitol Police were woefully (if understandably) unprepared for the mob that swarmed the building on January 6, and an investigation into their response to the incident was warranted. We should expect that the capital is protected from attack, no matter who the perpetrators are. Hiring additional police and deploying mobile barriers are within the realm of guaranteeing the safety of the capital and those who work there.

However, the Democrats are using the January 6 event as an opportunity to close off the nation’s capital from ordinary citizens, or at the very least make it difficult for people to approach the Capitol building. Like doomsday cultists, Democrats and their media lackeys keep predicting violence, then when it never materializes, they simply push their predictions further out on the calendar. They have not taken even a moment to revisit their very public prognostications of angry mobs, nor have they given any indication as to when this ginned up state of emergency will end. And that is what is most troubling.

Power once claimed is rarely relinquished voluntarily. The erosion of our constitutional liberties and the growth of the federal government are proof. The Democrats are following the playbook followed by tyrannical despots throughout history — use an emergency as a gateway to seizing greater power in the name of safety, then extend the emergency and label those who question their methods as being part of the opposition.

The U.S. Capitol belongs to the American people, and it needs to stay that way.