Frankly, Washington DC’s Mayor Muriel Bowser has few people to blame besides herself for what may be east bound, down, and literally coming down the road.

Politico reported Wednesday — in a very silly piece rife with hyperbole and condescension and obviously intended to smear truckers and Americans pushing back against vaccine mandates as unruly white supremacists threatening public order — that a trucker convoy similar to the one in Ottawa, Canada is mobilizing in California and will be headed East to DC.

You can already imagine the January 6 comparisons, but Politico was kind enough to spell them out in case there were doubts:

Organizers have dubbed their movement “the People’s Convoy” and say they are working with two groups — Freedom Fighter Nation and Restore Liberty — whose founders are closely tied to right wing politics, based on POLITICO’s review of social media and online records.

That includes Leigh Dundas, a California lawyer and founder of the Freedom Fighter Nation, who gave a speech on the eve of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots calling for Trump supporters to kill those whom she claimed had aided foreign governments in undermining the 2020 presidential election, based on a video posted on Twitter.

“A lot of this has worrying parallels to the build-up to the Jan. 6 riots,” said Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism and which has been following the global protests. “It’s concerning how this may play out if they get to D.C.”

But back to Mayor Bowser, who remains among the last holdouts enforcing severe COVID restrictions in the form of mask mandates and vaccine requirements. Even as her neighbors to the North like New York and Connecticut drop some of their mandates, DC is still requiring residents and visitors to show their papers to do almost anything indoors. Meanwhile, and possibly not entirely unrelated, the city’s crime rate spirals ever higher.

But that doesn’t bother Ms. Bowser, who said shortly after instituting her vaccine mandate in January that she was certain DC had unique things to offer that would keep residents happy and within district boundaries.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Tuesday she is not worried that her administration’s new vaccine passport mandate will hurt city businesses by driving customers into Virginia and Maryland.

“We know that there are many residents who like to have a safer environment to go to the restaurants and to do all of those things. And we know that we have a very high vaccination rate in the region,” Miss Bowser told The Washington Times. “So, we’re simply asking people to show their cards, and then they will take advantage of all that we have to offer, which is different, than many other places.”

Under the new mandate, people are required to present proof of their coronavirus vaccination status to enter public venues. Businesses also must display signs telling customers that they must show their vaccination cards for entry.

However, residents, commuters and tourists need only to travel to the Maryland or Virginia suburbs to patronize establishments without having to present proof of vaccination.

And so, given the relative success of the peaceful trucker convoy in Canada, U.S. citizens are planning a similar trek across the country that could start as soon as this weekend and end in DC in time for Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1 (other reports have the convoy beginning March 4).

[A Department of Homeland Security] bulletin warns that the convoy “could severely disrupt transportation, federal government, and law enforcement operations through gridlock and potential counterprotests.”

…

The bulletin says the DHS “has received reports of truck drivers planning to potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers.

“The convoy will potentially begin in California as early as mid-February and arrive in Washington, DC, as late as mid-March, potentially impacting the Super Bowl LVI scheduled for 13 February and the State of the Union address scheduled for 1 March.

“While there are currently no indications of planned violence, if hundreds of trucks converge in a major metropolitan city, the potential exists to severely disrupt transportation, federal government operations commercial facilities and emergency services through gridlock and potential counter protests.

It really couldn’t have happened to a nicer city leader, nor at a better time. Bowser recently extended DC’s mask mandate through the 28th of February. No word yet on when — or if — she plans on releasing residents from the grip of “papers please” at every indoor establishment.