Trump orders National Guard to Washington and takeover of capital’s police
- The San Juan Daily Star
- Aug 12
- 3 min read
By Katie Rogers, Campbell Robertson and Chris Cameron
President Donald Trump said he was temporarily taking control of the Washington, D.C., police department and deploying 800 National Guard troops to the city, painting a dystopian picture of the nation’s capital that stood in sharp contrast to official figures showing violent crime in the city is at a 30-year low.
After Trump’s claims that the city was overrun by “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth,” Mayor Muriel Bowser struck a diplomatic tone that acknowledged the president’s authority to enact a 30-day takeover of the city’s police. But she disputed his rationale and his depictions of life in the city, calling his actions “unsettling and unprecedented.”
During a White House news conference on Monday morning, Trump said Attorney General Pam Bondi would oversee the federal takeover of the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department and, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at his side, added that he was prepared to send the military into Washington “if needed.”
Trump also threatened to expand his efforts to other cities, including Chicago, if they did not deal with crime rates he claimed were “out of control.” But Trump’s authority to intervene elsewhere would be more limited: His announcement on Monday invoked a section of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that granted him the power to temporarily seize control of the city’s police department.
While Bowser said there was little she could do to prevent such a takeover, Brian Schwalb, the attorney general of the District of Columbia, called it “unlawful” and vowed to “do what’s necessary to protect the rights and safety of district residents.”
Here’s what else to know:
— D.C. deployment: The Trump administration also plans to temporarily reassign 120 FBI agents in Washington to nighttime patrol duties as part of the crackdown, according to people familiar with the matter. Residents expressed skepticism of the president’s actions, which also prompted protests.
— Dystopian claims: Trump’s most recent threats to take control of Washington came after a prominent member of the Department of Government Efficiency, his federal cost-cutting initiative, reported being beaten in an attempted carjacking. But on Monday he sought to lay out an even darker version of the city, overrun by violent crime and anarchy, that many who live in it are unlikely to recognize.
— Familiar targets: In portraying crime as out of control in cities across the country, he listed familiar targets including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago but did not mention cities in Republican-led states with the highest murder rates: St. Louis, New Orleans or Memphis, Tennessee. He also ignored the most violent episode in Washington’s recent history: the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, where his supporters sought to stop the certification of the 2020 election he lost. Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 of those rioters after returning to the White House in January.
— Earlier deployments: This summer, Trump deployed nearly 5,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles with orders to help quell protests that had erupted over immigration raids and to protect the federal agents conducting them. A suit brought challenging the deployment’s legality went to trial Monday, although most of the troops have since been withdrawn. And in his first term, Trump called up National Guard soldiers and federal law enforcement personnel to forcibly clear peaceful protests during the Black Lives Matter protests after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
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