Trump’s show of force begins to take shape as guard troops deploy in DC

Officers with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other federal agencies on patrol in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington on Tuesday night, Aug. 12, 2025. National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents began to deploy in Washington on Tuesday evening as President Donald Trump’s plan to use the federal government to crack down on crime in the city started taking shape. (Alex Kent/The New York Times)

By Tyler Pager and Devlin Barrett

National Guard troops began to deploy in Washington on Tuesday evening as President Donald Trump’s plan to use the federal government to crack down on crime in the city started taking shape.

About a dozen members of the National Guard appeared in five military vehicles near the Washington Monument as the sun set, a stark juxtaposition to a peaceful evening scene of people jogging by with headphones and walking their dogs. An Army official said troops were continuing to gather at the D.C. Armory and were expected to deploy around national monuments and near a U.S. Park Police facility in the Anacostia neighborhood of southeast Washington.

Trump on Monday described the nation’s capital in apocalyptic terms as a crime-infested wasteland — a description that ignores the extent to which crime has been falling in the city over the past two years. But it remains unclear whether the eventual show of force will match the president’s rhetoric.

The initial deployment near the Washington Monument, at least, often resembled something less fearsome, with troops snapping photos of themselves with visitors. They left roughly two hours after they arrived.

“We just did a presence patrol to be amongst the people, to be seen,” Master Sgt. Cory Boroff said as he stood near a Humvee. “Of the people, for the people in D.C.,” he added. He said he did not know where they would be headed next.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that the administration’s campaign was just beginning. “Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the District who breaks the law, undermines public safety and endangers law-abiding Americans,” she said.

Leavitt boasted that a federal task force, which includes some local officers, made 23 arrests Monday evening in connection with a range of crimes. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on social platform X on Tuesday evening that the FBI had participated in 10 arrests in “the first big push” of Trump’s crackdown. In Washington, a city of roughly 700,000 people, the Metropolitan Police Department makes an average of 68 arrests a day, officials said.

Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, and Pamela A. Smith, her police chief, met Tuesday morning with Attorney General Pam Bondi and other administration officials. City officials emerged from the meeting saying they were focused on how to make the most of the federal support, and Bowser said she wanted to make sure the federal force was “being well used, and all in an effort to drive down crime.”

Bondi, in a post on X, called the meeting “productive,” and said the Justice Department would work closely with the city and its police department to “make Washington, D.C. safe again.”

But Bowser struck a more forceful tone by Tuesday night, calling Trump’s actions an “authoritarian push” and an “intrusion on our autonomy.” In a live town hall on social media, she denounced the frightening characterization of Washington that Trump has promoted, saying that seeing homeless encampments “triggers something in him that has him believing that our very beautiful city is dirty, which it is not.”

“We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks,” she said. “We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story, who we are and what we want for our city.”

Bowser urged parents to make sure that their children do not engage in large group activity on the streets. “This is the type of thing that makes for good TV,” she said. “To be candid, that’s part of the motivation, I think — is to get some good TV and arrests in D.C.”

Smith said the federalization of the local police would “make our city even better,” and that city officials would “look at the locations around our city where we believe there are areas of pockets of crime that we would like to address.”

Residents would see local police officers “working side by side with our federal partners in order to enforce the efforts that we need around the city,” she added.

The law Trump invoked allows the president to take control of the city’s police force for up to 30 days. Officials have said that 800 National Guard members and roughly 500 federal law enforcement agents were also being deployed to city streets to help curb crime. Some of those agents began conducting foot patrols over the weekend. City officials have said the National Guard troops would not have the authority to make arrests.

As officials work out the specifics of the takeover, it is still unclear how any disagreements would be resolved in the new command structure decreed by the president. Leavitt said that Trump sits at the top of the chain of command, and that DEA Administrator Terry Cole would oversee the city’s police department.

Bowser said the president “has the authority, by virtue of the statute, to request services.” But she said city officials retained the authority to hire and fire people in the police department. She said the police chief would work “hand in hand with the people that the president has designated.”

Leavitt also said D.C. officials would use their authority to clean up homeless encampments, after Trump posted on social media last weekend that “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY.” She said homeless people would be offered mental health and addiction services, and space in shelters. If they refuse, she said, they could be subject to fines or jail time.

Across Washington, crime-prevention advocates braced for an increased police presence and warned of the consequences of Trump’s federal takeover.

“This is not about preventing crime,” said Clinique Chapman, CEO of DC Justice Lab. “It’s about political theater and federal control.”

She added: “What we do know and worry about is the unintended consequences, the collateral consequences, of this takeover. Young Black boys will bear the brunt of this, as they are the most likely to be stopped, to be questioned, to just really encounter the police interactions.”

Chapman warned that “we are going to see this damage done for years to come, beyond the time they are actually occupying the city right now.”