President Donald Trump will federalize D.C.’s police department and deploy National Guard troops, he announced Monday, in historic restrictions on local control over the District.
“This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our capital back,” the president said at a White House news conference.
A White House official told NBC News that National Guard troops are expected to be on the ground Tuesday morning. Members of the DC National Guard have been given orders to report here to the DC Armory.
A second White House official says the Guard members will be assigned to “protect federal assets, provide a safe environment for law enforcement officers and deter violent crime through their presence.”
Trump called D.C. crime an emergency and spoke about several crime victims.
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) statistics show a 26% drop in violent crime this year so far, compared to the same period last year. The beating of a 19-year-old former DOGE staffer during an alleged attempted carjacking by teens appeared to hit a nerve with Trump last week.
Trump said he’s bringing in 800 National Guard members to assist with law enforcement in D.C. it wasn’t immediately clear where they will be deployed. Trump added, “We will bring in the military if it’s needed” but said “I don’t think we’ll need it.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the D.C. National Guard will be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.” He also said the Pentagon was “prepared to bring in other National Guard units, other specialized units.” Go here for more info.
“You’ll have more police and you’ll be so happy because you’ll be safe when you walk down the street,” Trump said.
“Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
Bondi will lead MPD and new Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terry Cole will be interim federal commissioner of MPD, Trump said. Cole was sworn in at the DEA last month.
DC’s mayor calls the takeover ‘unsettling and unprecedented’
For D.C. residents, “access to democracy is tenuous,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference Monday afternoon. District residents fight in wars, pay taxes and uphold the duties of citizenship but – because D.C is not a state – are denied the rights of other Americans, the mayor said.
The mayor and Chief of Police Pamela Smith said they will coordinate with federal officials. Bowser said she reached out to Bondi for a meeting.
“While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” Bowser said.
“My message to residents is this,” Bowser said. “We know that access to our democracy is tenuous. That is why you have heard me and many Washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood.”
Bowser said she had “one brief call” with the White House over the weekend about activating the National Guard, so she thought Trump’s announcement would be about calling up the National Guard, not about taking over the police department.
DC delegate and attorney general react
Longtime D.C. statehood champion Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton called Trump’s actions “counterproductive, potentially dangerous, and an egregious assault on D.C. home rule.”
“President Trump’s decision to federalize MPD and activate the D.C. National Guard to address crime is an historic assault on D.C. home rule, is a counterproductive, escalatory seizure of D.C.’s resources to use for purposes not supported by D.C. residents, and is more evidence of the urgent need to pass my D.C. statehood bill,” she said in part in a statement.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb called the administration’s actions “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful.”
“There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime in DC reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year. We are considering all of our options and will do what is necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents,” he said.
Trump says other cities could be subject to the same federal control
Trump said he hopes other cities, including Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, are watching the steps he announced in D.C. and will take steps to “self-clean up.”
He said if needed, the administration will take similar steps in other cities and criticized their leadership at the local and state levels.
Can Trump federalize DC police? What role does Congress play?
Trump said he is invoking Section 740 of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act to federalize MPD.
The president is allowed to federalize MPD for 48 hours before he must notify Congress and for a total of 30 days before he must get approval from Congress.
The Home Rule Act says that when the president “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist,” he can place D.C. police under federal control. But the president cannot do this for more than 48 hours without providing notification to the chairs and ranking members “of the Committees on the District of Columbia of the Senate and the House of Representatives.” This would mean the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The law does not specify different conditions for congressional recesses. Congress is scheduled to return from recess on Sept. 3.
The president can only federalize the D.C. police force for a period of 30 days unless Congress passes a “joint resolution authorizing such an extension.”
Multiple sources told News4 early Monday that specific details of the National Guard deployment remained in flux. There was little to no coordination between the White House and local D.C. officials, sources said.
“This is a big day in Washington, D.C. Whatever the president announces will likely be historic and lead to major changes here in the District,” News4’s Mark Segraves said in live coverage prior to Trump’s remarks.
On social media on Monday morning, Trump said D.C. would be “liberated.”
“The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER!” he said in part.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Sunday. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.”
Last week, the president directed federal law enforcement agencies to increase their presence in Washington for seven days, with the option “to extend as needed.” On Friday night, federal agencies including the Secret Service, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service assigned more than 120 officers and agents to assist in Washington.
DC mayor says ‘we are not experiencing a crime spike’
D.C.’s mayor pushed back in an interview with MSNBC on Sunday, saying that comparing the city “to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, questioned the effectiveness of using the Guard to enforce city laws and said the federal government could be far more helpful by funding more prosecutors or filling the 15 vacancies on the D.C. Superior Court, some of which have been open for years.
Earlier, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer that D.C. was “more violent than Baghdad,” NBC News reported.
Bowser cannot activate the National Guard herself, but she can submit a request to the Pentagon.
“I just think that’s not the most efficient use of our Guard,” she said on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” acknowledging it is “the president’s call about how to deploy the Guard.”
Bowser said she spoke to Trump a few weeks ago in the White House’s Oval Office and several times about crime, including during their first meeting after he was elected for his second term.
“The President is very aware of our efforts,” Bowser said. “He established a task force, which our police department and agencies support with information and anything else they ask us for…it is always the President’s prerogative to use federal law enforcement or the National Guard.”
Bowser also anticipated what she believes the White House will announce on Monday.
“It is clear that the President, and I suspect that his announcement is that he is surging federal law enforcement, which he’s talked about, and he may talk about even larger numbers or longer periods of time he’s interested in being in neighborhoods and fighting crime in neighborhoods, and to the extent that officers know our laws”, she said.
“That officers work in community and work with prosecutors to build good cases and establish a presence and work with local officials who are you know, the expert is in policing and making arrests. That’s what we’re waiting to see,” the mayor added.
Trump threatened DC takeover after attack on DOGE staffer
Trump threatened last week to take federal control of D.C., after a former DOGE employee was attacked during an attempted carjacking. The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed the victim was Edward Coristine, known by the nickname Big Balls. He was one of the original DOGE staffers.
Police arrested two 15-year-olds in the attempted carjacking and said they were looking for others.
“We’re going to have to federalize D.C. and run it the way it’s supposed to be run,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday night.
“The rate of crime, the rate of muggings, killings and everything else, we’re not going to let it, and that includes bringing in the National Guard, maybe very quickly, too,” Trump told a member of the White House pool on Wednesday.
On Friday night, federal agencies including the Secret Service, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service assigned more than 120 officers and agents to assist in Washington.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that the rule of Washington could be returned to federal authorities. Doing so would require a repeal of the Home Rule Act of 1973 in Congress, a step Trump said lawyers are examining. It could face steep pushback.
Bowser acknowledged that the law allows the president to take more control over the city’s police, but only if certain conditions are met.
“None of those conditions exist in our city right now,” she said. “We are not experiencing a spike in crime. In fact, we’re watching our crime numbers go down.”
NBC News contributed reporting.
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