Donald Trump has ordered the national guard to Washington DC and seized control of the city’s police force, describing a “lawless” city in ways that are sharply at odds with official crime statistics.
The US president’s move was swiftly condemned as a “disgusting, dangerous and derogatory” assault on the political independence of a racially diverse city.
Speaking at a White House press conference on Monday, Trump said was taking “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse. This is liberation day in DC and we’re going to take our capital back.”
He described Washington DC as “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world”, claiming its murder rate is higher than Bogota or Mexico City, even though violent crime is at a 30-year low.
The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was among officials joining Trump on the podium, said 800 national guard troops would take to the streets of Washington over the coming week. “They will be strong, they will be tough and they will stand with their law enforcement partners,” he said.
Trump, who lost the presidential election in DC to Democrat Kamala Harris by 86 percentage points, added that he may send in the military “if needed”.
By invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, the president is federalising DC’s Metropolitan police department for the first time in its history. He said he is declaring a public safety emergency and putting the police under the control of the attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Trump vowed to allow police to “do whatever the hell they want” in the face of provocations. “That’s the only language they [alleged criminals] understand. They like to spit in the face of the police. You spit, and we hit, and they get hit real hard.”
Section 740 requires the mayor, Muriel Bowser, to provide “such services of the Metropolitan Police force as the President may deem necessary and appropriate”, when the president determines that there are “special conditions” requiring it. The president can only exercise such control under the act for 30 days without Congress passing a law extending it.
After the former General Services Administration staffer Edward Coristine – a 19-year-old on the so-called “department of government efficiency” team nicknamed “Big Balls” – appeared to have been attacked by a group of young people last week near his car, Trump began discussing a return to federal control of the city and the use of national guard to quell street crime.
Washington DC was hit hard by the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, recording more homicides in 2023 than in any year since 1997. At that time it was among the top five homicide rates in major population centres – those with more than a million residents – behind only Memphis in Tennessee, St Louis in Missouri and Baltimore in Maryland, according to the non-profit USAFacts.
But violent crime in Washington DC has fallen sharply since 2023, shaking off the pandemic increases to reach a 30-year low on the day Trump took office, and has fallen 26% further this year according to weekly reports from the Metropolitan police department. The change in crime rates is consistent with dramatic decreases in violence in large cities across the country.
The capital is much safer than it used to be. In 1991 it was branded the murder capital of the US with the killing of 482 people. By last year the total number of homicides had fallen to 187. This year the rate is on course to be lower.
Nonetheless, Trump ordered a range of federal law enforcement agencies to deploy on to DC streets over the weekend in a surge. About 450 officers from the United States Capitol police, the Federal Protective Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies were present into the city’s quadrants over the weekend.
At the press conference on Monday morning, Trump painted a nightmarish portrait of a city “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people”.
The DC attorney general, Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host only confirmed to her role on 2 August, said she sees “too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the hell out of you or anyone else”.
Pirro expressed her frustration with what she views as excessive leniency when it comes to the way juveniles are prosecuted. “I can’t arrest them. I can’t prosecute them,” she said. “They go to family court, and they get to do yoga and arts and crafts. Enough, it changes today.”
Pirro called for changes to the law to allow a wider range of juvenile cases to be heard in adult court.
Again taking to social media on Sunday, Trump demanded that homeless residents of the capital flee before him, posting images of encampments ostensibly taken from his motorcade.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”
Homelessness rates in the nation’s capital have also been falling, with the most recent point-in-time count showing a decrease from 2024.
Monday’s announcement by Trump, who pardoned his supporters who attacked the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021, was criticised by Democrats and civil rights leaders.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, a non-voting delegate representing DC in the House of Representatives, said the decision “is an historic assault on DC home rule, is a counterproductive, escalatory seizure of DC’s resources to use for purposes not supported by DC residents, and is more evidence of the urgent need to pass my DC statehood bill”.
Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “Trump is once again playing political games using service members and federal law enforcement officials. Trump doesn’t give a damn about keeping DC residents safe.
“When rioters violently stormed the Capitol and there were repeated requests for the national guard, Trump failed to act. To add insult to injury, he released from jail those 1,500 violent insurrectionists who assaulted police officers and broke local and federal law.”
Al Sharpton, the founder and president of the National Action Network, suggested that the intervention was motivated by a desire to distract from criticisms over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“Donald Trump was inspired to take this disgusting, dangerous, and derogatory action solely out of self interest,” he said. “Let’s call the inspiration for this assault on a majority Black city for what it is: another bid to distract his angry, frustrated base over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.”
