Trump expands LA military tactics by sending National Guard to Washington, DC

In an expansion of tactics started in June during immigration raids in Los Angeles, President Trump on Monday announced he would take federal control of the city's police department and activate 800 National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., to help "reestablish law and order."

"Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people," Trump said at the White House.

"This is liberation day in D.C.," he declared.

Trump, who sent roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June in a move that was opposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, issued an executive order declaring a public safety emergency in D.C. The order invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that places the Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control.

California Gov. Newsom decried Trump's move in D.C., warning that what happened in L.A. was now taking place across the country.

"He was just getting warmed up in Los Angeles," Newsom said on X. "He will gaslight his way into militarizing any city he wants in America. This is what dictators do."

In his briefing, Trump painted D.C. in dark, apocalyptic terms as a grimy hellhole "of crime, bloodshed, bedlam, squalor and worse." He said he planned to get tough, citing his administration's stringent enforcement on the nation's southern border.

Already, Trump said, his administration has begun to remove homeless people from encampments across the city, and he said he planned to target undocumented immigrants, too. He vowed to "restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be."

Although the president cited issues of violent crime in Washington — stating the city is "totally out of control" — data show violent crime has declined significantly in recent years.

Just a few weeks before Trump took office, the Justice Department announced that violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low. Homicides were down 32%, robberies down 39% and armed carjackings down 53% when compared with 2023 levels, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department.

Local D.C. officials pushed back against Trump's characterization of the city.

"There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia," read a statement from Brian Schwalb, the elected attorney general of the District of Columbia. He criticized the administration's deployment of troops as "unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful."

Jeanine Pirro, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, promised during Monday's briefing to crack down on juvenile crime, or as she put it, "young punks" who she said were too often granted probation or other lenient sentences

In D.C., the U.S. Attorney's office handles all adult felonies and the majority of adult misdemeanors, while Schwalb's office exercises jurisdiction over crimes committed by juveniles and some adult misdemeanors.

Since Schwalb took office in January 2023, the office has prosecuted so many juveniles at higher rates that the mayor has had to issue an emergency order creating more space at juvenile detention facilities, according to an office statement. Last year, the office prosecuted over 90% of homicide and attempted homicide cases, 88% of violent assault cases and 87% of carjacking cases, according to the statement.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser did not immediately respond to Trump's press briefing. But on Sunday, she told MSNBC's "The Weekend" show "we are not experiencing a crime spike." She said she had relayed that message to Trump repeatedly since he took office and her police department and agencies had cooperated with a task force Trump set up.

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, who also president of the United States Conference of Mayors, condemned Trump's move as a "takeover," and said "local control is always best."

Holt noted that the Trump administration's data — specifically, the FBI's national crime rate report released last week — shows crime rates dropping in cities across the nation.

Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security at the Cato Institute, described Trump's move as a "radical overreaction" and "yet another step towards the creation of a permanent American police state."

Trump said the deployment of troops in D.C. should serve as a warning to cities across the nation — including Los Angeles.

"Hopefully L.A.'s watching," Trump said as he berated Bass and Newsom for their handling of the firestorm that swept through the region in January, destroying thousands of homes.

"The mayor's incompetent and so is Gov. Newscum," Trump said, renewing his criticism of local officials for not accelerating rebuilding and the permitting process after the disaster. "He's got a good line of bull—, but that's about it."

Trump's announcement that he was deploying troops to D.C. comes two months after he sparked a major legal battle with California when he sent thousands of troops to Los Angeles. He argued they were necessary to combat what he described as "violent, insurrectionist mobs" as protests broke out in the city against federal immigration raids.

But the protests calmed relatively quickly and local officials said they were primarily kept in check by police. The National Guard troops and Marines wound up sparsely deployed in Los Angeles. Some protected federal buildings, but most remained at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos.

Some of the deployed personnel assisted federal agents as they conducted immigration enforcement operations, but military officials said the troops were restricted to security and crowd control and had no law enforcement authority. The National Guard played a role in both the convoy that descended on MacArthur Park and the raid of cannabis farms in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

In June, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco ruled that Trump broke the law when he mobilized thousands of California National Guard members against the state's wishes.

In a 36-page U.S. District Court decision, Breyer wrote that Trump's actions "were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution." Breyer added that he was "troubled by the implication" inherent in the Trump administration's argument that "protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion."

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals paused that court order, allowing the troops to remain in Los Angeles while the case plays out in federal court. The appellate court found the president had broad, though not "unreviewable," authority to deploy the military in American cities.

That decision is set to be reviewed by a larger "en banc" panel of the appellate court. Meanwhile, California will continue to fight its case in Judge Breyer's court in San Francisco.

State officials say Guard troops under Trump's command violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars federalized military from civilian law enforcement. A trial this week is likely to further muddy the waters for troops remaining in Los Angeles, as well as any deployed in D.C. to fight crime there.

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(Times staff writers Michael Wilner in Washington, D.C., and Sonja Sharp in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

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