US President Donald Trump on Monday announced the deployment of 800 National Guard troops to Washington and the temporary takeover of the city’s police department, in what he described as a decisive step to restore law and order.
The move bypassed the city’s elected leadership and marked what observers described as an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation’s capital.
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals,” Trump said at a White House news conference.
Trump framed his decision as necessary to “rescue” Washington from what he called a wave of lawlessness. While statistics showed violent crime surged in 2023, official figures indicate it has been steadily falling since.
It is the second time this summer that the president has sent troops to a Democratically governed city. A federal trial began on Monday in San Francisco to determine whether he broke US law by deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles in June without the consent of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
“If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,” Trump said. “Hopefully L.A. is watching.”
Trump also suggested that other Democratic-led cities could face similar interventions, singling out Chicago, a city that has seen reductions in violent crime during the first half of the year.
During his election campaign, Trump’s law and order rhetoric often targeted majority Democratic cities such as Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, all with large Black populations in his speeches about urban crime.
In recent days, hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies have been deployed across Washington. Trump said Attorney General Pam Bondi would oversee the city’s police force.
The US Army stated that the National Guard troops would assist law enforcement with “administrative, logistics and physical presence,” noting that between 100 and 200 personnel would be on duty in support roles at any given time.
Washington’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, has rejected Trump’s claims of unchecked violence, pointing to 2024 figures showing violent crime at its lowest level in more than three decades.
According to federal data, violent crime, including murders, rose sharply in 2023, making Washington one of the country’s deadliest cities. However, city police statistics show violent crime fell by 35% in 2024 and has dropped a further 26% in the first seven months of 2025.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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