President Donald Trump said he is invoking the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department in direct federal control - an unusual and controversial move.
He also said National Guard troops would be deployed to Washington, D.C., to “re-establish law, order, and public safety,” stressing they would be allowed to carry out their duties without restriction.
"I'm deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, D.C.," Trump told reporters at the White House, flanked by administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi. "Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals."
Pam Bondi will be overseeing the federal takeover of the city's police forces.
The National Guard deployment is supposed to help with logistics, transportation, and other duties, with the goal of releasing more local police to make arrests. That's in line with Trump's sending of the National Guard to Los Angeles earlier this year to support federal immigration agents conducting raids. It came despite the opposition of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and was followed by weeks of protests.
Trump can take over the city's police department temporarily through emergency powers in a law dating back decades that provides the over 700,000 residents of Washington with political self-governance to have a mayor and city council members elected.
Trump said the joint effort is aimed at addressing homelessness and violent crime.
“You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something, and you don’t have that now,” Trump said.
The move follows just days after Trump vowed new measures to address crime and homelessness in Washington, causing the city's mayor to warn against the deployment of the National Guard to patrol the streets.
Several hundred officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies, such as the FBI, ICE, DEA, and ATF, have already spread out across the city in recent days.
Ahead of the news conference, Trump posted on social media that the nation's capital would be “LIBERATED today!” He said he would end the “days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people.”
For Trump, the move to commandeer public safety in Washington is a next step in his law enforcement agenda following his pushy attempt to stem illegal crossings on the border.
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