President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi look on. (Alex Brandon/AP)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday announced he is ordering 800 D.C. National Guard troops to deploy throughout the city in an effort to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital.
“We’re taking our capital back,” he said during a news conference at the White House. “We’re taking it back.”
Trump also said the federal government would take control of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, and “we will bring in the military if needed.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also attended the briefing and said the D.C. National Guard will be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.”
Other National Guard and specialized units are prepared to be deployed to assist.
“They will be strong, they will be tough and they will stand with their law enforcement partners,” Hegseth said.
White House aides distributed photos of a Truth Social post in which Trump wrote Washington, D.C., would be “LIBERATED today!” The handout included photos of people who it claimed were arrested during the weekend and accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to possession of narcotics.
“Washington, D.C., should be one of the safest, cleanest and most beautiful cities anywhere in the world,” Trump said.
The Joint Force Headquarters of the District of Columbia National Guard in Washington on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
The Army activated the D.C. National Guard on Monday under Title 32 to assist law enforcement in Washington, the service said in a statement.
Of the 800 Guard members activated, between 100-200 troops will be supporting law enforcement at any given time. Their duties will include an array of tasks from administrative, logistics and physical presence in support of law enforcement, the Army said.
The deployment of troops in Washington comes after nearly 5,000 California National Guard troops were sent to Los Angeles recently with orders to quell protests that had erupted over immigration raids and protect the federal agents conducting them. Only 250 troops remain in Los Angeles as other troops have been sent home.
Six Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Trump’s move to take control of law enforcement in Washington.
“It is beyond humiliating that our nation’s capital has been overrun by crime, gangs, and illegals,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said in a post on X. “It’s time we MAKE D.C. SAFE AGAIN.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., described crime in Washington as “out of control” and thanked Trump for taking action. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said he fully supported Trump’s plan.
“Hoosiers should be able to visit our nation’s capital without fear of violence,” Banks said on X.
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents Washington, accused Trump of misleadingly citing years-old statistics to justify the deployment of troops to her city and the federalization of D.C. police.
Trump’s decision represented a “historic assault on D.C. home rule” and is a “counterproductive, escalatory seizure of D.C.’s resources to use for purposes not supported by D.C. residents,” she said in a statement.
Trump threatened last week to take federal control of Washington after a former Department of Government Efficiency employee was attacked during an attempted carjacking. The D.C. police confirmed the victim was Edward Coristine. 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 post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
“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 reporting pool on Wednesday.
D.C. police data indicates violent crime has decreased 26% compared with last year. The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office also announced in January that violent crime in the city in 2024 was at a 30-year low, citing police data.
Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said Sunday that the capital was not experiencing a crime spike.
“It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023,” Bowser said on MSNBC’s the Weekend. “We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”
The surge in federal policing in the city began just after midnight Friday and is expected to last seven days, with the option to extend enforcement “as needed,” NPR reported.
“The presence of National Guardsmen and vehicles seen this week and throughout the weekend are related to required training for [Unit Training Assembly]. At the same time, we remain committed to providing trained and ready forces capable of providing support when called upon by civil authorities,” according to a D.C. Guard statement.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell in a post on X in all caps said: “We are going to make D.C. safe and beautiful again!”
In Trump’s first term, he called up Guard soldiers and federal law enforcement to forcibly clear peaceful protests during the Black Lives Matter protests after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Past instances of the Guard’s deployment to Washington include in response to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
Stars and Stripes reporter Svetlana Shkolnikova contributed to this report.