Formally declaring a public safety emergency, Trump claimed the deployment is part of a city-wide effort to combat violent crime such as homicides, robberies and burglaries – even as such crimes have sharply fallen over the past two years.
“This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said at a wide-ranging White House press conference in which he also declared he was putting the city’s police department under federal control.
“I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order, and public safety in Washington, D.C., and they’re going to be allowed to do their job properly.”
The move quickly drew the outrage of local and Congressional Democrat lawmakers, who decried the move as unnecessary, “unsettling” and a “brazen power grab,” even as those in the GOP applauded it.
In an official memo to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump said he was invoking Constitutional law to deploy the hundreds of Guardsmen across the city, citing recent high-profile crimes in the city.
The memo’s text directs Hegseth to mobilize the D.C. National Guard and “in such numbers as he deems necessary, to address the epidemic of crime in our Nation’s capital.”
The order’s wording also allows for possible additional Guard deployments from other states, as Hegseth is told to coordinate with state governors for any extra Guardsmen “as he deems necessary and appropriate, to augment this mission.”
“There are other units we are prepared to bring in, other National Guard units, other specialized units,” Hegseth said during the press conference.
The document does not set a timeline for the Guard’s deployment, only noting that their mobilization and duration of duty “shall remain in effect until [Trump determines] that conditions of law and order have been restored in the District of Columbia.”
The troops will be in a Title 32 status, meaning they are under local authority but are federally funded and not subject to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits U.S. service members from taking part in law enforcement activities.
In a statement released later Monday, Army officials said the D.C. National Guard soldiers will be activated to help with administrative and logistical tasks in addition to providing “physical presence in support of law enforcement.”
Even as hundreds of Guard troops will be in the city, only between 100 and 200 soldiers will be supporting law enforcement at any given time.
Operational details, including where the soldiers will physically be assigned and what their command-and-control will be, have not been released and are likely still being worked out.
When they might be seen around the city is also unclear, though Hegseth said during the press conference that Guardsmen will be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.”
Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & National Security newsletter, I’m Ellen Mitchell — your guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond.
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