Washington finds itself at centre of Trump maelstrom as National Guard arrive

Ashraf Khalil, Associated Press

Some of the 800 National Guard members deployed by US president Donald Trump began arriving in the US capital on Tuesday.

It comes after the White House ordered federal forces to take over the city’s police department and reduce crime in what the president called — without substantiation — a lawless city.

The influx came the morning after Mr Trump announced he would be activating the guard members and taking over the department.

He cited a crime emergency — but referred to the same crime that city officials stress is already falling noticeably.

The president holds the legal right to make such moves, up to a point.

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Aggressive

It remains unclear as the week unfolds how visible and aggressive the federal presence in Washington will be, how it could play out, who would be targeted, and how long it might last.

On Monday, Washington mayor Muriel Bowser said Mr Trump’s freshly announced plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and call in the National Guard was not a productive step.

She laid out the city’s case that crime has been dropping steadily and said Mr Trump’s perceived state of emergency simply does not match the numbers.

She also flatly stated that the capital city’s hands are tied and that her administration has little choice but to comply.

“We could contest that,” she said of Mr Trump’s definition of a crime emergency, “but his authority is pretty broad”.

Ms Bowser made a reference to Mr Trump’s “so-called emergency” and concluded: “I’m going to work every day to make sure it’s not a complete disaster.”

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Sparring

While Mr Trump invokes his plan by saying that “we’re going to take our capital back”, Ms Bowser and the MPD maintain that violent crime overall in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low after a sharp rise in 2023. Carjackings, for example, dropped about 50% in 2024 and are down again this year.

Ms Bowser, a Democrat, spent much of Mr Trump’s first term in office openly sparring with the Republican president.

She fended off his initial plans for a military parade through the streets and stood in public opposition when he called in a multi-agency flood of federal law enforcement to confront anti-police brutality protesters in summer 2020.

She later had the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in giant yellow letters on the street about a block from the White House.

In Mr Trump’s second term, backed by Republican control of both houses of Congress, Ms Bowser has walked a public tightrope for months, emphasising common ground with the Trump administration on issues such as the successful effort to bring the NFL’s Washington Commanders back to the District of Columbia.

She watched with open concern for the city streets as Mr Trump finally got his military parade this summer.

Her decision to dismantle Black Lives Matter Plaza earlier this year served as a neat metaphor for just how much the power dynamics between the two executives has evolved.

Uncharted territory

Now that fraught relationship enters uncharted territory as Mr Trump has followed through on months of what many DC officials had quietly hoped were empty threats.

The new standoff has cast Ms Bowser in a sympathetic light, even among her long-time critics.

“It’s a power play and we’re an easy target,” Clinique Chapman, chief executive of the DC Justice Lab, said.

A frequent critic of Ms Bowser, whom she accuses of “over policing our youth” with the recent expansions of Washington’s youth curfew, Ms Chapman said Mr Trump’s latest move “is not about creating a safer DC. It’s just about power”.

Ms Bowser contends that all the power resides with Mr Trump and that her administration can do little other than comply and make the best of it.

For Mr Trump, the effort to take over public safety in Washington reflects an escalation of his aggressive approach to law enforcement.

The District of Columbia’s status as a congressionally established federal district gives him a unique opportunity to push his tough-on-crime agenda, though he has not proposed solutions to the root causes of homelessness or crime.

“Let me be crystal clear,” attorney general Pam Bondi said during Mr Trump’s announcement news conference.

“Crime in DC is ending and ending today.”

Mr Trump’s declaration of a state of emergency fits the general pattern of his second term in office: He has declared states of emergency on issues ranging from border protection to economic tariffs, enabling him to essentially rule via executive order. In many cases, he has moved forward while the courts sorted them out.