President Donald Trump announced plans to deploy 800 members of the District of Columbia National Guard to the nation's capital Monday morning, claiming it's part of an effort to crack down on violent crime in the city even as crime has fallen precipitously in the past two years.
Notably, the order's text also paves the way for more guard deployments from other states and overall increases by giving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authority to activate troops at "such numbers as he deems necessary." Trump also announced that -- using the authority of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973 -- he would be federalizing the D.C. police department, an unprecedented and historic move.
"This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back," Trump said during a press conference Monday morning.
Read Next: Activist and Trump Confidant Seeks to Oust Army Secretary
In January, a couple of weeks before Trump's inauguration, the Justice Department touted that total violent crime in D.C. in 2024 was down 35% from 2023 and the lowest it had been in more than 30 years, according to a news release that was still accessible on the Justice Department website as of Monday afternoon.
Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard follows a similar playbook seen in his second term to lean on and use military action for his political agenda. Similar moves this year included deploying troops to California amid immigration enforcement activities in Los Angeles, as well as sending thousands to the U.S. southern border to support law enforcement activities against migrants.
Hegseth said during the press conference that the D.C. Guard will be "flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week" and hinted that more could be on the way.
"There are other units we are prepared to bring in -- other National Guard units, other specialized units," Hegseth added.
Of the 800 Guardsmen being activated, about 100 to 200 will be on duty at any given time, the Army said in a statement Monday afternoon. The Guardsmen will be on Title 32 orders and will do administrative, logistics and "physical presence" work, the statement said.
Allies of the president, such as Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. -- who oversees the House committee that has jurisdiction over Washington, D.C. -- praised Trump's announcement.
"President Trump is rightly using executive power to take bold and necessary action to crack down on crime and restore law and order in Washington, D.C.," Comer said in a House Oversight Committee post on X.
Trump's move was immediately panned as unnecessary by the district's leaders.
"The administration's actions are unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful," D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote on X. "There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime in DC reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year."
D.C.'s nonvoting delegate in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, similarly decried the deployment of the Guard and the federalization of the local police as "counterproductive" and "escalatory."
"It does not escape me that the president is calling in the DCNG on the pretext of a surge in crime that the numbers do not support, while he was nowhere to be found for hours on January 6, 2021, as D.C. officials tried to get him to mobilize the DCNG as the U.S. Capitol was under siege," she said in a statement, referencing the hourslong delay in deploying the Guard as the Capitol was being attacked by Trump supporters trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
"The DCNG should be under control of D.C.'s chief executive, the same way governors control their Guard units," Norton added.
Norton and other Democrats in Congress have pushed for legislation that would give the district's mayor control over the D.C. National Guard, like governors control their states' Guards. The effort gained some momentum after the 2021 insurrection and passed the House as part of that year's annual defense policy bill. But the provision was not in the final version of the bill that became law, and the effort has since stalled.
Related: Trial to Start on Whether Deployment of National Guard to Los Angeles Violated Federal Law
