President Donald Trump on Monday declared a public safety emergency in Washington, D.C., seizing temporary control of the city’s police force and deploying the National Guard to the streets.
Trump said the declaration was needed for “dramatic action” to address public safety, placing Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge of the Metropolitan Police Department. The president also suggested similar interventions in New York, Baltimore, and Oakland, and left open the possibility of sending military forces into D.C.
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The order comes even though D.C.’s violent crime rate is down 26% so far this year — the lowest in three decades, according to police data. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump’s claims of a city in crisis “hyperbolic and false,” and the D.C. council labeled the Guard deployment a “manufactured intrusion on local authority.”
Critics warn the move risks violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. Several Democrats, including D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, are pushing legislation to strip the president of the power to commandeer local police and transfer control of the D.C. National Guard to the mayor — though the bill faces long odds in the Republican-led Congress.
