President Donald Trump this week reignited his threat that the federal government will take over and “run” Washington, DC, after a former Department of Government Efficiency employee was assaulted in an attempted carjacking.
After those comments, CNN reported the Trump administration is making plans to ramp up federal law enforcement and deploy the National Guard in Washington, DC. Officers from ICE, FBI, National Guard, along with local Department of Homeland Security agents will be part of the federal law enforcement presence, a source told CNN.
But experts say Trump can’t unilaterally federalize DC, and that calling federal troops into the city would be unusual, especially since the district does not appear to be suffering from a significant crime spike.
DC’s Home Rule
The US Congress has authority and oversight over DC. But it ceded some of that power when it passed the Home Rule in 1973, giving some of its ability to govern the city to local government entities, including the mayor and city council.
Trump said this week he was going “to look at” overturning Home Rule, saying, “the lawyers are already studying it.”
Members of the DC National Guard are deployed outside of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. – Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
But such an act would require a vote by Congress, said Jill Hasday, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.
“To fully remove local control over DC, Congress would have to repeal the Home Rule Act. So, if what the president has in mind is complete federal control over DC, in other words, no possibilities and no room for local control, that would require repealing the Home Rule Act,” Hasday said.
How the National Guard could play a role
The DC National Guard’s 2,700 soldiers and airmen report only to the president, unlike their counterparts in other states.
Trump told reporters this week he’s considering “bringing in the National Guard, maybe very quickly, too.”
William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University, said Trump’s command of guard troops in the district makes it easier for them to participate in law enforcement “on behalf of the government,” which would typically require a governor’s request.
“By statute, the president is made the commander of the DC Guard. In every other place, every other state, it’s the governor. Here, it’s the president,” Banks said.
When Trump invoked a rarely used law to federalize the National Guard in response to protests in Los Angeles earlier this year, experts told CNN the troops could not make arrests unless Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.
Claire Finkelstein, Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the National Guard should leave anything related to law enforcement to the police.
Banks said any national authorities in DC would “have the same limits on their authority that they would anywhere else.”
“They have to respect the constitutional rights of the people so they can’t intimidate, they can’t search and seize without a reasonable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing,” he said. “They can’t target individuals on the basis of their political beliefs or their political expression.”
What happened in 2020
The idea of federal troops patrolling DC could invoke for residents memories of 2020, when Trump called in a slew of federal authorities to respond to protests stemming from the police killing of George Floyd.
The city’s status as a district, not a state, allows the president, and in turn the federal government, more leeway in directing troops and a range of federal authorities.
The response to the protests included personnel from the National Guard, FBI and ICE, along with the Secret Service, Park Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, US Marshals Service, Bureau of Prisons, Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protective Service and the Transportation Security Administration.
The presence of federal authorities elicited criticism from DC officials and resulted in a stream of images of authorities dressed in full fatigues patrolling the streets of the city’s downtown.
Crime is down in DC
Hasday said another reason the move would be unprecedented is because it is “not clear that DC is, in fact, undergoing a public safety crisis,” Hasday said. Although there’s violent crime in DC, just as there is everywhere, Hasday said she hasn’t seen any outside sources claim the situation is beyond the capacity of local police.
Despite Trump’s repeated claims of increased crime in DC, 2025 crime numbers are lower than last year’s, according to a preliminary year-to-date crime comparison from DC Police.
Banks said bringing in outsiders would be “against the grain” of how Americans like for laws to be enforced.
“The background principle in the United States is that we like to have our laws enforced by civilians, by police, and we like it to be at the local level, people that are soldiers, cops, if you will, who are close to us. They’re our friends and neighbors. They live in our community,” he said.
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