Trump expands L.A. military tactics by sending National Guard to Washington, D.C.

In an expansion of tactics launched in June during the immigration raids in Los Angeles, President Trump announced on Monday that he would activate 800 national guard troops in Washington, DC, to help “restore public order” and “take up the capital”.

“Our capital was overwhelmed by violent gangs and criminals thirsty for blood, itinerant crowds of young savages, drug addicts and homeless,” said Trump in the white house news room.

“It is Liberation Day at DC,” he said.

Trump, who sent around 5,000 navies and troops of the National Guard to Los Angeles in June in a decision which was opposed by California Governor Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass, invokes article 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act which places the Metropolitan Police Department under the direct control of federal control.

Trump painted DC as a filthy hell and said that his administration had already started to remove the homeless from the camps across the city. He swore to “restore the city to the brilliant capital that everyone wants it to be”.

“If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty,” he said. “We are going to make it clean.”

Although the president has quoted violent crime issues in Washington – declaring that the city is “completely out of control” – data show that violent crimes have decreased considerably in recent years.

Only a few weeks before Trump took office, the Ministry of Justice announced that The violent crimes in the city were 30 years old. Homicides fell 32%, flights down 39% and armed cars fell 53% compared to the 2023 levels, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department.

He also issued a warning to Los Angeles.

“I hope it looks at it,” said Trump, reprimanding Bass and Newsom for their fire storm management that swept the region in January, destroying thousands of houses.

“The mayor’s incompetent, like Governor Newscum,” said Trump, renewing his criticism of local officials so as not to accelerate reconstruction and the authorization process after the disaster. “He has a good line of B -, but that’s it.”

Trump’s announcement that he was deploying troops to DC occurs two months after having sparked a major legal battle with California when he sent thousands of soldiers to the, he argued that they were necessary to fight against what he described as “violent crowds and insurrectionists” while the demonstrations broke out in the city against the federal immigration raids.

But the demonstrations were calmed relatively quickly and that local officials said they were mainly held in check by the local police. The troops and the navies of the National Guard found themselves little deployed to the certain protected federal buildings, but most remained at the base of the form of joint forces in Los Alamitos.

Some members of the deployed staff helped federal agents when they had carried out immigration implementation, but the military officials said that the troops were limited to the security and control of crowds and had no authority for applying the law. The National Guard played a role in the convoy which came down to the MacArthur park and the raid of cannabis farms in the counties of Ventura and Santa Barbara.

In June, the American district judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco judged that Trump had violated the law when he mobilized thousands of members of the California National Guard against the wishes of the State.

In a 36 -page decision of the American district court, Breyer wrote that Trump’s actions “were illegal – going beyond the scope of his statutory authority and violating the 10th amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Breyer added that he was “disturbed by the involvement” inherent in the argument of the Trump administration according to which “the protest against the federal government, a basic civil freedom protected by the first amendment, can justify a conclusion of rebellion”.

But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States has paused in this court order, allowing troops to stay in Los Angeles while the case takes place before the Federal Court. The Court of Appeal found that the president had a broad, but not “invisible” power to deploy the army in American cities.