Troops arrived and made arrests on the first day as President Donald Trump said “we’re going to take our capital back.”
By Catholics for Catholics
It’s on.
About 800 National Guard troops started arriving to Washington D.C. on Tuesday, in a show of force by President Donald Trump in his quest to take over the city and reduce crime.
The soldiers reached the capital the morning after the President announced he would be mobilizing the guard members and taking over the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. The president has the legal right to activate the military, with limitations.
According to Newsmax, the law permits the president to take charge of the police department for a month. However, how aggressive the federal presence will be and how it could play out remained open questions as the city’s mayor and police chief went to the Justice Department to meet with the attorney general.
Though Trump praised D.C.’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, as a good person, both have been at odds. She said that the president’s takeover of the Police Department with the National Guard is not a productive move. She added that crime has been dropping gradually and said Trump’s perceived state of emergency simply doesn’t match the numbers.
But Trump said that with the presence of the National Guard “we’re going to take our capital back.”
Bowser and the MPD maintain that violent crime in Washington has dropped to a 30-year low after a sharp rise in 2023. They cited carjackings, which dropped about 50% in 2024 and are down again this year. They added that more than half of those arrested, however, are juveniles, and the extent of those punishments is a point of contention for the Trump administration.
Bowser openly scrapped with the president during his first term. She questioned his initial plans for a military parade through the streets and stood in opposition when he called in 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.
The Trump Admin announces plan to clean up DC crime. Do the protestors not want safe cities? pic.twitter.com/BRvDKekEbI
— Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 (@CforCatholics) August 11, 2025
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