Trump’s Show of Force Begins to Take Shape as Guard Troops Deploy in D.C.
Troops appeared near the Washington Monument on Tuesday evening.
National Guard troops began to deploy in Washington on Tuesday evening as President Trump’s plan to use the federal government to crack down on crime in the city started taking shape.
About a dozen members of the National Guard appeared in five military vehicles near the Washington Monument as the sun set, a stark juxtaposition to a peaceful evening scene of people jogging by with headphones and walking their dogs. An Army official said troops were continuing to gather at the D.C. Armory and were expected to deploy around national monuments, and near a U.S. Park Police facility in the Anacostia neighborhood of southeast Washington.
Mr. Trump on Monday described the nation’s capital in apocalyptic terms as a crime-infested wasteland — a description that ignores the extent to which crime has been falling in the city over the last two years. But it remains unclear whether the eventual show of force will match the president’s rhetoric.
The initial deployment near the Washington Monument, at least, often resembled something less fearsome, with troops snapping photos of themselves with visitors. They left roughly two hours after they arrived.
“We just did a presence patrol to be amongst the people, to be seen,” Master Sgt. Cory Boroff said as he stood near a Humvee. “Of the people, for the people in D.C.,” he added. He said he did not know where they would be headed next.
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In Washington, a city of roughly 700,000 people, the Metropolitan Police Department makes an average of 68 arrests a day, officials said. City officials said the National Guard troops would not have the authority to make arrests.
Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, and Pamela A. Smith, her police chief, met Tuesday morning with Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the city officials emerged from the meeting saying they were focused on how to make the most of the federal support. Ms. Bowser said she wanted to make sure the federal force was “being well used, and all in an effort to drive down crime.”
Ms. Bondi, in a post on X, called the meeting “productive,” and said the Justice Department would work closely with the city and its police department to “make Washington, D.C. safe again.” ...
The meeting came one day after Mr. Trump invoked a law that allows the president to take control of the city’s police force for up to 30 days. Officials have said that 800 National Guard members and roughly 500 federal law enforcement agents were also being deployed to city streets to help curb crime.
Chief Smith said that the federalization of the local police would “make our city even better,” and that city officials would “look at the locations around our city where we believe there are areas of pockets of crime that we would like to address.”
Residents would see local police officers “working side by side with our federal partners in order to enforce the efforts that we need around the city,”
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“This is not about preventing crime,” said Clinique Chapman, the chief executive of DC Justice Lab. “It’s about political theater and federal control.”
She added: “What we do know and worry about is the unintended consequences, the collateral consequences, of this takeover. Young Black boys will bear the brunt of this, as they are the most likely to be stopped, to be questioned...
Ms. Chapman warned that “we are going to see this damage done for years to come, beyond the time they are actually occupying the city right now.”
Mr. Trump’s federal crackdown on Washington could be both an optics play and a powder keg.
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One night, as the protesters moved to downtown Washington, the administration dispatched military helicopters to conduct low-altitude maneuvers typically reserved for combat zones. The force of the helicopters tore tree branches and sent protesters scurrying around the corner, only to find rows of federal agents marching toward them armed with nonlethal weapons.
The Justice Department inspector general later criticized the deployment of the federal agents.
There is some cognitive dissonance in the NYT reporting. The headline characterizes the 30-day takeover in unmistakably ominous tones. But the text belies the lede significantly. The attitude of the guard official, "of the people, for the people of D.C." is conciliatory, almost as if he is going through motions and knows that this is Trump being bellicose for no reason. The District Mayor was conciliator; the meeting was characterized by Bondi as "productive" and pledged that DOJ would work closely with D.C. and its police department.
So, bad a look as this is, embarrassing it is to America to have National Guard troops in the capital of the nation, there is insufficient info from this report whether this demonstration is just for show or if it s a precursor for a Federal takeover of local police, which can last only thirty days, and lack arrest power.
To a standard of more probable than not, I don't think a federal takeover of the capital is, at this early stage, predictable with much confidence.