(Washington) Part of the 800 members of the American National Guard deployed by President Donald Trump began to arrive in Washington on Tuesday, intensifying their efforts after the White House ordered the federal forces to take control of the city’s police service and reduce crime in what the president has qualified-without justification-as a lawless city.
This influx occurred the day after the President of the activation of the members of the Guard and the takeover of the service. He spoke of a criminal emergency, but has referred to the same crime which, according to the municipal authorities, is already a significant decline.
The president has the legal right to take such measures, up to a certain point.
It is still unknown, over the week, to what extent the presence of federal police in Washington would be visible and aggressive, how it could take place, which would be targeted and how long it could last.
The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, said on Monday that the project recently announced by the president to take control of the metropolitan police and to call on the National Guard was not constructive. She calmly exposed the city’s arguments, saying that crime was constantly decreasing, and said that the state of emergency collected by Donald Trump simply did not correspond to the figures.
Photo Julia Demoree Nikhinson, Associated Press Archives
The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser
She also bluntly affirmed that the capital had linked hands and that her administration had no choice but to comply with it. “We could contest this,” she said about the definition of the criminal emergency given by the tenant of the White House, “but his authority is quite wide. »»
The mayor referred to the “so-called emergency” of Mr. Trump and concluded: “I will work every day so that it is not a total disaster. »»
Right relations between the city and Trump
While the American president invokes his plan by declaring that “we are going to resume our capital”, Mme Bowser and the metropolitan police say that violent crime in Washington has generally decreased to reach its lowest level in 30 years, after a sharp rise in 2023. Road piracy, for example, dropped by around 50 % in 2024 and is down again this year. However, more than half of those arrested are minors and the severity of these sanctions is a subject of discord for the Trump administration.
Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, spent a large part of Donald Trump’s first mandate openly opposing the Republican President. She postponed her initial project for a military parade in the streets and publicly opposed when he called on a multi-social federal police force to face the demonstrators against police violence in the summer of 2020. She then had the words “Black Lives Matter” painted (the lives of blacks count, in French) in giant yellow letters in the street, to around a pâté of house houses.
During the billionaire’s second mandate, with the republican control of the two Congress Chambers, Mme Bowser walked on a tightrope for months, focusing on the common points with the Trump administration on issues such as the successful return of the Washington Commanders football team in the Columbia district.
She observed with manifest concern the streets of the city when Donald Trump finally had his military parade this summer. The president’s decision to dismantle the Black Lives Matter Plaza earlier this year has perfectly illustrated the evolution of the balance of power between the two leaders.
This tense relationship entered in unknown territory, the president having executed threats that many officials of Washington hoped to be hollow threats for months. This new showdown gave the mayor of the capital a favorable image, even with its longtime detractors.
“It’s a power game and we are an easy target,” said Clinique Chapman, CEO of DC Justice Lab. Frequent criticism of mme Bowser, whom she accuses of “surviving our youth” with the recent enlargements of the curfew imposed on young people in Washington, Mme Chapman said that Mr. Trump’s latest initiative “does not aim to create a safer Washington DC. It is simply a question of power ”.
Where does power really reside?
Mme Bowser argues that all the power belongs to Donald Trump and that his administration can hardly do something other than complying and making the most of it. She devoted a large part of the press conference on Monday to link the president’s takeover to the broader question of the status of state of the District of Columbia. As long as Washington remains a federal enclave with limited autonomy under the Local autonomy law From 1973, she said, the territory will remain vulnerable to such taking.
“We know that access to our democracy is precarious,” said Muriel Bowser. This is why you heard me, as well as many Washingtonians before me, plead in favor of the status of full state of the District of Columbia. »»
Photo Jim Watson, agency France-Presse
Members of the National Guard arrive at Washington armory on August 12, 2025.
Article 740 of La Local autonomy law Authorizes the president to take care of the Washington police for 48 hours, with the possibility of extension up to 30 days, in the event of an emergency.
No president did it before, said Monica Hopkins, director general of the Washington section of the American Union for Civil Liberties. “It should alarm everyone,” she insisted, not only in Washington. »»
For Donald Trump, this attempt to take care of public security in Washington reflects an intensification of his aggressive approach to order maintenance. The status of the Columbia district, a federal district established by the Congress, offers it a unique opportunity to promote its crime combat program, although it has not proposed any solution to the deep causes of homeless or crime.
Lindsay Whitehurst, journalist at the Associated Press, contributed to this dispatch.
