WASHINGTON (AP) — Some of the 800 National Guard members deployed by President Donald Trump began arriving in the nation's capital on Tuesday, ramping up after the White House ordered federal forces to take over the city's police department and reduce crime in what the president called — without substantiation — a lawless city.
The influx came the morning after Trump announced he would be activating the guard members and taking over the department. He cited a crime emergency — but referred to the same crime that city officials stress is already falling noticeably. The president holds the legal right to make such moves for at least a month.
Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged to work alongside the federal officials Trump has tasked with overseeing the city's law enforcement, while insisting the police chief remained in charge of the department and its officers.
“How we got here or what we think about the circumstances — right now we have more police, and we want to make sure we use them,” she told reporters.
The tone was a shift the day before, when Bowser said Trump's plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and call in the National Guard was not a productive step and argued his perceived state of emergency simply doesn’t match the declining crime numbers. Still, the law gives the federal government more sway over the capital city than in U.S. states, and Bowser said her administration's ability to push back is limited.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, meanwhile, called the Tuesday morning meeting productive in a social media post and said the Justice Department would “work closely with the D.C. city government" to “make Washington, D.C., safe again."
