Donald Trump’s usurpation of law enforcement in the nation’s capital carried a warning for America’s liberal bastions.
Speaking at a White House press briefing Monday morning, Trump declared a “public safety emergency,” emphasizing Washington’s supposedly startling rise in crime while citing statistics from 2023 instead of 2025.
In reaction to the outdated numbers, he announced that his administration would deploy the Metropolitan Police Department and the D.C. National Guard, handing control of police over to Attorney General Pam Bondi and leveraging the D.C. Home Rule Act to federalize the district’s law enforcement.
“We will deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence, and you will have more police. And you will be so happy,” Trump said. “We will bring in the military if it’s needed, by the way.”
But Trump also suggested that cities far beyond Washington’s region could experience the same fate.
“We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then, of course, you have Baltimore and Oakland. You don’t even mention them anymore, they’re so far gone,” Trump said, before promising that Washington would be cleaned up “very quick.”
Later, when asked explicitly if other cities were next on his list, Trump said, “We’re just going to see what happens. We’re going to have tremendous success with what we’re doing.
“Other cities are hopefully watching this … and maybe they’ll self-clean up and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all the things that caused the problem,” he continued.
“We’re going to look at New York in a little while. Let’s do this together.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Trump has stepped on states’ rights while deploying the National Guard. In June, while Los Angelenos protested the administration’s ICE raids, Trump ushered in 4,000 National Guard members, ignoring myriad objections by the state and local government.
The trial to determine whether the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes, and the Tenth Amendment is scheduled to kick off Monday in a California courtroom.
This story has been updated.
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