Washington, D.C., is suing the Trump Administration over its deployment of National Guard troops to the city, alleging that the operation violates prohibitions on military involvement in local law enforcement.
“Deploying the National Guard to engage in law enforcement is not only unnecessary and unwanted, but it is also dangerous and harmful to the District and its residents,” said D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb. “No American city should have the US military – particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement – policing its streets.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded to the lawsuit by stating that the President was acting within his “lawful authority” to deploy the National Guard. “This lawsuit is nothing more than another attempt—at the detriment of D.C. residents and visitors—to undermine the President’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in DC,” Jackson said in a written statement.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by Shwalb, comes nearly a month after the President deployed more than 2,000 federal troops to the nation’s capital following his declaration of a public safety emergency over crime in the city declaration.
It follows a federal judge’s Tuesday ruling that the President broke the law when he deployed troops to Los Angeles earlier this summer following a series of protests against immigration raids in the city. The decision, set to go in effect on Sept. 12, will bar the Pentagon from deploying troops to arrests, search, or perform crowd control in L.A. without Congressional approval.
Trump has meanwhile threatened to deploy the National Guard to other Democratic-led cities in blue states, including Chicago, Baltimore, as well as New Orleans, which is led by a Democratic mayor but lies in a Republican-led state. Chicago officials are reportedly preparing for a potential deployment, though it’s unclear when—or if—federal troops will arrive.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued an order earlier this week directing city officials to continue coordinating with federal law enforcement “to the maximum extent allowable by law” beyond the expiration of Trump’s emergency declaration and authority over the city’s police force. Bowser said that the order was intended to “provide the pathway forward beyond the Presidential emergency.” The mayor later commented that the order made it so only Congress could extend the presence of federal law enforcement in D.C.
The Trump-declared crime emergency in D.C. is set to expire on Sep. 10. National Guard troops in D.C., however, are reportedly expected to be in the area through December, though an official extension of their deployment has not been finalized.
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