National Guard troops patrolling the United States capital at the direction of President Donald Trump have started carrying firearms, the military said on Sunday.
“Starting the late evening of August 24, 2025, [Joint Task Force-DC] service members began carrying their service-issued weapon,” the Joint Task Force-DC said in a statement.
The troops are only authorised to use force “as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm”, the statement said.
Unnamed officials told the Reuters news agency that the National Guard would either carry M17 pistols or M4 rifles.
The announcement came as Trump claimed, without evidence, on Sunday that there is “NO CRIME AND NO MURDER IN DC!”, one week after he deployed troops there.
In the same post on Truth Social, Trump said he might “send in the ‘troops’” to neighbouring Baltimore, which he described as “out of control” and “crime-ridden”.
Responding to an invitation from Maryland Governor Wes Moore to visit Baltimore and walk its streets, Trump said: “I would much prefer that he clean up this Crime disaster before I go there for a ‘walk’.”
However, according to the Baltimore police department, there was a double-digit reduction in gun violence in July compared with the previous year. The city has had 84 homicides so far this year – the fewest in more than 50 years, according to Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott.
In Washington, DC, which has a population of just more than 700,000 people, thousands of National Guard and federal law enforcement officers are now patrolling the streets.
The National Guard is a part-time force of reserve soldiers, which, according to the US Army, can be called on to respond to domestic emergencies, overseas combat missions and “counter-drug efforts”.
Their presence in the national capital, along with federal law enforcement officers, has been met by protests, as well as fear and confusion from residents.
At Trump’s request, some Republican governors have sent hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, which the president has depicted as being in the grip of a crime wave, although official data shows crime is down in the city.
Since Washington, DC, is not a state, the president has the power to take over policing in the capital for up to 30 days.
Many residents have long advocated for the district to become a state. However, Democrats did not further pursue efforts to make it a state after passing a bill in favour of it through the then-Democrat-controlled House of Representatives in 2020.
Meanwhile, JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, on Sunday rejected Trump’s push to send troops into Chicago.
“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicise Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he is causing working families,” Pritzker said in a statement.
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