MAGA Governor Jeff Landry’s pleas for the Trump administration to send federal troops to his state of Louisiana have been slammed by critics.
The Louisiana governor started begging for a National Guard deployment to the state in early September after President Trump weighed sending troops to New Orleans.
Landry has recently upped the pressure by sending a formal request to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday.
Jeff Asher, a crime trends analyst who co-founded AH Datalytics, said, “New Orleans has had the fewest murders this year since 1970.”
“This is a wholly unnecessary stunt,” he wrote in a Monday post on Bluesky.
Data from the Real-Time Crime Index supports this, showing nearly a 23 percent decrease in year-to-date murders compared to last year.
Landry said in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News that his request was made in order “to reduce the amount of violence” in the state.
“Why would you not want your citizens to be safe?” the governor asked.
Landry went on to claim a current “uptick in violence” in the Bayou State.
But as of 2025, all violent crimes, including murders, have significantly reduced since 2023, according to the New Orleans Police Department.
“Our crime rate is going down,” Hans Ganthier, the assistant superintendent of New Orleans’ police department, told reporters on Tuesday.
Louisiana politicians have also railed against Landry’s desire for a National Guard deployment.
Joy Walters, who represents a district in Shreveport, said: “Deploying troops to Shreveport will not solve our problems or crime. Crime is not eliminated by soldiers on the streets—crime is reduced when people have access to better jobs/careers/wages, education, healthcare, and opportunity.”
Louisiana congressman Troy Carter said “militarizing” New Orleans could possibly do more harm than good.
“We don’t embrace the notion of having National Guardsmen with M-16s walking the streets of New Orleans, militarizing our communities and perhaps adding more insult to injury,” he said.
Landry’s letter to Hegseth asks for up to 1,000 National Guard personnel to be deployed in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport through October 2026.
But the Trump-loving governor asked for the troops to be under Title 32, meaning they will be under the state’s control but with federal funding.
Another Louisiana Republican, House Speaker Mike Johnson, has also welcomed a military presence in Louisiana.
“New Orleans, like most Democrat-run cities, has a high crime rate, so it would be helpful,” Johnson said on Sept. 8 in an interview with the Associated Press.
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