The Daily - Trump Sends the National Guard Into Washington, D.C.

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

President Trump said on Monday that he would take control of the Washington, D.C., police department and send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.Devlin Barrett, who covers the F.B.I. for The New York Times, explains why the president says this is necessary and how it fits into his broader strategy for dealing with cities run by Democrats.Guest: Devlin Barrett, a New York Times reporter covering the Justice Department and the F.B.I.Background reading: Trump ordered the National Guard to Washington and a takeover of the capital’s police.But crime is down in Washington.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily. President Trump said on Monday that he would take control of the Washington, D.C. Police Department and send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city. Today, we talk with Devlin Barrett about why the president says this is necessary and how it fits into his broader strategy for dealing with Democratic held cities. It's Tuesday, August 12th. So Devlin, since President Trump took office, we have seen him deploy the military for a whole

host of reasons, securing the southern border, dealing with protests in Los Angeles. And now it seems that he wants to deploy federal agents, including the National Guard, into D.C. So just to start off, could you tell us what exactly is going on? So the president is once again using the military to try to address what he sees as a looming domestic crisis. In this case, crime in Washington, D.C. We're here for a very serious purpose, very serious purpose. Something's out of control, but we're going to put it in control very quickly like we did on the southern border. So Monday morning, he holds pretty remarkable press conference.

conference at the White House. I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse. This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back. And the president announces that he's sending National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and he's going to send additional federal agents, whether it's FBI or DEA, or others out onto the streets as part of this crackdown on crime that he says is making the nation's capital unlivable.

Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we're not going to let it happen anymore. We're not going to take it. And the president describes the problem that he says he will fix, and pretty apocalyptic. terms, which is that supposedly street crime and particularly crimes by juveniles is basically making it unsafe for law-abiding citizens to leave their houses. And it's embarrassing for me to be up here. You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once

beautiful capital was. And that's essentially how he describes Washington, D.C. So today we're declaring public safety emergency in the District of Columbia and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who's fantastic, is taking command of the Metropolitan Police Department as of this moment. So what the president described is that the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, will now essentially be in charge of this federal operation to wipe out crime in Washington, D.C. and what we know as of right now is that involves roughly 800 National Guard soldiers and about 500 reassigned federal agents.

But, you know, the real strange piece of this, the thing we really haven't seen before, because some of this stuff we've seen before, including in the first Trump administration, but the real new twist here and the thing I think there's still a lot of unanswered questions about is this idea that the federal government, starting with senior justice department officials are now going to be directing the city's police department. That is a new and more aggressive

version of Trump's idea of taking control of cities and there's a lot of parts of that we don't know how they're going to look yet. We're going to take back our capital. We're going to make it beautiful again, but we're going to make it more importantly safe again. It's going to be so safe.

It's going to be a model. And then we'll look at other cities also, but other cities are studying. what we're doing. And he also very clearly sent the signal that other cities should pay attention to what's happening in D.C. and should change their behavior accordingly so that the federal government doesn't do similar things to their cities down the road. We're going to have a safe, beautiful capital, and it's going to happen very quickly. Thank you all. He's painting quite a dark picture of the nation's capital. I don't live there, but you,

Dovelyn Barrett do live there? Is this true what he's saying about crime? Is it an emergency situation that he's responding to? So if you look at the crime stats for Washington, D.C., most major categories of crime are down double digits over the last year, over the last two years. So all these numbers are heading in what police officials would say are basically the right direction. but obviously anyone who lives in a city, you know, the data is only so reassuring. There's certainly stories frequently about crimes in the city that scare people, carjackings, muggings. But there's actually one particular crime that I think it's important to point out here

that sets some of this in motion. And that is a young guy named Edward Coristine. Big balls bloodied, the 19-year-old former Doe Staffer, by a violent mob of minors in the nation's capital and a popular part of that. And he had a sort of a funny internet nickname of Big Balls. Wow. He worked for Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, part of that Trump effort to cut down the federal workforce.

And he was out on the street in downtown D.C. after midnight with the young woman. And he ended up getting assaulted quite badly by a group of teenagers. Musk says on social media, Edward ran to defend her and, was severely beaten to the point of concussion. And most people, they will call 911 and hope for the best, not big balls. Two of the kids who allegedly attacked him have been arrested in charge. They're 15. Trump seized on this, got very upset about it.

In a lengthy social media post today, President Trump wrote, Crime in Washington, D.C. is totally out of control. And I think for Trump, an incident like this only serves to strengthen his. view that he needs to take major decisive action to, you know, address this problem. Somebody from Doge was very badly hurt last night. You saw that. A young man who was beat up by a bunch of thugs in D.C., and either they're going to straighten their act out in the terms of government

and in terms of protection, and we're going to have to federalize and run it the way it's supposed to be run. And the images from that carjacking that you mentioned of the Doge I remember seeing them. He looks beaten and bloody. So to your point, you know, what is the human reaction to seeing something like that? Right. And I think that's one of the reasons why people's feelings about crime, people's perceptions about crime, are often quite different from what the data shows. We live in a world now, especially where you can see videos of people getting in fights on this street. You can see pictures like the one of that attack of someone, you know,

with a badly beaten face, blood all over them. It's sad and scary to see stuff like that. And certainly, yes, there is a carjacking problem in D.C. That's been true for years. And there's also a problem of groups of teenagers running around, particularly in the summer, breaking the law or causing trouble. There's also been a long-running debate over how to deal with homelessness in the city. But the city's attorney general says there is no emergency here. This is not a crisis.

This is a city dealing with crime, which is a problem that every city has to deal with in one form or another. So given that D.C. is kind of in the same boat as a lot of other major cities in America, and that things are not getting any worse and may even be getting better than just a few years ago, what is the rationale here for taking over the police force and bringing in the military at this moment? Well, that's really the million-dollar question that a lot of people are asking, after the president's announcement. Why now and why the military? Even if this is this much of a problem,

why is this the answer? We'll be right back. Okay, so we've established. that there are issues with crime and quality of life in D.C., but nothing really out of the norm for cities across the country. So why bring in the military and how do you just bring in the military into a city that has its own law enforcement? So that's a great question. And one of the ways in which this is a little hard to explain is that the Trump administration, not that long ago, you know, late April, was touting

what it called a 25% drop in crime in D.C. Just since they took over the government. And they credited that drop of crime to President Trump. And they said, you know, strong law enforcement is making the city safe again. So by their own measure, crime was dropping. And it's a little strange now for them to suddenly come back and say, wait, let's just forget what we said before. actually it's out of control and we need to send the military to fix it now to the question how can he do this what authority does he have to do this so this is actually part of a pattern we we see

with the president in that he often likes to declare emergencies or crises and in declaring that decides that only the military or only a very severe reaction will fix what he declares to be the crisis or the emergency of the moment. Right. There are lots of things that the military does get used for sometimes. The National Guard does help in sort of, you know, emergency relief situations.

But that's not what this is. This is about declaring a crime emergency. And, you know, it's the president who is saying this is an emergency. Again, the local officials, the D.C. Attorney General, is saying there is no emergency here. There is no crisis.

But the law essentially makes the emergency in the eyes. of the president. So, you know, the city government of D.C. is all structured around a federal law that's basically called the home rule law. And one of the sections of that law says that in a time of emergency, the president can take control, temporary control, of the Washington, D.C. police department. So they're essentially invoking that section of that law to take over the Metropolitan Police Department. The law says you can only do that for 30 days. So basically, because of the uniqueness of the relationship between D.C. and the federal

government, he is able to do this. Right. Especially in terms of taking over the city police department. He does not have that power when it comes to, say, the Los Angeles Police Department. The law didn't give him that authority. He just sent in the National Guard instead. And that is, you know, the subject of an ongoing legal fight. Do we know what the specific plans are for the police force and for the National Guard? Like, what are they actually going to be doing on the ground? So already we're seeing small foot patrols of federal agents out, and that's a little different. But what's been described to me that's going to happen is there going to be some federal agents in what are called fixed post, meaning you stand in one place, either a high traffic place or a high crime place, and you stand to be observed and to discourage crime.

Others will be patrolling in vehicles. And the National Guard will probably be used in some way to be a very visible public presence. But keep in mind that National Guard aren't trained in arrests, aren't authorized to make arrests. That's not really what troops do. That's what police do. By the same measure, federal agents can't make the same type of small level street crime arrests that local police make. So what's been described to me is there's already conversations underway about, well, if you're a federal agent and you observe some minor crime being committed, you should detain the person and call the local cops and they will come and make a decision about whether there should be an arrest for that offense. This is all going to be pretty complicated, organizationally, legally, politically, all of it. And there's an important point here, which is that this is not just about crime. This is also about a whole category of issues that generally fall under the description of quality of life issues in a major city. A lot of people perceive things like homelessness and trash in the streets or drug addicts passed out on the streets as additional examples of crime, even though those are really more social problems.

But Trump's whole effort, he has made clear he also intends to remove homeless people. from the city. How he's going to do that, we haven't heard any explanation yet. That sort of work is more often done by local police when it happens. But I think one of the things that's really telling about this move by the president, it's a huge show of force, it's a huge, essentially flex of federal power to address not just crime, which is typically left to locals to deal with, but also quality of life issues in a major U.S. city. The idea of using federal forces to deal with homelessness, isn't that something that the police should do?

Like, don't they have more training than National Guardsmen in this instance? Absolutely. I think to apply the most rational version of this, you would probably see them using the police department that they have just taken federal control of to do that kind of work. But we really don't know because they haven't explained it yet. So that is definitely much more of a police function, much more of a city government function. But look, a lot of what Trump is doing is he's basically saying, and this has been a Republican argument, it's not unique to Trump.

He's basically saying Democrats don't know how to run cities. We will take control from these Democrats in this city and run it the way we want it run. Do we have any sense of how local law enforcement in D.C. has reacted to all of this? local officials have reacted very negatively to this decision the mayor of the city has called it unsettling and unprecedented you know there's a real resistance and dislike of this approach you know the mayor also said military should not be used against our citizens that is an argument that has existed in american politics since the founding of this country but obviously she can't stop them from doing it. Trump suggested in the press conference that he might expand this strategy to other cities. And I wonder how possible or likely you think that is? As a legal matter, it's pretty difficult. Like we said, there are some pretty unique features of Washington, D.C. that allow for the president to do something like take over control of the local police department. But he doesn't

necessarily need to take over control of the local police department to do some of this stuff. As we saw in Los Angeles, he sent in troops and he added more federal agents because he didn't like how the city was handling the protests against the immigration raids there. So he can do some of these things. He probably cannot do all of the things in other cities that he would like to do here. But that's clearly a warning and a statement of how he views city government in a lot of parts of the country. Whether he acts on it and how much he acts on it, he wasn't saying. Now, this aggressive public push towards Washington, D.C., specifically, is obviously going to grab a lot of headlines.

And it's obviously going to be the subject of debate and discussion for days to come as we see exactly how these troops, these agents, these police are used to carry out Trump's idea for what should happen in Washington, D.C. But it also comes at a time when the administration, is really fed up with and frustrated by a lot of headlines about the Jeffrey Epstein case and when and whether they will release additional documents from the files about that case. That is an issue that has tied the administration in knots for weeks. And I think this issue of D.C., this issue of crime in D.C. and federalizing control of the D.C. police department will just dominate headlines for a while now.

Wow. The answer to this might be obvious, but it sounds like it is possible that these federal forces, we don't know what they're going to be doing. They could be sitting around not doing that much, since we don't know that's a possibility. And this whole endeavor could be kind of a waste of time.

And if that happens, even though sending in federal forces, as you've described, is unusual, Why would it be concerning? Is it concerning? What are people worried about exactly? If nothing else, this is a tremendous show of force, right? This is about a president telling a city, I am taking charge of this situation and I am going to direct what happens for, let's say, a month. And if it's solely a show of force, then sure, I think. I think, you know, you can make an argument that not much harm came of it and maybe some good came of it. I think back to when federal troops were used in the city after the racial justice protests.

And a lot of that effort was, frankly, standing around. I remember talking to federal agents who's spent their nights, you know, driving around in cars. And they didn't really do very much. But it was believed or thought to be a good idea to sort of calm down the street. streets. So there's a world in which the most tangible result of all this is a bunch of people in uniforms or people in cop cars hanging around on the street and being sort of observable and maybe deterring crime that way. I think the worry for a lot of people is, one, force for its own sake is a bad idea. Two, this is not really anything like an emergency that requires

you know, federal troops. And finally, this is not how American government has historically worked. Presidents don't try to take over cities as a general rule. And so that is an alarming use of power. And whether it's just flexing, whether it's just the show of power for the sake of showing power, a lot of people in the city certainly would argue that's bad in itself. And one of the Immediate criticisms from a lot of city officials is that, you know, this is not a presidential issue. It's not the president's business to try to make sure kids aren't robbing people on U Street, Northwest, on any given night in Washington, D.C. But I think that criticism also speaks to, like, a real character trait of Trump as a president. which is that he often behaves and thinks about issues not as, you know, say a historical president would or even a governor would.

He, in some ways, he behaves like he's mayor of the United States. He likes to reach deep, deep into particular issues and try to make changes on a particular street or a very particular subject. like, for example, homeless tents in parts of Washington, D.C. That is not an area historically that the presidents or even governors would focus on or pay much attention to. But here, with this president, as we've seen it a lot of times before, this is a president who often thinks and acts more like a mayor than a president. And this particular action in Washington is a classic example of how he operates. Devlin Barrett, pleasure having you.

As a first-time guest, I wish we had a gong to ring for you, but I'll just say thank you. Thanks, Rachel. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to ring. President Trump signed an executive order extending the tariff truce with China by another 90 days. The tariff, 145 percent on Chinese goods imported to the United States, is now set to go into effect in mid-November. And Harvard and the Trump administration are nearing a $500 million settlement that would restore

billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's oldest university. The deal would require Harvard to spend the money on vocation. and educational programs and research, satisfying the school's demand that any settlement not be paid to the government directly. And Harvard would also need to continue its commitments to fighting anti-Semitism on campus, one of the root causes of the Trump administration's ire.

Today's episode was produced by Diana Wynne and Muj Sadi. It was edited by Lizzo Baylan and Jules. Paige Cowett with help from Lexi Deo. Contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lazzano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow. Thank you.