Trump Uses a Former DOGE Staffer's Assault in Washington, D.C. as a Pretext to Militarily Commandeer the American Capital

Aug 12, 2025

Donald Trump used a late-night attack on a former DOGE employee as his pretext to take over the D.C. police and send the National Guard onto the streets of the American capital. As usual, he is claiming emergency powers where there is no emergency: the DOJ’s own website declares that violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low. (See a deep dive from an expert on crime statistics.)

The New York Times reports:

President Trump significantly escalated his efforts to exert federal authority over the nation’s capital on Monday, saying that he was temporarily taking control of the city’s police department and deploying 800 National Guard troops to fight crime there.
At a White House news conference, the president painted a dystopian picture of Washington—including “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth”—that stood in sharp contrast to official figures showing violent crime in the city is at a 30-year low. … A White House official said the takeover was intended to last for 30 days. …
Mr. Trump also threatened to expand his efforts to other cities, including Chicago, if they did not deal with crime rates he claimed were “out of control.”

Trump has already been sending FBI agents to patrol against ordinary local crime, but, more ominously, he is also sending ICE and the border patrol. There is no reason to think immigration is feeding crime in D.C., so this just confirms that these agencies are being built up as Trump’s personal goon squad.

The threat to expand this to other cities—as he has already done in Los Angeles—indicates that Trump is attempting to normalize the military occupation of U.S. cities at his arbitrary whim. That is an even more ominous precedent to set in D.C., where controlling the streets with troops could be used (as was attempted recently in South Korea) against Congress.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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