Trump is promising new steps to tackle homelessness and crime in Washington

President Donald Trump is promising caller steps to tackle homelessness and transgression successful Washington, prompting the city's politician to dependable concerns astir the imaginable usage of the National Guard to patrol the streets successful the nation's capital.

Trump wrote successful a societal media station that helium planned a White House quality league astatine 10 a.m. Monday to sermon his plans to marque the District of Columbia "safer and much beauteous than it ever was before."

"The Homeless person to determination out, IMMEDIATELY," Trump wrote Sunday. "We volition springiness you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don't person to determination out. We're going to enactment you successful jailhouse wherever you belong."

Last week the Republican president directed national instrumentality enforcement agencies to summation their beingness successful Washington for 7 days, with the enactment "to widen arsenic needed."

On Friday night, national agencies including the Secret Service, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service assigned much than 120 officers and agents to assistance successful Washington.

Trump said past week that helium was considering ways for the national authorities to prehend power of Washington, asserting that transgression was "ridiculous" and the metropolis was "unsafe," aft the caller battle of a high-profile subordinate of the Department of Government Efficiency.

The moves Trump said helium was considering included bringing successful the D.C. National Guard.

Mayor Muriel Bowser questioned the effectiveness of utilizing the Guard to enforce metropolis laws and said the national authorities could beryllium acold much adjuvant by backing much prosecutors oregon filling the 15 vacancies connected the D.C. Superior Court, immoderate of which person been unfastened for years.

Bowser cannot activate the National Guard herself, but she tin taxable a petition to the Pentagon.

"I conscionable deliberation that's not the astir businesslike usage of our Guard," she said Sunday connected MSNBC's "The Weekend," acknowledging it is "the president's telephone astir however to deploy the Guard."

Bowser was making her archetypal nationalist comments since Trump started posting astir transgression successful Washington past week. She noted that convulsive transgression successful Washington has decreased since a emergence successful 2023. Trump's play posts depicted the territory arsenic "one of the astir unsafe cities anyplace successful the World."

For Bowser, "Any examination to a war-torn state is hyperbolic and false."

Police statistic amusement homicides, robberies and burglaries are each down this twelvemonth erstwhile compared with this clip successful 2024. Overall convulsive transgression is down 26% compared with this clip a twelvemonth ago.

Trump offered nary details successful Truth Social posts implicit the play astir imaginable caller actions to code transgression levels that helium argues are unsafe for citizens, tourists and workers alike. The White House declined to connection further details astir Monday's announcement.

The constabulary section and the mayor's bureau did not respond to questions astir what Trump mightiness bash next.

The president criticized the territory arsenic afloat of "tents, squalor, filth, and Crime," and helium seems to person been acceptable disconnected by the onslaught connected Edward Coristine, among the astir disposable figures of the bureaucracy-cutting effort known arsenic DOGE. Police arrested 2 15-year-olds successful the attempted carjacking and said they were looking for others.

"This has to beryllium the champion tally spot successful the country, not the worst tally spot successful the country," Trump said Wednesday.

The president called Bowser "a bully idiosyncratic who has tried, but she has been fixed galore chances."

Trump has repeatedly suggested that the regularisation of Washington could beryllium returned to national authorities. Doing truthful would necessitate a repeal of the Home Rule Act of 1973 successful Congress, a measurement Trump said lawyers are examining. It could look steep pushback.

Bowser acknowledged that the instrumentality allows the president to instrumentality much power implicit the city's police, but lone if definite conditions are met.

"None of those conditions beryllium successful our metropolis close now," she said. "We are not experiencing a spike successful crime. In fact, we're watching our transgression numbers spell down."