By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) -Hundreds of additional National Guard troops are headed to Washington, D.C., from half a dozen Republican-led states, bolstering President Donald Trump’s aggressive move to flood the city with soldiers and federal agents in what he says is an effort to fight violent crime.
The Republican governors of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee agreed to deploy troops to Washington, days after the Republican governors of West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio also did so at the Trump administration’s request.
Trump has characterized Washington as overrun with violence and homelessness, a description local officials have rejected. Federal and city statistics show violent crime rates have dropped sharply since a spike in 2023, though the city’s murder rate remains higher than most other big U.S. cities.
Trump announced on August 11 he had ordered 800 Guard troops to the city and temporarily taken control of the city’s police department, an extraordinary exercise of presidential power over the U.S. capital. The federal government also dispatched agents from numerous agencies, including the FBI, to patrol the city’s streets.
Following a legal challenge filed by the city’s attorney general, the administration negotiated a deal with Mayor Muriel Bowser to keep Police Chief Pamela Smith in charge of the department’s operations.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry said he had approved the deployment of about 135 Guard soldiers to Washington, while Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said he had ordered 200 soldiers to the capital. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has also deployed 160 Guard troops to the city, according to local media reports.
“Crime is out of control there, and it’s clear something must be done to combat it,” Reeves said in a statement.
In total, the six Republican states have announced deployments of more than 1,100 Guard troops to Washington.
TESTING LIMITS
Guard soldiers, most of whom have civilian jobs and serve part-time, often respond to natural disasters and other emergencies. While the National Guard in Washington reports to the president, governors typically control the Guard in their own states.
Trump tested that authority in June, when he ordered thousands of National Guard troops and active-duty Marines into Los Angeles as protests over his administration’s immigration raids flared up. The deployment came despite opposition from California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.
A federal judge in San Francisco is weighing whether Trump’s actions in Los Angeles were illegal, after California sued the administration.
Federal law generally forbids the use of the military in law enforcement, but there are exceptions, including for National Guard troops that are under state command, such as California’s.
In 2020, during Trump’s first administration, the White House requested Guard troops from numerous states to help restore order in Washington in the wake of racial justice protests. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr said the National Guard remained under state command and was used to protect federal buildings and personnel.
Even so, Barr said their duties would include controlling crowds, temporarily detaining people, and conducting “cursory” searches, activities usually associated with police.
Critics said the 2020 experience in Washington potentially opened the way for the president to use armed troops against civilians.
Trump has suggested he could target additional Democrat-led cities, though he would likely face more legal obstacles than in Washington, where the federal government still has broad oversight under the law.
A White House official said on Tuesday that Guard troops in Washington may carry arms but were not making arrests. Instead, the soldiers are protecting federal property and providing “a safe environment for law enforcement officers to make arrests.”
Some 465 arrests have been made in the 12 days since the Trump administration’s operations began, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X on Tuesday, an average of 39 arrests a day. The city’s Metropolitan Police Department arrested an average of 61 adults and juveniles per day in 2024, according to city statistics.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Tom Hals; Editing by Frank McGurty and Rod Nickel)
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