Trump’s order to deploy troops in DC is ‘unsettling and unprecedented’ – DC mayor
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump has ordered the national guard to Washington DC and seized control of the city’s police force, in a move described as “unsettling and unprecedented” by DC’s mayor.
The US president’s move was swiftly condemned as a “disgusting, dangerous and derogatory” assault on the political independence of a racially diverse city. The federal takeover is expected to be in effect for 30 days, the White House confirmed to the Guardian.
Speaking at a White House press conference on Monday, Trump said he was taking “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse. This is liberation day in DC and we’re going to take our capital back.”
He described Washington DC as “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world”, claiming its murder rate is higher than Bogotá or Mexico City, even though violent crime is at a 30-year low.
The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was among officials joining Trump on the podium, said 800 national guard troops would take to the streets of Washington over the coming week. “They will be strong, they will be tough and they will stand with their law enforcement partners,” he said.
Later Muriel Bowser, the mayor of DC, who has pursued a non-confrontational relationship with Trump, described the intervention as “unsettling and unprecedented” but declined to criticise the president directly.
“I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat, that I believe that the president’s view of DC is shaped by his Covid-era experience during his first term,” she told reporters.
“It is true that those were more challenging times related to some issues. It is also true that we experienced a crime spike post-Covid but we worked quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets, and gave our police officers more tools.”
