President Donald Trump has once again brought up the idea of the federal government taking over Washington, D.C. He says he would use soldiers to fight what he says is a rise in crime, which is not true. This thought is the latest in a long line of threats from the president to make the city part of the federal government. For more than 50 years, the city has been run by a government chosen by the people.
The existing setup, which has been in place for more than 50 years, gives the locally elected government of Washington, D.C., including its mayor, the power to run the city. City authorities are in charge of running things on a day-to-day basis, but Congress still has a say. President Trump has been unhappy with this arrangement for a long time and has said several times that he would rather the White House have the final say in how the city is administered.
When reporters questioned Trump if he should be in control of the city’s police, he said, “We’re thinking about it, yeah, because the crime is crazy.” “We want to have a great, safe capital,” he said. “And we’re going to have it.” The crime rate, the rate of muggings, murders, and everything else; we won’t allow it to happen. This may mean putting in the National Guard very rapidly.
These comments came after the president issued a similar threat on his social media platform the day before. He added, “If DC doesn’t get its act together quickly, we will have to take federal control of the city and run it the way it should be run.”
But these statements are very different from the official crime numbers. Data from the police reveal that violent crime in the capital, which is governed by the Democrats, declined by 26% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same time the year before. Also, numbers from the Justice Department from before Trump’s current tenure show that crime rates in the city were at their lowest in 30 years in 2024.
This isn’t the first time President Trump has thought about deploying the military to rule American communities. Many of these cities are run by Democrats and often disagree with his political agenda. A few weeks ago, he sent California’s military reserve unit to Los Angeles to deal with protests over immigration raids. Local officials and law police were not happy with this move.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s non-voting congressional delegate, quickly rejected the President’s claims and his threat to make the capital a federal city. “Presidents can’t just take over DC,” she wrote on social media. “I won’t let this effort get that far. Congress would have to pass a law.”