One year ago, President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, DC, claiming, without evidence, that the city had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.”

In response to this alleged crisis, Trump deployed roughly 800 members of the DC National Guard as well as more than 1,000 National Guard members from several cooperating states “to protect law-abiding citizens from the destructive forces of criminal activity.” A year later, 4,600 troops patrol the city against the wishes of the district’s elected local government.

This deployment violates long-standing American traditions, jeopardizes public safety, and has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars—all without any discernible impact on violent crime rates in Washington. Yet Trump wants to keep troops here, and he’s counting on Americans to stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen.

From the beginning, Trump’s claim of a “crime emergency” stood on weak footing. In fact, the murder tally in Washington had declined from 274 in 2023 to 187 in 2024.

The founding generation would immediately have seen the danger in a president trying to normalize the domestic use of troops.

But even if day-to-day crime in Washington had instead been trending upward, that would not have justified the invocation of emergency powers. Such powers are intended for sudden, unforeseen crises—the definition of an emergency—that normal legal frameworks and systems are too slow-moving to address. Urban crime, in contrast, is a foreseeable, ongoing problem that can and should be addressed employing the ordinary tools of government.

Use of the military raises additional concerns. A president deploying troops to police street crime is unprecedented; it violates centuries of American civic tradition and political thought. Americans have long rejected military interference in civilian affairs, and particularly military involvement in law enforcement, because an “army turned inward” can easily become an instrument of tyranny. Domestic deployment of the military is a tool of last resort, to be used only when civilian authorities are overwhelmed.

There are other, more immediate reasons to be wary of domestic military operations. Military personnel, including members of the National Guard, are trained to be soldiers, not police officers. Most National Guard members have little or no training in local criminal law, how to uphold constitutional rights, or how to preserve and collect evidence. Over the past year, there have been disturbing incidents where guard members have improperly detained DC residents and, in at least one documented case, used excessive force.

Trump’s use of the National Guard in Washington has also largely failed to serve........

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