President Trump announced Monday that he was taking control of the District of Columbia’s police and deploying the National Guard.

Trump portrayed the moves, which will involve around 800 National Guard troops, as a response to high crime rates in the nation’s capital.

He said it was an attempt to “rescue” the District from “bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”

Reporters in a packed White House briefing room received handouts just before the president spoke where the District’s murder rate was shown as higher than those of other international cities including Delhi, London and Bogotá, Colombia.

Police statistics, however, show that crime rates in the District have fallen sharply over the past two years. Violent crime is down 26 percent when compared year-to-date against 2024. Last year, in turn, saw a 32 percent drop in homicides and a 35 percent drop in overall violent crime compared to 2023.

That being said, the total number of homicides last year, 187, was still above the years that immediately preceded 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are the main takeaways from Trump’s announcement.

A major assertion of federal power — and Trump’s power

The decision from Trump was more expansive than many people expected.

A deployment of National Guard troops had been predicted, in part because the District’s status — short of full statehood — gives the president clear control of when the Guard is deployed.

The decision to wrest control of Washington’s police — the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) — was a significantly larger step.

The fact that it came amid falling crime rates makes it even more controversial.

So too does the politics of the District. Voters who gave then-Vice President Kamala Harris more than 90 percent of their votes last November will have their police force taken over by a notably divisive Republican president. Trump secured fewer than 7 percent of the vote in D.C.

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