On Trump’s order, the National Guard is starting to deploy in Washington

Part of the 800 members of the National Guard began to arrive in Washington on Tuesday, intensifying their efforts after the White House ordered the federal forces to take control of the city’s police service and reduce crime in what the president has qualified-without justification-as a lawless city.

This influx occurred in the aftermath of the announcement by the president of the activation of the members of the Guard and the takeover of the service. He spoke of a criminal emergency, but has referred to the same crime which, according to the municipal authorities, is already a significant decline.

The president has the legal right to take such measures, up to a certain point.

It is not yet known to what extent, over the week, the presence of federal police in Washington will be visible and aggressive, how it will take place, which will be targeted and how long it will last.

Non -constructive

Washington mayor Muriel Bowser said on Monday that the project recently announced by the president to take control of the metropolitan police and to call on the National Guard was not constructive. She calmly exposed the city’s arguments, saying that crime was constantly decreasing, and said that the state of emergency collected by Donald Trump simply did not correspond to the figures.

She also bluntly affirmed that the capital had linked hands and that her administration had no choice but to comply with it. We could contest thisshe said about the definition of the criminal emergency given by the tenant of the White House, But his authority is quite wide.

The mayor referred to the so-called M. Trump and a conclusion: I will work every day so that it is not a total disaster.

Right relations between the city and Trump

While the American president invokes his plan by declaring that We will resume our capitalMs. Bowser and the metropolitan police say that violent crime in Washington has generally decreased to reach its lowest level in 30 years, after a sharp increase in 2023.

Road piracy, for example, fell by around 50 % in 2024 and is down again this year. However, more than half of those arrested are minors and the severity of these sanctions is a subject of discord for the Trump administration.

Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, spent a large part of Donald Trump’s first mandate openly opposing the Republican President. She postponed her initial project as a military parade in the streets and publicly opposed the use of a multi -social federal police force to deal with demonstrators against police violence in the summer of 2020. She then had the words paint Black Lives Matter (The lives of blacks count, in French) in giant yellow letters in the street, about a pâté of house houses.

Since the start of the billionaire’s second term, a republican control of the two Congress Chambers, Ms. Bowser has been walking on a stiff rope, emphasizing the common points with the Trump administration on issues such as the successful return of the Washington Commanders’ football team in the Columbia district.

She observed with manifest concern the streets of the city when Donald Trump finally had his military parade this summer. The president’s decision to dismantle the Black Lives Matter Plazaearlier this year, perfectly illustrated the evolution of the balance of power between the two leaders.

This tense relationship entered in unknown territory, the president having executed threats that many officials of Washington hoped to be hollow threats for months. This new showdown gave the mayor of the capital a favorable image, even with its longtime detractors.

It is a power game and we are an easy target.

Frequent criticism of Ms. Bowser, whom she accuses of Overwind our youth With the recent enlargements of the curfew imposed on young people in Washington, Ms. Chapman said that Mr. Trump’s last initiative Don’t aim to create a safer Washington DC. It is simply a question of power.

Where does power really reside?

Ms. Bowser argues that all the power belongs to Donald Trump and that her administration can hardly do something other than complying and making the most of it. She devoted a large part of the press conference on Monday to link the president’s takeover to the broader question of the status of state of the District of Columbia. As long as Washington remains a federal enclave with limited autonomy under the 1973 local autonomy law, she said, the territory will remain vulnerable to such takeover.

We know that access to our democracy is precarious. This is why you heard me, as well as many Washingtonians before me, plead in favor of the status of full state of the District of Columbia.

Article 740 of the Local Autonomy Act authorizes the President to take charge of the Washington police for 48 hours, with the possibility of extension up to 30 days, in an emergency.

No president did it before, said Monica Hopkins, director general of the Washington section of the American Union for Civil Liberties.

This should alarm everyone, not just in Washington.

For Donald Trump, this attempt to take care of public security in Washington reflects an intensification of his aggressive approach to order maintenance. The status of the Columbia district, a federal district established by the Congress, offers it a unique opportunity to promote its crime control program, although it has not proposed any solution to the deep causes of roaming or crime.