Occupied Territory

In August 2025, President Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., invoking a never-before-used provision of the Home Rule Act to put the city’s police under federal control, and ordered the National Guard onto the streets. The DC guard was joined within weeks by National Guard troops from Republican-led states and a surge of federal agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE, US Marshals and Border Patrol.

The administration cited out-of-control crime as the genesis of the operation; the data, however, showed violent crime at a 30-year low.

The federal takeover of police expired after 30 days, but the troops remain. The District sued, arguing the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act; an appeals court has let the mission continue while the case proceeds. In July of 2026 the administration announced that the deployment will extend through the next presidential inauguration in 2029, making the Guard’s presence — thousands of troops from D.C. and 11 other states — a fixture of life in the District for the foreseeable future.