By Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he may use the National Guard to police the streets of Washington, D.C., and a White House official said federal law enforcement would increase its presence in the city this week.
The threat – and the move to follow through on it – is the latest step by Trump and his administration toward taking over running the city that serves as the seat of the U.S. government.
“We have a capital that’s very unsafe,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We have to run D.C. This has to be the best-run place in the country.”
A White House official told Reuters that operational details about the increased federal presence were still being finalized.
CNN reported that officers from the FBI, National Guard, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as agents from the Department of Homeland Security would be involved starting Thursday.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the city had been “plagued by petty and violent crime for far too long” and Trump was committed to making it safe.
Trump, who has threatened a federal takeover of the city multiple times, escalated those threats after a young staffer who was part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was assaulted over the weekend.
Musk, the billionaire former adviser to Trump who once spearheaded the DOGE effort, said the man was beaten and received a concussion. “It is time to federalize DC,” he wrote.
Asked if he was considering taking over the D.C. police, Trump responded affirmatively.
“We just almost lost a young man, beautiful handsome guy that got the hell knocked out of him,” Trump said.
The president posted a picture of the victim, Edward Coristine, known by the nickname “Big Balls,” on social media, with blood on his face, arms, torso and legs.
“We’re going to beautify the city. We’re going to make it beautiful. And what a shame, the rate of crime, the rate of muggings, killings and everything else. We’re not going to let it. And that includes bringing in the National Guard, maybe very quickly, too,” Trump said.
A spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declined to comment.
Violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 was down by 26% in D.C. compared to last year while overall crime was down about 7%, according to records on the police department’s website.
Overall crime was down 15% in 2024, compared to 2023, the website showed.
Trump has long complained about crime in the city. He signed an executive order in March aimed at increasing law enforcement in Washington.
The District of Columbia was established in 1790 with land from neighboring Virginia and Maryland. Congress has control of its budget, but resident voters elect a mayor and city council, under a law known as the Home Rule Act. For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking that act, which Trump would have to sign.
The president said on Wednesday that lawyers were already looking at overturning the Home Rule Act.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Diane Craft and Saad Sayeed)
