Amna Nawaz
@PBSNewsHour·5.3M subscribers·62.2K videos
WATCH: Key moments from Trump on taking control of DC police
Posted
August 11, 2025
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August 11, 2025
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3:33Now PlayingPresident Donald Trump said Monday that he has signed executive orders to take federal control of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and called up members of the D.C. National Guard to crack down on homelessness and crime in the nation’s capital.
The city has seen a 26% drop in violent crime in 2025, compared to the same period last year. Two years ago, when crime in the nation’s capital spiked upward, the District accounted for the fourth-highest homicide rate among large metro areas in the nation.
"I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse," Trump said at a White House news conference. "This is liberation day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back."
Trump said that planned to eliminate the city’s “slums” and status as a sanctuary city for migrants.
“My father always used to tell me, … ‘Son, when you walk into a restaurant and you see a dirty front door, don’t go in because if the front door is dirty, the kitchen’s dirty also,’” the president said. “Same thing with the capital. If our capital's dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us.”
Trump will call up about 800 National Guard members to the city. Mayor Muriel Bowser in her own news conference Monday called the decision “unsettling and unprecedented” and called for D.C. statehood to avoid this kind of takeover.
“We are American citizens. Our families go to war. We pay taxes, and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship,” she said.
D.C.’s police union said Monday it supported Trump’s decision, but stressed that intervention from the government should be temporary.
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