Last updated on May 14, 2026
With crime falling and no civil unrest, the president’s unprecedented deployment of troops in the nation’s capital raises questions of abuse of power and political distraction.
The duty of an American president to protect the safety and security of the nation is paramount. Sometimes, that obligation has impelled chief executives to call National Guard units into federal service to assure the public peace, such as in Little Rock in 1957, Selma in 1965, Detroit in 1967, and Los Angeles in 1992. Those occasions were not driven by an overt and obvious presidential desire to distract the public from personal scandal or advance a divisive, fundamentally racist agenda.
Donald Trump’s latest stunt is so motivated. He has claimed that crime in Washington, D.C. is intolerably high, but it has been on the decline for two years and, in fact, is down 7% from last year, according to statistics provided by the Metropolitan Police Department. The drop in violent crime is especially pronounced, having fallen by more than quarter since 2024.
Even though violent crime is higher in Washington, D.C. than in many states, there is no reasonable basis to conclude that the MPD cannot handle it or is not doing its job. The decline in the incidence of those acts shows that.
And, while Trump is not the first president to call the tiny D.C. National Guard into federal service, he is the first to do it when there has been no riot or widespread violent display of public rage to rationalize it, as there was when LBJ made the same choice in the aftermath of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968.
Trump does have broad statutory authority, in his role as commander of the D.C. National Guard, to use those troops for law enforcement purposes. But the principal statute that gives him that power, a part of the D.C. code, says that he can do so only in case of “a tumult, riot, mob, or a body of men acting together by force with attempt to commit a felony or to offer violence to persons or property, or by force or violence to break and resist the laws, or when such tumult, riot, or mob is threatened.”
And the help has to be requested by one of several different officials, including the mayor. No such request was made before Trump’s action this week.
While the words of the D.C. statute indicating that a “tumult, riot, mob, or body of men acting together with force to attempt to commit a felony or to offer violence to persons or property,” etc. seems broad, our law has historically frowned on the idea that the military should be used to perform routine police work. See, e.g., Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 15 (1972) (noting “a traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs” and pointing out that the “tradition has deep roots in our history”).
In that sense Trump has made perhaps a literal reading of the D.C. code, but one that is inconsistent with our history and our legal norms. And that means it can and should be regarded as an abuse of power.
That conclusion is reinforced by Trump’s last use of the National Guard in the nation’s capital in 2020. Then, he did not call up the D.C.-based troops but brought in National Guard units from other states in response to public demonstrations in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in Minnesota. That, too, was an example of the president’s eagerness to involve soldiers in domestic political discord.
I believe that Congress, were it not under the control of completely subservient Republicans, would be justified in conducting a detailed investigation of Donald Trump’s true motivations for calling up the D.C. National Guard this week.
It is doubtful, even granting Trump’s tendency to read the grant of every presidential authority in the most expansive possible terms, that he did so only because of some crimes in the district. More likely, Trump is using soldiers in an attempt to distract the public from ongoing concern about his friendship and close relationship with the late child molester and child rapist Jeffrey Epstein. And we should not overlook Trump’s well-documented hostility to Black Americans, either, given that Washington, D.C. is a diverse city in which nearly 300,000 residents fit that demographic description.
Perhaps the nation will, in the not distant future, have a Congress that will be more interested in upholding and honoring our history and tradition of leaving the armed forces out of domestic law enforcement and that will have some interest in examining whether Trump has, yet again, committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.”
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COMMENTARY: Trump’s D.C. National Guard Call-Up Defies Law, History, and Public Safety Needs
Last updated on May 14, 2026
With crime falling and no civil unrest, the president’s unprecedented deployment of troops in the nation’s capital raises questions of abuse of power and political distraction.
The duty of an American president to protect the safety and security of the nation is paramount. Sometimes, that obligation has impelled chief executives to call National Guard units into federal service to assure the public peace, such as in Little Rock in 1957, Selma in 1965, Detroit in 1967, and Los Angeles in 1992. Those occasions were not driven by an overt and obvious presidential desire to distract the public from personal scandal or advance a divisive, fundamentally racist agenda.
Donald Trump’s latest stunt is so motivated. He has claimed that crime in Washington, D.C. is intolerably high, but it has been on the decline for two years and, in fact, is down 7% from last year, according to statistics provided by the Metropolitan Police Department. The drop in violent crime is especially pronounced, having fallen by more than quarter since 2024.
Even though violent crime is higher in Washington, D.C. than in many states, there is no reasonable basis to conclude that the MPD cannot handle it or is not doing its job. The decline in the incidence of those acts shows that.
And, while Trump is not the first president to call the tiny D.C. National Guard into federal service, he is the first to do it when there has been no riot or widespread violent display of public rage to rationalize it, as there was when LBJ made the same choice in the aftermath of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968.
Trump does have broad statutory authority, in his role as commander of the D.C. National Guard, to use those troops for law enforcement purposes. But the principal statute that gives him that power, a part of the D.C. code, says that he can do so only in case of “a tumult, riot, mob, or a body of men acting together by force with attempt to commit a felony or to offer violence to persons or property, or by force or violence to break and resist the laws, or when such tumult, riot, or mob is threatened.”
And the help has to be requested by one of several different officials, including the mayor. No such request was made before Trump’s action this week.
While the words of the D.C. statute indicating that a “tumult, riot, mob, or body of men acting together with force to attempt to commit a felony or to offer violence to persons or property,” etc. seems broad, our law has historically frowned on the idea that the military should be used to perform routine police work. See, e.g., Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 15 (1972) (noting “a traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs” and pointing out that the “tradition has deep roots in our history”).
In that sense Trump has made perhaps a literal reading of the D.C. code, but one that is inconsistent with our history and our legal norms. And that means it can and should be regarded as an abuse of power.
That conclusion is reinforced by Trump’s last use of the National Guard in the nation’s capital in 2020. Then, he did not call up the D.C.-based troops but brought in National Guard units from other states in response to public demonstrations in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in Minnesota. That, too, was an example of the president’s eagerness to involve soldiers in domestic political discord.
I believe that Congress, were it not under the control of completely subservient Republicans, would be justified in conducting a detailed investigation of Donald Trump’s true motivations for calling up the D.C. National Guard this week.
It is doubtful, even granting Trump’s tendency to read the grant of every presidential authority in the most expansive possible terms, that he did so only because of some crimes in the district. More likely, Trump is using soldiers in an attempt to distract the public from ongoing concern about his friendship and close relationship with the late child molester and child rapist Jeffrey Epstein. And we should not overlook Trump’s well-documented hostility to Black Americans, either, given that Washington, D.C. is a diverse city in which nearly 300,000 residents fit that demographic description.
Perhaps the nation will, in the not distant future, have a Congress that will be more interested in upholding and honoring our history and tradition of leaving the armed forces out of domestic law enforcement and that will have some interest in examining whether Trump has, yet again, committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.”
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Hank Lacey
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