A protester walks past members of the DC National Guard and a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) at Union Station, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry) One year ago, President Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C, claiming, without evidence, that the city had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.”
In response to this alleged crisis, Trump deployed roughly 800 members of the D.C. National Guard as well as more than 1,000 National Guard members from several cooperating states “to protect law-abiding citizens from the destructive forces of criminal activity.” A year later, 4,600 troops patrol the city against the wishes of the District’s elected local government.
This deployment violates long-standing American traditions, jeopardizes public safety and has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars — all without any discernible impact on violent crime rates in Washington. Yet Trump wants to keep troops here, and he’s counting on Americans to stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen.
From the beginning, Trump’s claim of a “crime emergency” stood on weak footing. In fact, the murder tally in Washington had declined from 274 in 2023 to 187 in 2024.
But even if day-to-day crime in Washington had instead been trending upward, that would not have justified the invocation of emergency powers. Such powers are intended for sudden, unforeseen crises — the definition of an emergency — that normal legal frameworks and systems are too slow-moving to address. Urban crime, in contrast, is a foreseeable, ongoing problem that can and should be addressed employing the ordinary tools of government.
Use of the military raises additional concerns. A president deploying troops to police street crime is unprecedented; it violates centuries of American civic tradition and political thought. Americans have long rejected military interference in civilian affairs, and particularly military involvement in law enforcement, because an “army turned inward” can easily become an instrument of tyranny. Domestic deployment of the military is a tool of last resort, to be used only when civilian authorities are overwhelmed.
There are other, more immediate reasons to be wary of domestic military operations. Military personnel, including members of the National Guard, are trained to be soldiers, not police officers. Most National Guard members have little or no training in local criminal law, how to uphold constitutional rights or how to preserve and collect evidence. Over the past year, there have been disturbing incidents where guard members have improperly detained D.C. residents and, in at least one documented case, used excessive force.
Trump’s use of the National Guard in Washington has also largely failed to serve its stated purpose. Although there was a narrow reduction in opportunistic property crime over the first six months of the deployment, recent analysis has found little to no impact on violent crime. On the other hand, the deployment has proven to be extraordinarily expensive for taxpayers, with a current cost of over $3 million per day.
Those costs will only accelerate in light of the recently announced $292 million deal to provide National Guard members deployed to Washington with apartment-style housing. In return for these huge sums of money, guard members across D.C. are spending their days standing idle on street corners and in metro stations — a form of non-activity euphemistically labeled “presence patrols.”
Yet Trump shows no signs of reversing course. To the contrary, he has doubled down. A “summer surge” brought the number of guard forces in D.C. close to 5,000, and the administration has announced that it intends to keep troops here through Jan. 20, 2029, at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion beyond the money already spent.
The duration of the deployment might be what’s most concerning. No true emergency can be predicted to remain in place for another two-and-a-half years. If there was any doubt before, it’s now clear that the deployment was never meant to be a quick response to an immediate crisis.
It is designed to normalize something that should never be normal in this country: the use of the military as a domestic police force. It would be a small step from National Guard forces assisting in the arrest of people who dip their hands in the reflecting pool to guard members policing protests. And if Trump were to try to illegally block Congress’s certification of the 2028 presidential election — this time using military force, rather than exhorting an angry mob — there would be thousands of troops already arrayed within a short distance of the U.S. Capitol.
It is no small irony that armed troops are patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital in the same summer as the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document denounces King George III for, among other things, using “among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” The founding generation would immediately have seen the danger in a president trying to normalize the domestic use of troops.
We must see it, too. The longer the deployment lasts, the less shocking the sight of National Guard forces on nearly every street corner becomes, and the easier it is to view the situation as a new normal. The American people must resist that instinct and demand an end to the deployment.
Joseph Nunn is a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. He focuses on issues surrounding the domestic activities of the U.S. military, including the Insurrection Act, the Posse Comitatus Act, National Guard deployments and martial law.
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