Why Are Troops in DC: Orders, Lawsuit, and Costs

Troops are in Washington, D.C. because President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in the capital on August 11, 2025, and activated the D.C. National Guard to patrol the city. The reason the president can do this in D.C., and not in any state, is that the District is a federal creation governed under the D.C. Home Rule Act, and the D.C. National Guard reports directly to him rather than to a governor. What began with roughly 800 troops has grown to more than 4,800 as of mid-2026, with the administration planning to reach 5,000 for the summer.¹

The Executive Orders That Put Them There

Trump’s August 11, 2025 executive order declared a crime emergency in the District and invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, which allows the president to direct the mayor to provide the Metropolitan Police Department for “federal purposes” when “special conditions of an emergency nature” exist.² A companion order activated the D.C. National Guard, directing the Secretary of Defense to mobilize troops in whatever numbers were deemed necessary to “address the epidemic of crime,” and set no fixed end date. The deployment stays in place “until the president determines that conditions of law and order have been restored.”³

To justify the emergency, the administration pointed to specific violent incidents, including the May murder of two embassy staffers, the June fatal shooting of a congressional intern, and the beating of an administration staffer. The order called D.C. “under siege from violent crime” and cited a 2024 homicide rate of 27.54 per 100,000 residents and a vehicle theft rate more than three times the national average.²

Two weeks later, on August 25, a follow-up order expanded the operation. It directed the Pentagon to create a specialized D.C. Guard unit focused on public safety and to reorganize Guard units in all 50 states so they could be mobilized quickly to “quell civil disturbances” anywhere in the country. The same order established a “standing National Guard quick reaction force” for rapid nationwide deployment.⁴

Why This Can Happen in DC But Not in a State

Washington, D.C. is not a state. It is a creation of Congress, governed under the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973. That law gave residents an elected mayor and council, but Congress kept ultimate authority over the city’s budget and laws, and the president appoints the District’s judges. D.C. has no voting representation in Congress.⁵

Two features of this arrangement made the deployment possible. First, Section 740 of the Home Rule Act lets the president take control of the Metropolitan Police Department during “special conditions of an emergency.” The initial takeover runs 48 hours and can extend up to 30 days without congressional approval; anything longer needs a joint resolution.⁶

Second, and more consequentially for the troops still on the streets, the D.C. National Guard is unlike every state’s. It reports directly to the president at all times, not to a governor, because D.C. has no governor. Critics have described this as giving the president “unchecked authority” over its activation. For out-of-state Guard units sent to join the mission, the administration relied on Title 32 of the U.S. Code, specifically 32 U.S.C. § 502(f), which keeps troops under their governor’s command on paper while the federal government pays for their service. Troops in Title 32 status are not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal law that generally bars using the military for domestic law enforcement.⁷

What the Troops Are Actually Doing

The operation runs as Joint Task Force–District of Columbia under the broader “D.C. Safe and Beautiful” initiative. By early 2026 the task force had grown to more than 3,100 personnel drawn from 28 agencies, including Guard members, FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service, and Park Police, with the U.S. Marshals Service serving as the lead coordinating agency.⁸

Guard members mostly conduct “presence patrols” meant to deter crime through visibility. They are posted at the National Mall, key federal buildings, the waterfront, Metro stations, and some residential neighborhoods. They are at times armed. When they encounter a situation, they do not handle it themselves; they notify the Metropolitan Police Department or other authorities.⁹

The D.C. Guard contingent also does beautification work, cleaning graffiti, picking up trash in parks, and refurbishing recreation centers. By late October 2025 the unit had completed 119 such projects.⁹ The task force as a whole has produced, by Justice Department count, more than 13,100 arrests and the seizure of 1,400 firearms, with arrests including 28 for homicide, 1,693 for narcotics, 874 for weapons offenses, and 34 for sex offenses, along with the recovery of 19 missing children.¹⁰

The Police Takeover Ended; the Guard Stayed

The August 11 order also placed the Metropolitan Police Department under federal authority, with the president delegating operational control to Attorney General Pam Bondi. During that 30-day window Bondi directed the MPD to repeal sanctuary city policies restricting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and ordered the department to assist ICE with enforcement operations and provide access to its databases.¹¹

That federalization expired on September 10, 2025, after Congress declined to pass a joint resolution extending it. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the MPD would no longer assist with federal immigration enforcement once the emergency ended. The National Guard deployment, however, is a separate order with no expiration date and continued unaffected. Federal law enforcement agencies also remained in the city, as they are not subject to the Home Rule Act’s time limits.¹²

Mayor Bowser publicly questioned the legality of the broader military presence, saying, “I don’t think it’s legal, let me start there, for the National Guard to police Americans on American soil.” She also noted she has no authority over the D.C. Guard, which is “completely federally operated.”¹³

What It Costs and Whether It Works

The deployment has been expensive. A February 2026 report from Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, led by Sens. Gary Peters and Andy Kim, put the cost at more than $330 million over the first seven months, roughly $1.65 million per day.¹⁴ If the mission runs through the end of 2026, projected costs would exceed $600 million, surpassing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s entire fiscal year 2026 operating budget of $599 million.¹⁵

Guard members cost roughly $607 per person per day, compared to $384 for an MPD officer.¹⁶ Congressional investigators also reported that the Pentagon refused to provide official cost estimates and showed a “reluctance to provide a number” on funding.¹⁷ With the expansion to 5,000 troops planned for summer 2026, daily costs were expected to reach around $3 million.¹⁸

Whether the mission has made D.C. safer is contested. A May 2026 study from the Niskanen Center found the Guard had “no measurable effect on violent crime.” Violent crime in D.C. had already been dropping sharply from a summer 2023 peak and was down 26 percent year over year when the deployment began.¹⁹ Researchers found the Guard’s footprint “misaligned with the geography of violence,” with troops concentrated in tourist corridors and transit hubs while violent crime remained concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods like Anacostia and Buena Vista.²⁰

The same study did find a 24 percent reduction in “opportunistic property crime” like vehicle break-ins in areas where troops were visibly stationed, attributing it to the deterrent effect of uniformed personnel in high-traffic spots.¹⁶ The researchers concluded that the decline in violent crime was driven by the MPD’s own strategies, including targeted operations in high-violence neighborhoods and narcotics sweeps, none coordinated with the Guard. They estimated the $185 million spent in the first five months could have funded more than 1,300 additional officer-years of MPD staffing.²⁰

Mayor Bowser, for her part, credited the federal surge with an 87 percent drop in carjackings over its first 20 days compared with the same period in 2024 and expressed appreciation for agencies like the DEA, ATF, and FBI.²¹ White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the Niskanen study “should not be taken seriously” and said the task force had “driven down crime, beautified the city, and improved quality of life,” though the administration did not provide specific data to rebut the findings.²²

The Lawsuit Over Whether This Is Legal

On September 4, 2025, the District of Columbia sued to stop the deployment. On November 20, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb issued a preliminary injunction finding it unlawful. She held that the deployment violated Title 49 of the D.C. Code by using troops for nonmilitary, crime-deterrence missions without a request from the mayor, and that Section 502(f) did not authorize the use of out-of-state Guard units for this purpose.²³

The administration appealed. On December 17, 2025, a unanimous three-judge D.C. Circuit panel stayed the injunction, letting the deployment continue while the appeal plays out. The panel found the administration likely to succeed on the merits, citing the president’s “unique power” over D.C. as a federal district rather than a sovereign state. Judge Patricia Millett wrote that lifting the stay would cause “a profound level of disruption” to the more than 2,000 then-deployed troops, and Judges Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas questioned whether D.C. even had standing to sue the federal government based on sovereignty claims.²³ As of mid-2026, the case is awaiting oral argument before the full D.C. Circuit.²⁴

A separate Supreme Court decision changed the picture elsewhere but not in D.C. On December 23, 2025, the Court ruled 6–3 in Trump v. Illinois that the president likely lacked authority to federalize National Guard forces under 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3) to protect federal property and personnel. After the ruling, Trump announced the withdrawal of federalized Guard forces from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland.²⁵ The D.C. deployment continued because it rests on a different legal theory, the president’s direct command of the D.C. Guard and the Title 32 framework for out-of-state units, rather than the federalization statute the Supreme Court addressed. The D.C. Circuit panel that issued the stay still acknowledged that sending out-of-state Guard units into D.C. without local consent would be “constitutionally troubling to our federal system of government.”²⁶

Where Things Stand Now

The deployment shows no sign of ending. The administration announced a “summer surge” tied to the America 250 celebrations marking the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, requesting an additional 1,500 troops to bring the total to 5,000.²⁷ The Guard presence in D.C. nearly doubled in the month before the celebrations, reaching over 4,800 by late June 2026, with daily costs estimated upwards of $2.8 million.¹

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in April 2026 that there were “no announcements to make” regarding when the deployment would end.²⁸ The pending D.C. Circuit appeal in District of Columbia v. Trump may ultimately decide whether the troops can stay. Until then, the stay remains in effect and they remain on the streets.

1
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U.S. Marshals Service. Make DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force Makes 10,000th Arrest
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U.S. Department of Justice. DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force
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American Immigration Council. Immigration Enforcement Trump Federal Takeover DC
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16
The Hill. National Guard DC Crime Study
17
WTTW News. National Guard Deployment DC Costing Roughly $1M a Day, Estimates Say
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NPR. Number of National Guard Troops Deployed to Washington DC Set to Double
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NBC Washington. National Guard Deployment to DC Had No Effect on Violent Crime, Study Says
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Niskanen Center. Washington DC’s Crime Decline and Its Lessons for American Policing
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NPR. National Guard Washington DC Crime
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Courthouse News Service. DC Circuit Rules Trump’s National Guard Deployment Can Continue for Now
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The Hill. America 250 Security Prep
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WTTW News. No End in Sight for Their Deployment, National Guard Troops Roam Washington