Donald Trump has threatened to take his federal crackdown on crime and city cleanliness to New York and Chicago, as defense secretary Pete Hegseth ordered that national guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC under federal control will now be armed.
The US president talked to reporters in the Oval Office and said: “When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess.” He added that then the administration “will help with New York”, amid the controversial and aggressive federal efforts to control leading Democratic-voting cities, each of which has a Black mayor.
On the issue of suddenly announcing that it would now arm the federalized troops in DC, the defense department did not immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.
The step is an escalation in the federal government’s rare intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and came as nearly 2,000 national guard members are stationed in the city.
Earlier this week hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states arrived to bolster the DC national guard.
The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.
The city had been informed about the intent for the national guard to be armed, a person familiar with the conversations said earlier this week. The person was not authorized to disclose the plans and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A defense official told CNN: “At the direction of the secretary of defense, [Joint Task Force] JTF-DC members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training.”
Trump took command of the Washington DC police department earlier this month and deployed the national guard, under laws and constitutional powers that give the federal government more sway over the nation’s capital than other cities. The US president claims that crime and homelessness in the district constitute a crisis, against the objections of local leaders.
Elsewhere, the national guard is under the jurisdiction of the relevant state, where the state governor is the force’s commander in chief and can deploy that military in case of emergency. In rare circumstances the federal government takes control of a state’s national guard in what is deemed a national emergency, typically at the request of the state governor in question.
Earlier this summer, Trump federalized the California national guard over the objection of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, in an almost unprecedented abnormality, sending troops into parts of Los Angeles to counter protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Hegseth’s orders come just a day after Jeanine Pirro, the District of Columbia’s top federal prosecutor, instructed prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible in cases stemming from recent arrests, limiting their discretion as the Trump administration intensifies its law enforcement presence in the capital.
That directive, first reported by the New York Times, was issued this week and narrows the ability of line prosecutors to decide how cases are charged and prioritized. By pushing for the maximum charges allowed, the new policy could lead to longer prison terms for convicted defendants.
“In line with President Trump’s directive to make DC safe, US attorney Pirro has made it clear that the old way of doing things is unacceptable,” spokesman Tim Lauer told the newspaper. “She directed her staff to charge the highest crime that is supported by the law and the evidence.”
Pirro, who was formerly a Fox News host, has been a prominent figure in the administration’s law-enforcement push. She has also pressed for changes to local laws that she argues treat juvenile offenders too leniently.
The DC attorney’s office holds a unique position, overseeing federal and local prosecutions since the District of Columbia is not a state. The office has long debated how to handle lower-level arrests made by the city’s police department.
According to the White House, federal agents have made more than 630 arrests as of Thursday, though the justice department has not clarified how that figure compares with typical city police numbers.
While Pirro has committed to filing the toughest charges possible in most cases, she has also relaxed enforcement of one local gun law. This week she directed prosecutors not to pursue felony charges against people for possessing rifles or shotguns in the city, despite a DC law prohibiting them.
The policy does not apply to cases involving violent crimes or individuals barred from owning firearms, Pirro said in a statement to CNN. She said that the change follows guidance from the US supreme court and the justice department’s solicitor general.
On Thursday, Trump declared his takeover of the Metropolitan police department to be a success.
He had previously signaled that he would target other cities, such as Baltimore, Oakland and another mission in Los Angeles, as well as New York and Chicago, which are all strongly Democratic-voting and run by Black mayors. Maryland governor Wes Moore said to CNN that crime was dropping in Baltimore as a result of community violence prevention efforts and he would never activate the national guard “for theatrics”.
Baltimore’s major Brandon Scott also spoke to CNN, accusing Trump of “singling out Black cities” and Moore said that the cities the president is now targeting “are places he has never been, streets he has never walked”.
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