US President Donald Trump’s administration is evaluating plans to create a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” composed of hundreds of US National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into US cities facing protests or unrest, the Washington Post reported yesterday, citing internal Pentagon documents.
The report follows Trump’s announcement on Monday that he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the city’s police department, an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation’s capital.
The president cast his actions as necessary to “rescue” Washington from a purported wave of lawlessness. Statistics show that violent crime shot up in 2023, but has been rapidly declining since.
Photo: AP
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals,” Trump told a news conference at the White House.
It is the second time this summer that the Republican president has deployed troops to a Democratically governed city. A federal trial began on Monday in San Francisco on whether Trump contravened US law by deploying National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June without the approval of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Trump signaled that other major US cities with Democratic leadership could be next.
Photo: EPA
“If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,” Trump said at the White House, adding: “Hopefully LA is watching.”
Hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies have fanned out across Washington in the past few days.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi is to oversee the police force, Trump said.
The US Army said that National Guard troops would carry out a number of tasks, including “administrative, logistics and physical presence in support of law enforcement,” with 100 to 200 troops be supporting law enforcement at any given time.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said she would follow the law regarding the “so-called emergency” even as she indicated that Trump’s actions were a reason why the District of Columbia should be a state with legal protections from such actions.
“While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” Bowser said.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called Trump’s actions “unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful.”
“There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia,” he said.
Additional reporting by AP
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