Trump is promising new steps to tackle homelessness and crime in
Washington
[August 11, 2025]
By DAVID KLEPPER
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is promising new steps to
tackle homelessness and crime in Washington, prompting the city's mayor
to voice concerns about the potential use of the National Guard to
patrol the streets in the nation's capital.
Trump wrote in a social media post that he planned a White House news
conference at 10 a.m. Monday to discuss his plans to make the District
of Columbia “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before.”
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Sunday. “We
will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals,
you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you
belong.”
Last week the Republican president directed federal law enforcement
agencies to increase their presence in Washington for seven days, with
the option “to extend as needed.”
On Friday night, federal agencies including the Secret Service, the FBI
and the U.S. Marshals Service assigned more than 120 officers and agents
to assist in Washington.
Trump said last week that he was considering ways for the federal
government to seize control of Washington, asserting that crime was
“ridiculous” and the city was “unsafe,” after the recent assault of a
high-profile member of the Department of Government Efficiency.
The moves Trump said he was considering included bringing in the D.C.
National Guard.
Mayor Muriel Bowser questioned the effectiveness of using the Guard to
enforce city laws and said the federal government could be far more
helpful by funding more prosecutors or filling the 15 vacancies on the
D.C. Superior Court, some of which have been open for years.
Bowser cannot activate the National Guard herself, but she can submit a
request to the Pentagon.
“I just think that’s not the most efficient use of our Guard,” she said
Sunday on MSNBC's “The Weekend,” acknowledging it is "the president’s
call about how to deploy the Guard.”
Bowser was making her first public comments since Trump started posting
about crime in Washington last week. She noted that violent crime in
Washington has decreased since a rise in 2023. Trump's weekend posts
depicted the district as “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in
the World."
For Bowser, “Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and
false.”
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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air
Force One at Lehigh Valley International Airport, Sunday, Aug. 3,
2025, in Allentown, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Police statistics show homicides, robberies and burglaries are all
down this year when compared with this time in 2024. Overall violent
crime is down 26% compared with this time a year ago.
Trump offered no details in Truth Social posts over the weekend
about possible new actions to address crime levels that he argues
are dangerous for citizens, tourists and workers alike. The White
House declined to offer additional details about Monday's
announcement.
The police department and the mayor’s office did not respond to
questions about what Trump might do next.
The president criticized the district as full of “tents, squalor,
filth, and Crime,” and he seems to have been set off by the attack
on Edward Coristine, among the most visible figures of the
bureaucracy-cutting effort known as DOGE. Police arrested two
15-year-olds in the attempted carjacking and said they were looking
for others.
“This has to be the best run place in the country, not the worst run
place in the country,” Trump said Wednesday.
The president called Bowser “a good person who has tried, but she
has been given many chances.”
Trump has repeatedly suggested that the rule of Washington could be
returned to federal authorities. Doing so would require a repeal of
the Home Rule Act of 1973 in Congress, a step Trump said lawyers are
examining. It could face steep pushback.
Bowser acknowledged that the law allows the president to take more
control over the city's police, but only if certain conditions are
met.
“None of those conditions exist in our city right now," she said.
“We are not experiencing a spike in crime. In fact, we’re watching
our crime numbers go down.”
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Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil and Michelle L. Price
contributed to this report.
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