President Trump’s choice to deploy a whole lot of Nationwide Guard troops to Washington has California officers on excessive alert, with some worrying that he intends to activate federal forces within the Bay Space and Southern California, particularly in the course of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Trump mentioned that his use of the Nationwide Guard to struggle crime might develop to different cities, and instructed that native police have been unable to do the job.
Authorized consultants say it’s extremely uncommon and troubling for forces to be deployed with out a main disaster, corresponding to civil unrest or a pure catastrophe. The Washington deployment is one other instance of Trump looking for to make use of the navy for home endeavors, just like his choice to ship the Nationwide Guard to Los Angeles in June, amid an immigration crackdown that sparked protests, consultants mentioned.
Washington has lengthy struggled with crime however has seen main reductions in recent times.
Officers in Oakland and Los Angeles — two cities the president talked about by identify — slammed Trump’s feedback about crime of their cities. Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee mentioned in an announcement that the president’s characterization wasn’t rooted in truth, however “based mostly in fear-mongering in an try to attain low cost political factors.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass referred to as it “performative” and a “stunt.”
Trump has mentioned he would contemplate deploying the navy to Los Angeles as soon as once more to guard the 2028 Olympic Video games. This month, he signed an government order that named him chair of a White Home activity drive on the Los Angeles Video games.
The White Home has not mentioned particularly what function Trump would play in safety preparations.
Los Angeles Metropolis Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who sits on town panel overseeing the Video games, acknowledged final week that town is a “little nervous” in regards to the federal authorities’s plans for securing the occasion.
Congress just lately authorised $1 billion for safety and planning for the Video games. A consultant for the Division of Homeland Safety declined to clarify to The Occasions how the funds will likely be used.
Padilla mentioned her concern was based mostly on the unpredictable nature of the administration, in addition to latest immigration raids which have used masked, closely armed brokers to spherical up folks at Dwelling Depot parking heaps and automotive washes.
“Every part that we’re seeing with the raids was an actual curveball to our metropolis,” Padilla mentioned throughout a Los Angeles Present Affairs Discussion board occasion. It dealt “an actual curveball to [efforts] to deal with the issues that folk care about, like homelessness, like transportation … financial growth,” she mentioned.
Bass, showing on CNN this week, mentioned that utilizing the Nationwide Guard in the course of the Olympics is “fully applicable.” She mentioned that town expects a “federal response when we’ve got over 200 international locations right here, that means heads of state of over 200 international locations. In fact you might have the navy concerned. That’s routine.”
However Bass made a distinction between L.A. Olympics safety and the “political stunt” she mentioned Trump pulled by bringing within the Nationwide Guard and the U.S. Marines after protests over the federal authorities’s immigration crackdown. That deployment faces ongoing authorized challenges, with an appeals court docket ruling that Trump had the authorized authority to ship the Nationwide Guard.
“I believed then, and I imagine now that Los Angeles was a check case, and I believe D.C. is a check case as properly,” Bass mentioned. “To say, properly, we are able to take over your metropolis each time we would like, and I’m the commander in chief, and I can use the troops each time we would like.”
On Monday, Trump tied his motion to what has been a well-recognized theme to him: perceived city decay.
“You take a look at Chicago, how dangerous it’s, you take a look at Los Angeles, how dangerous it’s. We now have different cities which might be very dangerous. New York has an issue. After which you might have, in fact, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even point out that anymore —they’re up to now gone,” he mentioned. “We’re not going to let it occur. We’re not going to lose our cities over this.”
White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned officers and brokers deployed throughout the District of Columbia have up to now made 23 arrests for offenses together with murder, possession with intent to distribute narcotics, lewd acts, reckless driving, fare evasion and never having permits. Six unlawful handguns had been seized, she mentioned.
Citing crime as a purpose to deploy Nationwide Guard troops with out the assist of a state governor is very unprecedented, consultants mentioned. The Nationwide Guard has been deployed to Southern California earlier than, notably in the course of the 1992 L.A. riots and the civil unrest after George Floyd’s homicide in Minneapolis in 2020.
“It could be terrible as a result of he can be clearly violating his authorized authorities and he’d be sued once more by the governor and undoubtedly, by the mayors of L.A. and Oakland,” mentioned William Banks, a regulation professor at Syracuse College. “The residents in these cities can be up in arms. They’d be aghast that there are troopers patrolling their streets.”
The District of Columbia doesn’t have management over its Nationwide Guard, which supplies the president broad latitude to deploy these troops. In California and different states, the pinnacle of the Nationwide Guard is the governor and there are authorized limits on how federal troops can be utilized.
The Posse Comitatus Act, handed in 1878 after the top of Reconstruction, largely bars federal troops from being utilized in civilian regulation enforcement. The regulation displays a convention courting to the Revolutionary Battle period that sees navy interference in American life as a menace to liberty and democracy.
“We now have such a robust custom that we don’t use the navy for home regulation enforcement, and it’s a attribute of authoritarian international locations to see the navy be utilized in that approach,” mentioned Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Regulation College and a constitutional regulation professional. “That’s by no means been so in the USA, and lots of are involved about the way in which wherein President Trump is appearing the way in which authoritarian rulers do.”
Whether or not the troops deployed to Los Angeles in June amid the federal immigration raids had been used for home regulation enforcement in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is central within the trial underway this week in federal court docket in San Francisco.
If Trump had been to ship troops to California, Banks mentioned, the one authorized lever he might pull can be to declare an rebellion and invoke the Rebel Act.
Not like in D.C., Trump wouldn’t be capable of federalize police departments in different elements of the nation. There are circumstances the place the federal authorities has put departments below consent decrees — a reform device for companies which have engaged in illegal practices — however in these instances the federal government alleged particular civil rights violations, mentioned Ed Obayashi, a Northern California sheriff’s deputy and authorized counsel on policing.
“You aren’t going to have the ability to are available in and take over since you say crime is rising in a selected place,” he mentioned.
Oakland Councilman Ken Houston, a third-generation resident who was elected in 2024, mentioned his metropolis doesn’t want the federal authorities’s assist with public security.
Oakland has struggled with crime for years, however Houston cited progress. Violent crimes, together with murder, aggravated assault, rape and theft are down 29% up to now this 12 months from the identical interval in 2024. Property crimes together with housebreaking, motorcar theft and larceny are also trending down, in keeping with metropolis information.
“He’s going by outdated numbers and he’s making a degree,” Houston mentioned of Trump. “Oakland doesn’t want the Nationwide Guard.”
Occasions employees author Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
