DC mayor: ‘this action today is unsettling and unprecedented’ Bowser says that her office plans to follow the law, and cooperate with the federal government. The DC Home Rule Act requires the mayor to “provide the services” of the police department in the case of a declared emergency.
Although, she notes that there is a “question about the subjectivity” of the declaration – referring to the recorded evidence of a dropping violent crime rate in DC. “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,” she adds.
The mayor also says that she’s requested a meeting with attorney general Pam Bondi, who will temporarily oversee the Metropolitan police department.
Bowser notes that all officers should be clearly identifiable: “a uniform, a badge, a jacket, so that people know that they are law enforcement”.
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In a statement, Mike Zamore, the ACLU’s national director of policy and government affairs, called Donald Trump’s actions to federalise the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington an “assault on our fundamental freedoms”.
“He is using the word ‘emergency’ as a blank check for asserting federal control whenever it suits his agenda – abusing emergency powers while militarizing our communities and endangering the very people he is sworn to protect”, said Zamore.
Monica Hopkins, the executive director of the ACLU of DC, called the move “political theater and a blatantly phony justification for abuse of emergency powers.”
Hopkins added: “The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore, across the country. That should alarm everyone, not just Washingtonians”.
The DC Council, the chief policy-making authority for the district, issued a statement calling Trump’s move to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department “unwarranted” and “a manufactured intrusion on local authority.”
“Violent crime in the District is at the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years,” the statement said.
“Federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department is unwarranted because there is no Federal emergency. Further, the National Guard has no public safety training or knowledge of local laws. The Guard’s role does not include investigating or solving crimes in the District. Calling out the National Guard is an unnecessary deployment with no real mission,” added the council.
President Donald Trump said on Monday he met with Intel Corp’s chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, along with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and treasury secretary Scott Bessent.
“The meeting was a very interesting one,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Mr. Tan and my Cabinet members are going to spend time together, and bring suggestions to me during the next week.”
Lip-Bu Tan in California in April. Trump’s remarks come just days after he called on the chief executive to resign, alleging Tan had ties to the Chinese Communist party.
Trump plans to impose a 100% tariff on imported computer chips, a move experts warn could lead companies to pull back on production or raise prices, but could favor Intel as a US-based semiconductor firm.
Tan had invested in hundreds of Chinese firms, some of which were linked to the Chinese military, Reuters reported in April.
Over the weekend, more details emerged about the fatal attack on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that took place on Friday, killing a police officer. In case you missed it:
We reported that the shooter had blamed a Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal. The suspect’s father contacted police and said his son was upset about the death of his dog, and had also become fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine.
A union representing CDC employees demanded that the federal government condemn vaccine misinformation after it was known that the shooter blamed the Covid-19 vaccine. The CDC workers’ union said the deadly violence was not random and “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured”. It said vaccine misinformation had put scientists at risk.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation named Patrick Joseph White as the shooter. After firing shots at the CDC campus near Emory University on Friday, White was found dead on the second floor of the pharmacy building.
Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has recently discussed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine with secretary of state Marco Rubio.
On Monday, Yermak said in a post on X that Rubio was briefed “on active communications with our partners,” including a meeting with US vice-president JD Vance.
“We coordinated our positions ahead of important diplomatic steps planned for this week,” Yermak said in the post. “For Ukraine, the priority is a just and lasting peace, which requires an unconditional ceasefire as a prerequisite for substantive negotiations, as well as increased pressure on Russia to take real steps in this direction.”
The post comes after UK foreign secretary David Lammy and Vance held a meeting with Ukrainian and European partners in Britain over the weekend, where leaders discussed the drive for peace in Ukraine.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are slated to meet on Friday in Alaska to discuss ways forward to end the years-long war.
CNN is reporting that national guard troops in the nation’s capital deployed by the Trump administration are not expected to openly carry rifles.
An army official told the news outlet that troops will most likely have weapons nearby, like inside their trucks, if they absolutely need to access them for purposes of self-defense.
Still, the official said it is always a possibility that troops could be ordered to operate differently.
Lauren Gambino
Gavin Newsom tried to play nice with Maga. But then in June, Donald Trump sent the national guard to LA, to quell immigration protests following Ice raids on the city, and the California governor went scorched-earth on the new administration.
Since then Newsom’s social media exchanges with Trump and his White House have taunted and trolled, factchecked and alarm-sounded.
Following Trump’s announcement on Monday that he’s activating the National Guard in the nation’s capital and taking over Washington’s police department, Newsom’s social media team set to work.
Newsom warned in one post that other cities were next (and reminded followers that he had predicted this might happen back in June.)
He was just getting warmed up in Los Angeles.
He will gaslight his way into militarizing any city he wants in America.
This is what dictators do. https://t.co/IPvx9Hrp0q
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 11, 2025 His press office grabbed a screenshot of the Trump officials looking bewildered.
The team continued its full-frontal social assault, peppering Trump with tweets on the DC takeover, tariffs and his partisan redistricting plan. They deployed a Taco tariffs meme (Trump always chickens out) in response to the news that Trump and China extended their truce for another 90 days. They questioned how Attorney General Pam Bondi, who they said “couldn’t find the Epstein files” might fare as the head of the newly installed DC police department.
They even fired off a Trump-style all-caps missive warning that California would redistrict if he did not call on Texas to stand down.
Following the DC mayor’s press conference, here’s a recap of the day so far
Donald Trump is launching a federal takeover of DC Metropolitan police department (MPD), and deploying 800 national guardsmen to assist local law enforcement. He declared crime in the city “public safety emergency” in a press conference earlier, invoking a section of the DC Home Rule Act which places MPD under federal control. It’s expected to last 30 days, according to the White House.
DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser said today that her office plans to comply and cooperate with federal government, but noted there are questions about the “subjectivity” of the emergency declaration. DC has seen a notable drop in violent crime, and even saw a record 30-year low in 2024, according to the justice department.
Beyond Washington, Trump also previewed his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, claiming he will know “probably in the first two minutes” whether a peace deal can be made. Trump confirmed that while Volodymyr Zelenskyy wouldn’t be a part of the summit, he would call him first as soon as he saw a “fair deal” for a ceasefire emerge. He also didn’t rule out the possibility of a future trading relationship with Russia.
And while the ongoing redistricting battle across the US wasn’t the main story of the day, California governor Gavin Newsom said that he will be “forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states” in a letter to Donald Trump. Newsom said he would be left with no choice if the president can’t get governor Greg Abbott to drop his push to redraw Texas’ congressional maps mid-decade.
In a statement, Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who serves as the House minority leader, said that the president’s plan to federalise the DC police department and deploy the National Guard had “has no basis in law and will put the safety of the people of our Nation’s capital in danger”.
He added:
The violent crime rate in Washington DC is at a 30-year low. Donald Trump doesn’t care about public safety. On his first day in office, he pardoned hundreds of violent felons – many of whom brazenly assaulted law enforcement officers on January 6. We stand with the residents of the District of Columbia and reject this unjustified power grab as illegitimate.
On the president’s statements earlier that he would be comfortable bringing the military into DC if he deems it necessary, Muriel Bowser says that “we don’t believe it’s legal to use the American military against American citizens on American soil”.
Trump did, however, bring in out-of-state, unfederalised national guard troops during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Bowser does note that she suspected that the national guard would be deployed, but had no prior knowledge of the federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department.