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Associated Press: Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime

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President Donald Trump has taken control of D.C.’s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety crisis.

Even as district officials questioned the claims underlying his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” His rhetoric echoed that used by conservatives going back decades who have denounced cities, especially those with majority non-white populations or led by progressives, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

“This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump promised Monday.

As D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters Tuesday, for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action.

April Goggans, a longtime D.C. resident and grassroots organizer, said she was not surprised by Trump’s actions. Communities had been preparing for a potential federal crackdown in D.C. since the summer of 2020, when Trump deployed troops during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.

“We have to be vigilant,” said Goggans, who has coordinated local protests for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law enforcement could mean for residents’ freedoms.

“Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,” she said.

Other residents reacted with mixed feelings to Trump’s executive order. Crime and homelessness has been a top concern for residents in recent years, but opinions on how to solve the issue vary. And very few residents take Trump’s catastrophic view of life in D.C.

“I think Trump’s trying to help people, some people,” said Melvin Brown, a D.C. resident. “But as far as (him) trying to get (the) homeless out of this city, that ain’t going to work.”

“It’s like a band-aid to a gunshot wound,” said Melissa Velasquez, a commuter into D.C. “I feel like there’s been an increase of racial profiling and stuff, and so it’s concerning for individuals who are worried about how they might be perceived as they go about their day-to-day lives.”

Uncertainty raises alarms

According to White House officials, troops will be deployed to protect federal assets and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests. The Trump administration believes the highly visible presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some advocates.

“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,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.

A history of denigrating language

Conservatives have for generations used denigrating language to describe the condition of major cities and called for greater law enforcement, often in response to changing demographics in those cities driven by nonwhite populations relocating in search of work or safety from racial discrimination and state violence. Republicans have called for greater police crackdowns in cities since at least the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles.

President Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968 after campaigning on a “law and order” agenda to appeal to white voters in northern cities alongside overtures to white Southerners as part of his “Southern Strategy.” Ronald Reagan similarly won both his presidential elections after campaigning heavily on law and order politics. Politicians, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former President Bill Clinton have cited the need to tamp down crime as a reason to seize power from liberal cities for decades.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump’s takeover of local police “unsettling” but not without precedent. Bowser kept a mostly measured tone during a Monday news conference but decried Trump’s reasoning as a “so-called emergency,” saying residents “know that access to our democracy is tenuous.”

Trump threatened to “take over” and “beautify” D.C. on the campaign trail and claimed it was “a nightmare of murder and crime.” He also argued the city was “horribly run” and said his team intended “to take it away from the mayor.” Trump on Monday repeated old comments about some of the nation’s largest cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and his hometown of New York City. All are currently run by Black mayors.

“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities in a very bad, New York is a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore. They’re so far gone. We’re not going to let it happen,” he said.

Civil rights advocates see the rhetoric as part of a broader political strategy.

“It’s a playbook he’s used in the past,” said Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Trump’s rhetoric “paints a picture that crime is out of control, even when it is not true, then blames the policies of Democratic lawmakers that are reform- and public safety-minded, and then claims that you have to step in and violate people’s rights or demand that reforms be reversed,” Wiley said.

She added that the playbook has special potency in D.C. because local law enforcement can be directly placed under federal control, a power Trump invoked in his announcement.

Leaders call the order an unjustified distraction

Trump’s actions in Washington and comments about other major cities sent shock waves across the country, as other leaders prepare to respond to potential federal action.

Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement that Trump’s plan “lacks seriousness and is deeply dangerous” and pointed to a 30-year-low crime rate in Baltimore as a reason the administration should consult local leaders rather than antagonize them. In Oakland, Mayor Barbara Lee called Trump’s characterization of the city “fearmongering.”

The administration already faced a major flashpoint between local control and federal power earlier in the summer, when Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell protests and support immigration enforcement operations in LA despite opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Civil rights leaders have denounced Trump’s action in D.C. as an unjustified distraction.

“This president campaigned on ‘law and order,’ but he is the president of chaos and corruption,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “There’s no emergency in D.C., so why would he deploy the National Guard? To distract us from his alleged inclusion in the Epstein files? To rid the city of unhoused people? D.C. has the right to govern itself. It doesn’t need this federal coup.”

Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime
President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in his federal takeover of Washington police echoes that of conservative politicians going back decades who’ve denounced American cities with majority non-white populations or progressive leaders as crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-washington-dc-takeover-race-39388597bad7e70085079888fe7fb57b

Washington Post: Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest

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Documents reviewed by The Post detail a prospective National Guard mission that, if adopted, would require hundreds of troops to be ready around-the-clock.

The Trump administration is evaluating plans that would establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively.

Cost projections outlined in the documents indicate that such a mission, if the proposal is adopted, could stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars should military aircraft and aircrews also be required to be ready around-the-clock. Troop transport via commercial airlines would be less expensive, the documents say.

The proposal, which has not been previously reported, represents another potential expansion of President Donald Trump’s willingness to employ the armed forces on American soil. It relies on a section of the U.S. Code that allows the commander in chief to circumvent limitations on the military’s use within the United States.

The documents, marked “predecisional,” are comprehensive and contain extensive discussion about the potential societal implications of establishing such a program. They were compiled by National Guard officials and bear time stamps as recent as late July and early August. Fiscal 2027 is the earliest this program could be created and funded through the Pentagon’s traditional budgetary process, the documents say, leaving unclear whether the initiative could begin sooner through an alternative funding source.

It is also unclear whether the proposal has been shared with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The Department of Defense is a planning organization and routinely reviews how the department would respond to a variety of contingencies across the globe,” Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We will not discuss these plans through leaked documents, pre-decisional or otherwise.”

The National Guard Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.

While most National Guard commands have fast-response teams for use within their home states, the proposal under evaluation by the Trump administration would entail moving troops from one state to another.

The National Guard tested the concept ahead of the 2020 election, putting 600 troops on alert in Arizona and Alabama as the country braced for possible political violence. The test followed months of unrest in cities across the country, prompted by the police murder of George Floyd, that spurred National Guard deployments in numerous locations. Trump, then nearing the end of his first term, sought to employ active-duty combat troops while Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other Pentagon officials urged him to rely instead on the Guard, which is trained to address civil disturbances.

Trump has summoned the military for domestic purposes like few of his predecessors have. He did so most recently Monday, authorizing the mobilization of 800 D.C. National Guard troops to bolster enhanced law enforcement activity in Washington that he said is necessary to address violent crime. Data maintained by the D.C. police shows such incidents are in decline; the city’s mayor called the move “unsettling and unprecedented.”

Earlier this year, over the objections of California’s governor and other Democrats, Trump dispatched more than 5,000 National Guard members and active-duty Marines to the Los Angeles area under a rarely used authority permitting the military’s use for quelling insurrection. Administration officials said the mission was necessary to protect federal personnel and property amid protests denouncing Trump’s immigration policies. His critics called the deployment unnecessary and a gross overreach. Before long, many of the troops involved were doing unrelated support work, including a raid on a marijuana farm more than 100 miles away.

The Trump administration also has dispatched thousands of troops to the southern border in a dramatic show of force meant to discourage illegal migration.

National Guard troops can be mobilized for federal missions inside the United States under two main authorities. The first, Title 10, puts troops under the president’s direction, where they can support law enforcement activity but not perform arrests or investigations.

The other, Title 32, is a federal-state status where troops are controlled by their state governor but federally funded. It allows more latitude to participate in law enforcement missions. National Guard troops from other states arrived in D.C. under such circumstances during racial justice protests in 2020.

The proposal being evaluated now would allow the president to mobilize troops and put them on Title 32 orders in a state experiencing unrest. The documents detailing the plan acknowledge the potential for political friction should that state’s governor refuse to work with the Pentagon.

Some legal scholars expressed apprehension about the proposal.

The Trump administration is relying on a shaky legal theory that the president can act broadly to protect federal property and functions, said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in legal issues germane to the U.S. military’s domestic activities.

“You don’t want to normalize routine military participation in law enforcement,” he said. “You don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”

The strategy is further complicated by the fact that National Guard members from one state cannot operate in another state without permission, Nunn said. He also warned that any quick-reaction force established for civil-unrest missions risks lowering the threshold for deploying National Guard troops into American cities.

“When you have this tool waiting at your fingertips, you’re going to want to use it,” Nunn said. “It actually makes it more likely that you’re going to see domestic deployments — because why else have a task force?”

The proposal represents a major departure in how the National Guard traditionally has been used, said Lindsay P. Cohn, an associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. While it is not unusual for National Guard units to be deployed for domestic emergencies within their states, including for civil disturbances, this “is really strange because essentially nothing is happening,” she said.

“Crime is going down. We don’t have major protests or civil disturbances. There is no significant resistance from states” to federal immigration policies, she said. “There is very little evidence anything big is likely to happen soon,” said Cohn, who stressed she was speaking in her personal capacity and not reflecting her employer’s views.

Moreover, Cohn said, the proposal risks diverting National Guard resources that may be needed to respond to natural disasters or other emergencies.

The proposal envisions a rotation of service members from Army and Air Force National Guard units based in multiple states. Those include Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee, the documents say.

Carter Elliott, a spokesperson for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), said governors and National Guard leaders are best suited to decide how to support law enforcement during emergencies. “There is a well-established procedure that exists to request additional assistance during times of need,” Elliott said, “and the Trump administration is blatantly and dangerously ignoring that precedent.”

One action memo contained in the documents, dated July 22, recommends that Army military police and Air Force security forces receive additional training for the mission. The document indicates it was prepared for Hegseth by Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy.

The 300 troops in each of the two headquarters locations would be outfitted with weapons and riot gear, the documents say. The first 100 would be ready to move within an hour, with the second and third waves ready within two and 12 hours’ notice, the documents note, or all immediately deployed when placed on high alert.

The quick-reaction teams would be on task for 90 days, the documents said, “to limit burnout.”

The documents also show robust internal discussions that, with unusual candor, detail the possible negative repercussions if the plan were enacted. For instance, such short-notice missions could “significantly impact volunteerism,” the documents say, which would adversely affect the military’s ability to retain personnel. Guard members, families and civilian employers “feel the significant impacts of short notice activations,” the documents said.

The documents highlight several other concerns, including:

• Reduced Availability for Other Missions: State-Level Readiness: States may have fewer Guard members available for local emergencies (e.g., wildfires, hurricanes).

• Strain on Personnel and Equipment: Frequent domestic deployments can lead to personnel fatigue (stress, burnout, employer conflicts) and accelerated wear and tear on equipment, particularly systems not designed for prolonged civil support missions.

• Training Disruptions: Erosion of Core Capabilities: Extensive domestic deployments can disrupt scheduled training, hinder skill maintenance and divert units from their primary military mission sets, ultimately impacting overall combat readiness.

• Budgetary and Logistical Strains: Sustained operations can stretch budgets, requiring emergency funding or impacting other planned activities.

• Public and Political Impact: National Guard support for DHS raises potential political sensitivities, questions regarding the appropriate civil-military balance and legal considerations related to their role as a nonpartisan force.

National Guard planning documents reviewed by The Post

Officials also have expressed some worry that deploying troops too quickly could make for a haphazard situation as state and local governments scramble to coordinate their arrival, the documents show.

One individual cited in the documents rejected the notion that military aviation should be the primary mode of transportation, emphasizing the significant burden of daily aircraft inspections and placing aircrews on constant standby. The solution, this official proposed, was to contract with Southwest Airlines or American Airlines through their Phoenix and Atlanta operations, the documents say.

“The support (hotels, meals, etc.) required will fall onto the general economy in large and thriving cities of the United States,” this official argued. Moreover, bypassing military aircraft would allow for deploying personnel to travel “in a more subdued status” that might avoid adding to tensions in their “destination city.”

Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest
Documents reviewed by The Post detail a prospective National Guard mission that, if adopted, would require hundreds of troops to be ready around-the-clock.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/12/national-guard-civil-unrest