Trump Took Over the D.C. Police. He Can’t Do It In Other Cities, Legal Experts Say

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday taking control of Washington, D.C.’s Police Department, part of a sweeping effort by his administration to crack down on crime. As 800 National Guard members and other federal law enforcement officers are fanning out across the nation’s capital, Democratic leaders elsewhere are wondering if their cities could be next. That speculation was fueled in part by Trump’s vow to intervene in other cities to fight crime, suggesting New York, Baltimore, Oakland as possible future targets. “They’re so far gone,” he said. “This will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C.” But Trump’s authority to take over local police forces and send troops to patrol streets beyond Washington, D.C. is severely limited by law, legal experts say, since most cities fall under state jurisdiction where governors control the National Guard and local law enforcement. The nation’s capital is not a state, giving the President a rare ability to deploy the National Guard and assume control of its police during declared emergencies. In other cities, the President cannot unilaterally commandeer police departments or deploy federal troops for ordinary law enforcement without state approval or a declared federal emergency, says Meryl Chertoff, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School.  “It was contemplated by the Founders that the states would retain a certain degree of autonomy and a certain degree of individuation,” Chertoff says. “Generally, the justification for the federal government to get involved is because either there’s a commerce issue or a foreign policy issue that is national in scope.”  She adds, “When the President basically says ‘I govern all of it,’ the Constitution requires that there be some justification for that. And this notion that everything becomes an emergency is often used as a way of bypassing what would ordinarily be state autonomy.” In Washington, D.C., Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which allows the president to take control of the city’s police during an emergency for up to 30 days. His declaration of the situation as a public safety emergency drew criticism from local officials, as violent crime in the city is at a 30-year-low. Attorney General Pam Bondi was named to oversee the Metropolitan Police Department, while 800 National Guard troops were deployed to patrol the streets.  “Other cities are hopefully watching this,” Trump said. “They’re all watching and maybe they’ll self clean up and maybe they’ll self do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all of the things that caused the problem.” The law Trump invoked applies only to the District of Columbia because it lacks a governor to approve or deny the federal intervention. “Washington, D.C. is in a unique position and is uniquely powerless vis-à-vis the federal government,” Chertoff says. In contrast, cities like New York, Baltimore, and Oakland are in states with elected governors who have legal authority over the National Guard and local police. Many of those leaders have pushed back strongly against Trump’s threats to federalize their law enforcement.  Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, who announced earlier this month that the city’s violent crime rate is at its lowest in decades, responded on social media: “This is the latest effort by the president to distract from the issues he should be focused on — including the roller coaster of the U.S. economy thanks to his policies,” Scott wrote. “When it comes to public safety in Baltimore, he should turn off the right-wing propaganda and look at the facts. Baltimore is the safest it’s been in over 50 years. Homicides are down 28% this year alone, reaching the lowest level of any year on record.” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker directly challenged Trump’s authority on X, writing, “Let’s not lie to the public, you and I both know you have no authority to take over Chicago,” after the president blamed him for crime in the city. While Trump can’t take over the police in other cities, he can deploy the military domestically under certain circumstances. Earlier this year, nearly 5,000 National Guard members and active-duty Marines were sent to Los Angeles to respond to immigration protests and protect federal agents, bypassing the state’s governor. In his first term, Trump sent federal agents and troops to patrol streets in cities like Portland in response to racial justice protests. In those situations, National Guard troops had specific mandates, and were not supposed to be involved in everyday policing. Legal experts argue that such deployments run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that generally prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. Laura Dickinson, a professor at George Washington Law School, noted that while the president has broad authority to call up the National Guard in D.C., it is highly unusual—and legally fraught—to deploy military forces for routine crime control in cities without a clear federal emergency. “Democracies around the world and in our country, historically, don’t use the military to do law enforcement on a regular basis,” Dickinson says, noting that the National Guard and Marines are not trained for every policing situation. “It’s risky and harmful and impractical for all sorts of reasons.” A legal challenge over Trump’s declaration could soon be underway in D.C. Brian Schwalb, the city’s Attorney General, called the order “unlawful” but has not committed to filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. Any litigation would likely take longer than 30 days, the maximum period Trump can retain those emergency powers without Congressional approval.  In California, courts are currently reviewing the legality of Trump’s order of federal troops to Los Angeles earlier this summer. Beyond direct intervention, Chertoff warns that the Trump Administration could leverage federal funding as a tool to pressure states and cities to comply with its law enforcement priorities “There is so much federal money going into states,” she says, “and what the President has done is say, if you don’t cooperate with me on, let’s say, sanctuary city policies or immigration enforcement, I am going to withhold money that goes into your programs.” This financial leverage, she says, is “doing indirectly what he cannot under the 10th Amendment, which provides states with a degree of autonomy.”