D.C. sues Trump administration over National Guard deployment

The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration over its deployment of the National Guard to the capital.

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who filed the lawsuit, argued in his complaint that President Donald Trump abused the powers granted to him under the Home Rule Act, a law that grants the president emergency control over local law enforcement. The deployment of National Guard units to police D.C. streets without the mayor’s consent was a violation of both the Home Rule Act, as well as congressionally approved rules, Schwalb wrote.

At the heart of his argument, Schwalb contended that Trump misappropriated his presidential powers, fudging the law’s original intent to serve his own political purposes.

The lawsuit called Trump’s deployment of the National Guard an attack on the city’s sovereignty and right to self-governance. It called for a reversal of Trump’s deployment and listed the Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Army, and the Department of Justice among its defendants.

The administration sent over 2,000 troops to the district, citing a need to combat high levels of crime in the nation’s capitol that threaten the safety of lawmakers, their staff, and the federal government’s functions.

Why does Trump have special powers over Washington, D.C.? Unlike the 50 states, the nation’s capital lacks a legislature and, under the Constitution’s current framework, entrusts its governance to Congress. The Home Rule Act, passed in 1973, gave the city more flexibility to govern itself, but also empowered the president to take control if a local emergency threatened oversight of the country.

Democrats have decried Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C. and the deployment of the National Guard to the city as an overreach of his political power.

Washington, D.C. doesn’t have representation in Congress and is not truly autonomous, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote in a post on X. As a result, people don’t recognize the district’s vulnerability, she added.

Bowser and other Democrats have argued that D.C.’s crime levels do not rise to the kind of national emergency Trump has described. By contrast, the administration argues its crackdown has been effective, leading to reduced crime rates across the city.

What’s the political context? Trump has floated the idea of expanding his takeover of Washington, D.C. to other American cities plagued by high levels of crime. He has referenced cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans as possible targets. Already, leaders in those cities where the Home Rule Act does not extend have issued sharp warnings to the administration that such actions would not go unchallenged.

Dig deeper: This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has pushed conventional understandings of what the president can and can’t do under existing law. Read my report on how Trump changed the understanding and limits of presidential immunity.