Presidential Takeover of D.C. is Unlawful and Unjust
On August 11, 2025, President Donald Trump asserted statutory authority to take over the District of Columbia’s police force, send in National Guard troops, and broadly govern D.C. Since then, six states have sent in their National Guard. Though done to make D.C. “safe and beautiful,” it violates D.C. residents’ views on beauty and safety and, even to the extent D.C. self-government is disregarded for the sake of non-residents’ opinions, it is unconstitutional and ineffective.
National politicians have long viewed D.C. residents as deserving of fewer rights than other Americans, but their disrespect for D.C. has moved beyond denying equal suffrage in the federal government into undermining suffrage in its own government. The President’s goal is to have D.C. “maxed out in terms of beauty,” even though residents say that “we have a beautiful city” and a supermajority believes the takeover will make them less safe. The Vice President lectures that “the compassionate thing to do” for unhoused people is to “get them in treatment,” but official policy is to impose punitive policies such as prosecuting juveniles as adults.
The takeover also echoes some of America’s darkest moments. The President’s promise to move unhoused people “FAR from the Capital,” like previous instances of forced relocation by the U.S. government, “has no place in law under the Constitution.” The Supreme Court reaffirmed this principle in a case filed by sixteen states and D.C. against President Trump in his first term. The administration’s moral contradictions and unconstitutional threats deepen the U.S. government’s long-running view of D.C. residents as unequal to other Americans.
Even if it was well-intentioned and constitutional, the takeover will not solve homelessness or improve public safety. The American Public Health Association reports that “[e]merging evidence suggests that displacement results in increased costs to the health care system in the form of increased emergency room visits, increased hospital stays, and lapses in early interventions and preventive care.” The same study discovered that displacements disrupt individuals’ progress in finding housing by displacing vital documents, clothing, and medicine and by impacting health and undermining trust in government as a partner.
If states who are sending National Guard troops have resources to spare, a real display of comity would be to share resources to help cover, or encourage their Members of Congress to restore, the District’s budget deficit stemming from an ostensible accident by Congress. As a recent Justice Report argued, “evidence-based solutions to homelessness are far more complex than sweeps and require continued engagement.” Residents point out that “a more comprehensive strategy to combat crime in the city would involve bigger investments in recreation centers, arts and youth job programs.”
The takeover is not only unlawful and unjust — it is also ineffective. Lasting safety and justice will never come from sidelining D.C. residents but from respecting their equal rights and investing in real, evidence-based solutions.