With the dome of the U.S. Capitol successful the background, members of the DC National Guard support ticker extracurricular Union Station aft U.S. President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and ordered an accrued national instrumentality enforcement beingness to assistance successful transgression prevention, successful Washington, D.C., August 19, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Washington, D.C., connected Thursday sued the Trump administration implicit its deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to the superior city's streets, arguing that the determination violates the Constitution and national law.
President Donald Trump "has tally roughshod implicit a cardinal tenet of American democracy—that the subject should not beryllium progressive successful home instrumentality enforcement," D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote successful the federal lawsuit.
"These unprecedented, unlawful actions person subjected the District to superior and irreparable harm," Schwalb wrote.
The suit names Trump and the heads of the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, the Army and the U.S. Marshals Service, arsenic good arsenic their respective departments, arsenic defendants.
D.C. wants a justice to contented a imperishable injunction against Trump's unit deployment.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said successful a connection that the suit "is thing much than different effort — astatine the detriment of DC residents and visitors — to undermine the President's highly palmy operations to halt convulsive transgression successful DC."
Trump "is good wrong his lawful authorization to deploy the National Guard successful Washington D.C. to support national assets and assistance instrumentality enforcement with circumstantial tasks," Jackson said.
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Trump connected Aug. 11 enactment the D.C. constabulary section nether national power and deployed hundreds of National Guard troops to the metropolis arsenic portion of his crackdown connected transgression successful cities crossed the nation.
Trump invoked a conception of D.C.'s decades-old Home Rule Act that gives the president powers implicit the district's constabulary unit successful an emergency.
That statute specifies that the president's power expires aft a maximum of 30 days, unless Congress passes a instrumentality authorizing an extension.
The National Guard troops, meanwhile, could enactment successful the metropolis through the extremity of the year, an authoritative said earlier this week.
In the weeks since Trump's announcement, the full fig of National Guard troops has swelled to astir 2,200, according to Schwalb's lawsuit.
Trump's efforts to deploy the subject successful U.S. cities deed a ineligible snag earlier this week, erstwhile a federal justice blocked Trump from deploying National Guard and different troops to behaviour instrumentality enforcement successful California.
The decision in U.S. District Court successful San Francisco was constricted to California, and is stayed until Sept. 12, but it inactive dealt a stroke to Trump's unprecedented efforts to deploy national instrumentality enforcement to cities.
Trump has said helium is besides considering deploying National Guard members to Chicago and different cities crossed the country.
"We're going in. I didn't accidental when, but we're going in," Trump told reporters astatine the White House erstwhile asked if helium volition nonstop troops to Chicago.
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