US President Donald Trump is sending the National Guard to Washington DC and taking over its police force in an extraordinary assertion of his power in the American capital.

Trump has deployed 800 National Guard troops, claiming a crime “emergency” and that his actions are necessary to “rescue” Washington from a wave of lawlessness.

His move on Monday (local time) came despite statistics showing violent crime hit a 30-year low in 2024 and has continued to decline this year, and as Democratic mayors accused him of manufacturing a crisis.

Trump also took aim at homeless people and said he would be “getting rid of the slums”.

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” he said at the White House.

“This is liberation day in DC, and we’re going to take our capital back.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.

“We’re getting rid of the slums too; we have slums here — we’re getting rid of them,” he said.

Trump said his administration had begun removing homeless encampments “from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks”.

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He claimed Washington’s murder rate was worse than that in Colombia’s capital Bogota and Mexico City and was “higher than the worst places”.

Trump claimed car thefts had doubled in five years and carjackings had tripled.

But Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back, saying a spike in crime after Covid had since decreased after laws and tactics against violent offenders were introduced.

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“Crime isn’t just down from 2023, it’s also down from 2019 before the pandemic, and we’re at a 30-year violent crime low,” she said.

“We haven’t taken our foot off the gas, and we continue to look for ways to make our city safer.”

The Democratic Mayors Association accused Trump of creating  “yet another political charade to serve his own interests and distract”.

The text of Trump’s executive orders claims that “rising violence in the capital now urgently endangers public servants, citizens, and tourists, disrupts safe and secure transportation and the proper functioning of the federal government”.

Attorney General Pam Bondi will oversee the police force takeover, Trump said.

It is the second time in recent months he has deployed troops to a Democrat-governed city.

Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June despite the objections of state and local officials.

He signalled on Monday that another major US city with Democratic leadership could be next — Chicago, where violent crime has also fallen significantly so far in 2025.

“If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,” Trump said, adding, “Hopefully LA is watching.”

The US Army said 800 soldiers would be activated.

“During this activation, between 100-200 soldiers will be supporting law enforcement at any given time,” it said.

“Their duties will include an array of tasks from administrative, logistics and physical presence in support of law enforcement.”

Trump has shown particular interest in taking over Washington, which is under the jurisdiction of Congress but exercises self-governance under a 1973 US law.

Hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, have fanned out across the city in recent days.

Violent crime, including murders, spiked in 2023, turning Washington into one of the nation’s deadliest cities.

Since then, however, violent crime dropped 35 per cent in 2024, according to federal data. City police say it fell an additional 26 per cent in the first seven months of 2025.

The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, called Trump’s actions “unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful” in an X post, and said his office was “considering all of our options”.

“Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost,” House of Representatives Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X.

In the past week, Trump has intensified his messaging, suggesting he might attempt to strip Washington of its local autonomy and implement a full federal takeover.

The District of Columbia, established in 1790, operates under the Home Rule Act. That gives the US Congress ultimate authority but allows residents to elect a mayor and city council.

Trump said last week that lawyers were examining how to overturn the law, a move that would likely require Congress to revoke it.

In taking over the Metropolitan Police Department, Trump invoked a section of the act that allows the president to use force for 30 days during “special conditions of an emergency nature”.

Trump said he was declaring a “public safety emergency”.

Under the statute, presidential control was “designed to be a temporary emergency measure, not a permanent takeover,” University of Minnesota law professor Jill Hasday said.

-with AAP