President Donald Trump is painting Democrats as soft on crime ahead of the 2026 midterm elections as he seizes control of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., and accuses liberals of presiding over a public safety crisis.
Trump announced Monday morning that he, for the first time in the nation’s history, will federalize Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police and mobilize hundreds of National Guard troops to supplement a crackdown on violent crime in the district.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES FEDERAL TAKEOVER OF DC POLICE TO FIGHT CRIME: WHAT TO KNOW
The move was followed by Trump’s threats to expand his law enforcement push to other cities led by Democrats, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Baltimore, and Oakland. “We’re not going to lose our cities over this,” Trump said of crime. “And this will go further.”
While Washington, D.C. is unique because Congress controls it and the president can order up the National Guard, Trump calling out other blue cities put Democrats on defense, claiming that crime isn’t that bad to warrant such federal interference.
“Violent crime in Washington, D.C. is at a thirty-year low,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said. “Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost.”
The takeover of the DC police, which is expected to last 30 days, was met with outrage from leading Democratic lawmakers, including Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), JB Pritzker (D-IL), and Wes Moore (D-MD), all potential 2028 presidential candidates.
“He was just getting warmed up in Los Angeles,” Newsom wrote on social media following Trump’s Monday press conference, referencing the president’s use of National Guard assets earlier this year to quell protests and riots surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the Los Angeles Area. “He will gaslight his way into militarizing any city he wants in America. This is what dictators do.”
“Let’s not lie to the public, you and I both know you have no authority to take over Chicago,” Pritzker added in his statement. “By the way, where are the Epstein files?”
Moore said, “Trump’s decision to mobilize the National Guard to conduct municipal policing in D.C. lacks seriousness and is deeply dangerous.”
The Democratic Mayors Association cited statistics showing that “crime is down in most major cities — including Washington, D.C.” to claim that Trump “only wants to create another political charade to serve his own interests and distract Americans from his failures.”
Senior Republican operatives with close ties to the Trump White House told the Washington Examiner that Newsom, Pritzker, and other presidential hopefuls “predictably” fell into Trump’s political trap, one that pits them on the “losing side” of the issue.
“There’s no denying that Washington is an absolute cesspool — wannabe teenage gangsters, weed smoke everywhere. President Trump is doing what any reasonable person would hope, making this city safe and liveable,” one former Trump administration official said. “And instead of saying, ‘thank you, Mr. President, for cleaning up our streets,’ the Democrats are coming out as pro-crime. It’s the perfect play.”
“I certainly hope so,” a veteran operative with past work on Trump’s political campaigns laughed when asked if Trump’s move could put Democrats at a disadvantage ahead of next year’s elections.
Trump has employed similar tactics in the past, albeit with mixed results. Throughout the 2020 campaign, which he eventually lost, the president repeatedly sought to paint former President Joe Biden and Democrats as soft on crime by linking them to the Black Lives Matter protests and national police reform movements.
That tactic proved much more successful during the 2024 election. However, as Trump was able to spin Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s border policies into electoral gold, he specifically sought to tie immigration to crime on Monday morning.
“We’re not going to take it just like we did on our southern border,” he said during his press conference. “Nobody comes to our southern border anymore.”
Trump’s intervention happened after a string of high-profile crimes in DC, including the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, the attack of Edward Coristine, a former Department of Government Efficiency engineer who goes by the nickname “Big Balls,” and the shooting death of 21-year-old congressional intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym.
Tamara Tarpinian-Jachym, Eric’s mother, said she doesn’t care that statistics show DC crime may be declining when far too many people are getting hurt.
“I looked at Eric’s ashes, and I said, Eric, you haven’t died in vain,” Tarpinian-Jachym told Fox News in praising Trump’s announcement. “Things will change so other people are safe when they go visit DC or work at DC. And that’s my goal, to make people safe.”
Even the DC Police Union issued a statement on Monday welcoming Trump’s takeover announcement. Chairman Gregg Pemberton said his union stands “with the president in recognizing that Washington, DC, cannot continue on this trajectory.”
“Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits,” Pemberton wrote. “The federal intervention is a critical stopgap, but the MPD needs proper staffing and support to thrive. This can only happen by repealing the disastrous policies that have driven out our best officers and hindered recruitment.”
“This is why Democrats continue to be so unpopular among everyday Americans — they think the President of the United States cracking down on crime in our nation’s capital is a bad thing,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers added in a statement when asked if Trump’s announcement is meant to put political pressure on the opposing party.
However, Trump’s polling remains negative, with the RealClearPolitics average showing his approval rating sitting six points underwater as of Monday. Furthermore, only 4% of respondents to an Economist-YouGov tracking poll last week ranked crime as the most important issue to them, with inflation and prices (21%), jobs and the economy (14%), and healthcare (11%) all significantly outranking crime.
And not all Democrats took Trump’s Monday bait.
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser framed Trump’s announcement as an opportunity to supplement their existing police initiatives.
“I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” she told reporters. “I can say to D.C. residents that we will continue to operate our government in a way that makes you proud.”
Though Bowser did call Trump’s moves “unprecedented,” she also repeatedly declined to tell reporters that she would resist the federal takeover in any form or fashion, despite protests breaking out in the city demanding a “Free DC.“
“If people are concerned about the president being able to move the National Guard into our city, the time to do that would have been when Congress had a bill that it could have given control of the D.C. National Guard to D.C.,” the mayor continued.
A Democratic National Committee spokesman declined to comment on whether Trump’s D.C. takeover would put political pressure on Democrats regarding crime, instead citing chairman Ken Martin’s statement from earlier in the day.
“Donald Trump’s record as president is marked by gross abuses of power, and his latest move to supersede local law enforcement by deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C. is no exception,” Martin wrote.
Democratic strategist Mike Nellis downplayed questions regarding whether Trump has potentially put pressure on Democrats concerning crime.
“Federalizing the D.C. police is another wild swing from the president as his approval rating continues to crater,” Nellis told the Washington Examiner. “His decision-making is driven by erratic attempts to change the subject.”
Nellis, who worked for former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2020 Democratic primary campaign during which she was pressured regarding crime, added: “Polls show him underwater on every major issue, including immigration. Most Americans don’t care about what happens in DC — they want action on the economy, and most say they’re worse off than before Trump took office.”
A second Democratic strategist, Christopher Hahn, agreed, “This is the standard GOP playbook being taken to another level.”
TRUMP FEDERALIZES DC POLICE AND ACTIVATES NATIONAL GUARD TO COMBAT CRIME: ‘TAKE OUR CAPITAL BACK’
“Now that he’s involved, he owns all of it,” Hahn told the Washington Examiner regarding Trump. “And we all know how powerful a single crime can be in political ads.”