WASHINGTON — As the U.S. capital braces for a second week with soldiers and masked federal agents conducting "roving patrols" on the city streets, President Trump says he knows some Americans fear he's crossed a dangerous line.
"Already they're saying, 'He's a dictator,'" Trump said Wednesday, speaking at the Kennedy Center in Washington. "The place is going to hell and we've got to stop it. So instead of saying 'He's a dictator,' they should say, 'We're going to join him and make Washington safe.'"
It's impossible to untangle the impulses that led Trump to abruptly militarize law enforcement in D.C., putting hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents on the streets, while attempting a chaotic takeover of the city's Metropolitan Police Department.
But Trump has long made crime, especially when committed by young Black men, a central part of his populist message, dating back to his time as a high-profile real estate developer in New York City.
He has also regularly portrayed urban communities like Washington, D.C. in bleak, often apocalyptic terms.
During his first inaugural presidential address in 2016, Trump spoke of "mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities" while promising to end what he called "American carnage."
But critics say a deeply troubling aspect of Trump's unfolding crackdown in D.C. is that he launched it on false and debunked claims that Washington is spiraling into disorder.
"There is not a crime crisis in D.C.," said Rosa Brooks, a former D.C. Metropolitan reserve police officer who teaches now at Georgetown Law School.
"This is police state territory, banana republic police state territory," she added.
Brooks acknowledged Washington has struggled with serious crime waves in recent years. One analysis published last year by the Rochester Institute of Technology found D.C. still has the fourth-highest murder rate of any city in the U.S.
But that same study reinforced findings from the U.S. Justice Department that crime in Washington has plummeted since 2023, with violence reaching a 30-year low last year.
When Trump took office in January for his second term, D.C. was also seeing a significant year-over-year decline in homelessness, as well as an unprecedented drop in drug overdose deaths.
Brooks said it's alarming that Trump would attempt to leverage a false crisis to justify putting soldiers on the streets. "I think what we're seeing is the effort to habituate people to the idea that you're going to have armed federal personnel in your business, asking questions, stopping you, and that's just truly scary," she said.
Administration officials portrayed the crackdown very differently, as a sign of "bold leadership."
Is there an end game to Trump's military surge in Washington?
"In less than ten days, over 300 dangerous criminals have already been arrested and taken off the streets of Washington, D.C.," said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers in a statement to NPR.
"President Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to clean up this city and restore American Greatness to our cherished capital."
But federal officials haven't offered any plan for how this surge of troops and federal agents will end. Nor have they offered details on where the city's most vulnerable residents — those who are poor, homeless, mentally ill, and drug-addicted — will go after being swept off the streets.
"We're simply moving the problem around, we're not really providing a solution to folks' homelessness," said Dana White, who works with a social service program in Washington called Miriam's Kitchen.
"D.C. shelter capacity is often very limited. Ultimately, these people often have no permanent, stable place to go."
Some legal experts say Trump's authority to wield power in D.C. under an emergency declaration expires 30 days after he signed his Aug. 11 executive order. But Republican lawmakers who control Congress have shown no interest in reining in his authority.
"Give Trump a third term, give him a Peace Prize, and let him run D.C. as long as he wants," Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, wrote Friday on social media.
Growing tension as White House, local leaders spar for control
Late last week, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled there won't be a quick resolution to the crisis when she attempted to install Terry Cole, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as the "emergency police chief" with daily command and control of the Metropolitan Police.
D.C.'s Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit in federal court, that effectively forced the Justice Department to back down from that power play. "The hostile takeover of our police force is not going to happen. Very important win for home rule today," Schwalb told reporters Friday.
But then over the weekend, Republican governors from Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia, confirmed they will send hundreds of additional National Guard troops to D.C.
In yet another escalation, a White House official said some of those Guard units may be armed while conducting "roving patrols" through the city on foot and in vehicles. Up until now, soldiers have not carried weapons as they've been stationed near tourist-heavy areas such as the monuments, National Mall and Union Station.
What if the situation on D.C.'s streets erupts?
At times, Trump has seemed to relish the idea of a violent confrontation between law enforcement and those he views as criminals, saying last Monday that police should be allowed to do "whatever the hell they want" and arguing that tough tactics are needed to restore order.
"They fight back until you knock the hell out of them," he said.
But faced with a volatile situation on the streets, D.C. government and civic leaders signaled they are eager to de-escalate whenever possible.
Some said they hoped to avoid the kind of violence between residents and law enforcement that erupted in Ferguson, Mo. following the fatal shooting by police of Michael Brown in 2014, and in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020.
"We have done this before, we have been down this road before," warned the Rev. Ronald Bell Jr. during his sermon on Sunday at the Asbury United Methodist Church, one of D.C.'s predominantly Black congregations.
"When it seems like the armies have come and taken what was yours, you know where to go. You worship, you go to God," he told worshippers.
Speaking to NPR, Bell said he and other Black leaders are already working to maintain calm. "I think we have learned lessons from the past. I think we are well-equipped to handle this moment," he said.
In an open letter to D.C. residents, meanwhile, Mayor Muriel Bowser called the first week of Trump's emergency a "crisis" and acknowledged people are feeling "waves of anxiety."
Bowser noted the city's public school year begins in just over a week and said families are struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy.
"I know that if we keep sticking together, we will make it to the other side of this," Bowser said. "We will show the entire nation what it looks like to fight for American democracy."
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