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The city of Washington, D.C., sued the Trump administration Thursday over its deployment of the National Guard from other states to the nation’s capital.
The lawsuit alleges the president’s unilateral deployment of National Guard troops from other states to patrol the city without the mayor’s consent violates the Home Rule Act, which gives Washington residents control over local affairs, with Congress retaining ultimate authority over the district.
The lawsuit, filed by city Attorney General Brian Schwalb, argues that President Donald Trump “disregarded Congress’s decision, half a century ago, to afford the residents of the District ‘the powers of local self-government,’ including the authority to police the District as they see fit. In so doing, he has run roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy—that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.”
“No American city should have the US military — particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement — policing its streets,” Schwalb said in a statement to NBC News. “It’s DC today, but could be any other city tomorrow. We’ve filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach.”
The city’s lawsuit comes the same week that a federal judge ruled the federal government illegally deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in June in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal law that generally prohibits the U.S. military from acting as domestic law enforcement.
At the same time as the city is pushing back on the deployment of the National Guard, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued an order Tuesday to formalize the city’s cooperation with federal law enforcement, including the FBI, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Bowser has credited the increased presence of federal law enforcement on the streets with a reduction in the rate of certain crimes, saying in a press conference last week that she thinks “there’s more accountability in the system — or at least perceived accountability in the system — that is driving down illegal behavior. We know that we have had fewer gun crimes, fewer homicides. And we have experienced an extreme reduction in carjackings.” Emphasizing her desire for more local control, she called “masked ICE agents in the community” and “national guards from other states” an inefficient use of resources.
Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to send the National Guard into other cities, such as Chicago, Baltimore and New York, with the purported mission of reducing crime — even as local officials prepare for federal officers to focus on immigration enforcement.