US president sends military to occupy capital city
President Donald Trump announced a federal takeover of the Washington, D.C., police force and plans to deploy the National Guard in the nation’s capital. As crime in D.C. hits the lowest level in decades, Trump said he was declaring a public-safety emergency and taking control under Section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act, the president said at a Monday morning White House press conference. Attorney General Pam Bondi will take charge of the Metropolitan Police Department through a Drug Enforcement Administration head Terry Cole, he said.
The DC National Guard has been mobilized under Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, and will be “flowing into DC in the coming weeks,” SecDef Pete Hegseth said at the conference. Trump also signed an executive order enabling Hegseth to work with various states to bring various National Guard forces to assist, an official said.
“We will bring in the military if needed,” Trump said Monday. “If necessary, we’re going to move service members to help the National Guard.”
Over the weekend, hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies began patrolling the nation’s capital. More than 500 will eventually be deployed, Trump said Monday. The agencies include FBI, ICE, DEA and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Reuters reports. A bit more from the New York Times: “Most of the agents will be pulled from their regular duties at the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, but it was not immediately clear if agency leaders would need to pull additional personnel from nearby cities, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe details of an effort that were not meant to be public.” NPR has photos of FBI patrols.
The record shows that violent crime in D.C. hit a 30-year low last year and then dropped another 26 percent this calendar year. So what’s going on? Here’s Politico: “A 19-year-old man known as ‘Big Balls’ who played a key role in the DOGE initiative to shrink the size of government was assaulted over the weekend in Washington, according to city police.” Trump mentioned him at the conference.
The president also offered deeply exaggerated descriptions of the situation in DC, with residents who are afraid to “go into a store and buy a newspaper” as “caravans of youth rampage through the streets.” He also issued a vague threat against neighborhoods: “We’re getting rid of the slums…where they live.”
By the way, here’s author and historian Garrett Graff, who reminds readers on social media that “Trump’s first act was to pardon HUNDREDS of J6 rioters who assaulted and beat DC police officers. Trump’s been responsible for a large percentage of the total assaults (and many of the worst/most brutal) on DC police in the last decade.”
Bigger picture: “Trump’s announcement is his latest effort to target Democratic-run cities by exercising executive power over traditionally local matters, and he has shown particular interest in asserting more control over Washington,” Reuters writes. “The Republican president has dismissed criticism that he is manufacturing a crisis to justify expanding presidential authority in a heavily Democratic city.” Read more, here.
For some legal perspective, here’s national security law professor Steve Vladeck, writing before Trump’s press conference about federalizing troops for the capital.
Writing after the conference, Vladeck observed that Trump’s actions Monday set “an ominous political precedent for pretextually overriding local government,” and warned that “if we get acclimated to the President doing this anywhere, we get desensitized to him trying to do it everywhere.”
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Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1988, al-Qaeda was reportedly founded during a meeting in Peshawar.
Russia’s Ukraine invasion, day 1265
President Trump is planning to speak with Russian leader Vladimir Putin Friday in Alaska. The meeting was reportedly requested by Putin, and is ostensibly about the future of Putin’s Ukraine invasion. However, the talks do not yet feature anyone from Ukraine, as French President Emmanuel Macron objected on social media Saturday, citing the support of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Macron: “Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now,” the French president said, and insisted, “Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.”
Kyiv’s president, too, rejected the idea of talks without Ukrainian representation. “Any decisions that are without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace. They will not achieve anything,” Volodymir Zelenskyy said in a video message Saturday.
Kyiv is not alone. Macron, Merz and Starmer were joined by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a joint statement Saturday encouraging talks to end Russia’s Ukraine invasion, while also calling for Ukrainian and European involvement in future peace negotiations.
“The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” the European ensemble said. “We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force,” they added, and recommended, “The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.”
By the way: The EU parliament and NATO allies are creating a new financial institution akin to the World Bank to help boost military spending, officials announced last week. It’s known as the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, or the DSRB, and it involves many top banks like JP Morgan Chase, German Commerzbank, and Canadian RBC Capital Markets.
The idea: “Nations who become DSRB’s shareholders are likely to contribute a total of US$65 billion to US$70 billion dollars in capital,” the Financial Post reported Thursday. “This would help get the bank a triple-A credit rating, after which the bank intends to go to the bond market and raise money which would in turn be used to expand lending in the defence sector…The bank will also help commercial banks in member countries expand their lending into the defence sector, which has often been seen as off limits,” the Post writes. The DSRB will hold its first meeting in September, with plans to launch the institution formally at the end of 2026.
What to expect: “European NATO members will likely leverage the bank to sustain investments in Ukraine’s defense industrial base, to launch further joint production initiatives with Ukraine, and to fund defense production intended for Ukraine and NATO allies’ own stocks,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote Sunday.
In Alaska, Putin is likely to bring up a lopsided Russian ceasefire proposal pitched last week to U.S. officials in Moscow. The plan “would require that Ukraine hand over eastern Ukraine, a region known as the Donbas, without Russia’s committing to much other than to stop fighting,” the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. “The offer, which Putin conveyed Wednesday to U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow, set off a diplomatic scramble to obtain further clarity on details of the proposal.” (More on that in the next item.)
Why Russia might seek a Ukrainian withdrawal from Donetsk: “Conceding to such a demand would force Ukraine to abandon its ‘fortress belt,’ the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014—with no guarantee that fighting will not resume,” ISW said Saturday. “The fortress belt is a significant obstacle to Russia’s current path of advance westward,” they noted.
Europe pitched a counter-prosal to U.S. officials on Saturday, and it “includes demands that a cease-fire take place before any other steps are taken,” the Journal reported separately on Sunday. “It also says that territory can be exchanged only in a reciprocal manner—meaning that if Ukraine pulls out of some regions, Russia must withdraw from others.” As well, potential NATO membership for Ukraine cannot be removed from discussions, as Russian officials have insisted.
Second opinion: “Russia remains unwilling to compromise on its long-standing war aims of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, regime change in Ukraine in favor of a pro-Russian proxy government, and Ukraine’s demilitarization—all of which would ensure Ukraine’s full capitulation,” ISW analysts warned Sunday. Russia will also “very likely violate and weaponize any future ceasefire agreements in Ukraine while blaming Ukraine for the violations as it repeatedly did in Spring 2025,” they added.
One recent speedbump: Trump’s inexperienced Russian envoy, real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff, misinterpreted withdrawal terms presented by his Russian counterparts during talks last week at the Kremlin regarding the future of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion, European officials said this weekend.
Witkoff mistook Russia’s insistence that Ukrainians leave their own Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions and initially thought instead that Putin volunteered to “peacefully withdraw” Russian troops from the latter two regions, Germany’s Bild reported this weekend. The Wall Street Journal confirmed Witkoff’s misrepresentation. Witkoff also misunderstood a Russian ceasefire regarding energy infrastructure and long-range strikes, European officials told Bild.
Expert reax: “This is deeply damaging incompetence,” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul wrote on social media. “Witkoff should finally start taking a notetaker from the U.S. embassy for future meetings. That’s how professional diplomacy works.”
The view from Kyiv: “Russia is dragging out the war,” and “deserves stronger global pressure,” Zelenskyy said in an address Sunday evening. Hours later, he released another video describing the results of Russia’s latest overnight drone and missile barrage, which allegedly struck homes, a bus station and a clinic in Zaporizhzhia. “Today, along the entire front line, in frontline communities, and in border towns and villages, the Russians once again continued to take lives.”
“No deadlines, no expectations work on them,” Zelenskyy said. “Everyone sees that there has been no real step from Russia toward peace, no action on the ground or in the air that could save lives.”
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