Trump orders federal law enforcers onto streets of DC
With President Donald Trump calling for a federal takeover of the nation’s capital city, the White House says there will be an increased presence of federal law enforcement on the streets of Washington DC, for at least the next week. “We have to run DC,” Trump told reporters.
But doing so would require a repeal of the Home Rule Act of 1973 in Congress and could face steep pushback. This was prompted by the attempted carjacking of a DOGE employee nicknamed “Big Balls” by a group of teenagers. Carjackings and homicides are actually down sharply in DC after spiking in 2023.
A two-hour tour of the DC streets, starting around 1 a.m. Friday morning, revealed no evidence of the sort of multiagency flood of uniformed personnel described in Trump’s announcement.
“Washington, DC, is an amazing city but it has been plagued by violent crime for far too long,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump has directed an increased presence of federal law enforcement to protect innocent citizens.”
She said that means “there will be no safe harbor for violent criminals in DC.”
Peace signing
This developed as the president said that he was looking forward to hosting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Friday.
In a post on his social media site, he billed the event as “historic” and said the two leaders would participate in a “Peace Signing Ceremony.”
Trump said his “administration has been engaged with both sides for quite some time” and added that he was “very proud of these courageous Leaders for doing the right thing.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter conflict over territory since the early 1990s, when ethnic Armenian forces took control over the Karabakh province and nearby territories.
