By Jess Bravin
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that President Trump's mobilization of the National Guard to bolster crime-fighting in Washington violates several laws, including home-rule powers Congress granted the District of Columbia in 1973.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said that the president couldn't deploy the D.C. National Guard to assume law enforcement duties Congress assigned to the mayor, currently Muriel Bowser, a Democrat. She also found that Trump lacked the authority to send Guard units from other states to Washington, because the federal law he cited allows such deployments only to carry out missions that the D.C. Guard could perform.
"At its core, Congress has given the District rights to govern itself," she wrote. "Those rights are infringed upon" by Trump's deployment of the Guard without the consent of the city's leaders, she wrote.
Cobb, a 2021 Biden appointee, delayed implementation of her ruling until Dec. 11 so that the administration could appeal.
Some 2,000 Guard members, about equally divided between the D.C. forces and those sent from other states, are deployed in Washington under a mission dubbed Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful. The deployment began in August, when Trump signed an order mobilizing the Guard "to address the epidemic of crime in our Nation's capital... until I determine that conditions of law and order have been restored."
The district's Democratic attorney general, Brian Schwalb, sued in September to stop the deployment.
"From the beginning, we made clear that the U.S. military should not be policing American citizens on American soil," Schwalb said Thursday. "This unprecedented federal overreach is not normal, or legal. It is long past time to let the National Guard go home -- to their everyday lives, their regular jobs, their families, and their children," he said.
The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Guard units have taken up visible positions in Washington, often in touristed areas such as the National Mall and in transit stations. They also have helped in fighting litter.
"Since September, cleanup teams have collected more than 500 tons of debris across the District -- visible proof of a unified commitment to restoring public trust, improving quality of life, and ensuring that the capital reflects the pride and dignity worthy of representing the American people," an Army website reported this month.
Democratic-led states including California, Illinois and Oregon also sued to stop Guard deployments Trump authorized to support immigration enforcement. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift an order temporarily blocking the Chicago-area deployment. D.C.'s status as a federal enclave made Schwalb's case unique.
Separately, Trump assumed temporary control of the district's local police department under a federal law allowing the president to require its assistance for up to 30 days. That order expired in September.
Write to Jess Bravin at Jess.Bravin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 20, 2025 16:43 ET (21:43 GMT)
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