Hegseth’s Rant on D.C. Takeover Turned Into Evidence Against Trump

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Monday remarks about the deployment of troops on the streets of Washington, D.C., may have already harmed the Trump administration in its legal battle over the deployment of troops on the streets of Los Angeles.

Monday marked the beginning of a three-day trial in which California is making the case that Hegseth and the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 federal law forbidding the use of the military for civilian law enforcement purposes—during its crackdown on L.A. protests against its immigration agenda.

During a Monday press conference on Trump’s federal takeover of D.C., Hegseth announced that the National Guard will be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week” and that “there are other units we are prepared to bring in—other National Guard units, other specialized units.

“They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners,” Hegseth said. And “this is nothing new for DOD,” he added. “In Los Angeles, we did the same thing, working with the California National Guard, working with ICE officers.”

The comments apparently caught the ears of those hoping to prove that Hegseth unlawfully deployed troops in Los Angeles.

According to journalist Adam Klasfeld of the legal affairs publication All Rise, California’s attorney on Monday moved to enter Hegseth’s announcement of National Guard deployment—and, specifically, his comments about the troops “stand[ing] with their law enforcement partners” and having done “the same thing” in L.A.—into evidence.

Hegseth’s comments were ultimately admitted by the judge, Klasfeld reports, despite the Trump administration objecting on the grounds that they were not already on the exhibit list. The judge reportedly observed that the remarks could not have been included on the exhibit list previously, considering they just happened.

This is apparently the sort of mishap that occurs when one doesn’t wait for their potential military occupation of one city to play out in court before moving on to the next.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser does not think President Trump’s hostile takeover of the D.C. Police Department is a “disaster.”

The mayor held a press conference on Monday after Trump announced he’d be invoking Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, kicking off an aggressive crackdown that gives him temporary control over the nation’s capital. He has also activated the National Guard.

“When you testified to Congress after the 2020 racial justice protests, when there was concern that Trump might take control over MPD at that time, that that would be a ‘complete disaster’ and that you were worried that you were gonna lose control of the city,’” a reporter asked Bowser, “can you reflect on this moment today? Do you feel that you’re at risk of losing control of the city? Are you worried this is going to be a complete disaster?”

Bowser offered a mild, diplomatic answer, which she had done many times up to that point in the press conference.

“I’m gonna work every day to make sure it’s not a complete disaster, let me put it that way,” Bowser replied, refusing to directly condemn the decision.

“And I think that with [Metropolitan Police] Chief Smith’s leadership and her expertise in both the federal space and the local space, we are gonna do our level best … to maintain the trust that D.C. residents have in us,” she continued. “What could be a disaster is if we lose communities who won’t call the police. That could be a disaster. What would be a disaster is if communities won’t talk to the police if a crime has been committed, and could help solve that crime. That could be a disaster. It could be a disaster if people who aren’t committing crimes are antagonized into committing crimes. That would be a disaster. So we’re gonna work every day to … get this emergency put to an end, I’ll call it the so-called emergency. And continue to do our work. And at the same time, make sure … we don’t want [the National Guard’s] time to be wasted.”

Bowser also told reporters that she had only expected Trump to announce his calling in of the National Guard, not to invoke Section 740 to take over the Metropolitan Police Department. However, she downplayed the level of control that Trump would levy over the MPD, stating that officers would continue to answer to Smith, even as Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi just very aggressively stated the opposite earlier that same morning.

“MPD reports to the chief of police, and they are subject to D.C. local laws as well as federal laws,” Bowser replied, when asked if MPD would comply with a different set of federal rules during the takeover. She also noted that she would defer to President Trump in regard to what constitutes an “emergency” situation.

“I’ll end by saying this … we know the tools that are available to the district if we have or are experiencing a surge in crime. And I put them in place before, including curfews. I’ve asked the Council to pass the emergency legislation, I’ve asked the Congress for additional funds. We’ve done all of those things. So there’s nobody here, and certainly nobody who works for me, who wants to tolerate any level of crime.”

What could have been a strong, pointed statement in the face of an authoritarian overreach was more of a timid announcement of cooperation on Bowser’s part. And while Bowser’s continued calls for D.C. statehood were all well and good, they did little to address the immediate concern that the nation’s capital—very much not experiencing a crime epidemic—will be overrun with aggressive police who only answer to Trump.

On Monday, Representative Doug LaMalfa of California became the latest Republican to face furious constituents, at an in-person town hall in Chico.

Many Republicans haven’t held such events for months—GOP leaders advised lawmakers to avoid them earlier this year—so the handful who’ve decided to break the advised embargo in recent weeks have endured fierce confrontations with their constituents.

But LaMalfa hasn’t appeared in Chico for an in-person town hall for much longer than that: Before Monday, it had reportedly been eight years since his previous one in town, as Chico City Councilmember Katie Hawley noted early in the event. At that point, LaMalfa had already been berated by the audience, including with shouts of “No fascism in America!” and “You need to be impeached!”

Hawley remarked, “If Chico City Council was a public event only once every eight years, I think we would have a room exactly like this.” She continued, “The less frequently you show up and have town halls like this, I believe that the harder it will be to facilitate the conversations.”

Throughout the event, LaMalfa faced raucous jeers, as well as tough questions and criticisms.

One resident, who identified himself as the son of Holocaust survivors, said, “People being kidnapped without arrest warrants, without trial, without recourse, by the president of the United States’s ICE armies is clear evidence of how a fascist, authoritarian government works. We are not headed toward an authoritarian fascist government; we are already there.”

Another resident called Trump’s spending plan (the so-called “one, big beautiful bill”) the “big bullshit bill” and was chastised by LaMalfa for their language. “Fuck you!” replied several in attendance.

Multiple people voiced concerns about SNAP and Medicaid cuts under the plan—with one pointing out that people in the area depend on those services to “help keep them alive.” Another common cause of concern was Israel’s war on Gaza, on which LaMalfa maintained a staunch, pro-Israel stance.

Trump’s efforts to defund PBS and NPR also elicited outrage from the attendees. LaMalfa responded to one such comment with, “Well, the people have many, many choices to receive media,” only to be met with resounding boos.

Another resident expressed concern about Trump’s tariffs. “Article 1, Section 8 talks about the power of Congress to regulate foreign trade,” he said. “It doesn’t say anything about the president unilaterally creating tariffs.”

Several in attendance also registered their worries about public education under Trump. LaMalfa, for his part, suggested that the more pressing issue regarding public schools is that they need “to be focused on what the children really need”—the so-called three R’s: reading, writing, and arithmetic—instead of on “ancillary things” like “climate change” and “LGB.”

A particularly interesting question came toward the tail end of the event, when a resident asked if LaMalfa supports the ongoing GOP attempt to gerrymander Texas in order to tilt Congress in his party’s favor. The move has led California Democrats to propose retaliatory redistricting that could possibly sound the death knell for LaMalfa’s political career.

“Texas shouldn’t be doing that,” LaMalfa said. “California shouldn’t be doing this. This is going to start a grass fire all across the country. Every single state will try to change it based on a political outcome.”

Same-sex marriage could soon be back on the Supreme Court docket.

Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed in 2015 for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, is appealing her case. Davis is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys’ fees, reported ABC News Monday.

In a petition filed last month, Davis claimed that her First Amendment rights protecting her religious freedom effectively immunized her from repercussions for denying the licenses.

“The mistake must be corrected,” Davis’s attorney Mathew Staver argued in the petition, further condemning Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges as “legal fiction.”

“This court should revisit and reverse Obergefell for the same reasons articulated in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center,” reads one titled portion, under which Staver claims that “Obergefell was wrong when it was decided and it is wrong today because it was grounded entirely on the legal fiction of substantive due process.”

Staver’s argument alluded to Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, which overturned the nationwide right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. In his 2022 opinion, Thomas argued that the court “should reconsider” its substantive due process precedents, including contraception, same-sex marriage, and even same-sex relationships.

Davis served six days in jail for refusing to issue the licenses. Her appeal marks the first time that the nation’s highest judiciary has been formally asked to reconsider the landmark decision.

“If there ever was a case of exceptional importance,” Staver wrote, “the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”

Gay marriage was effectively legalized in 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell that keeping marriage licenses from same-sex couples was discriminatory. The decision mandated that all states issue licenses to gay and lesbian couples, and required states to recognize marriages performed in other jurisdictions, as well.

Marriage equality was further protected at the federal level in 2022, when the Respect for Marriage Act became law, requiring all 50 states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. It did not, however, formally legalize gay marriage, so if the Supreme Court were to take up Davis’s case and overturn Obergefell, gay marriage rights would fall with it.

Roughly 69 percent of Americans support same-sex marriages, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. Republican support for gay couples’ equal rights has dipped in recent years, however, from a record high of 55 percent in favor of it in 2021 to 46 percent in 2024.

President Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C., was directly inspired by the homeless people he saw from his motorcade window on the way to his golf course.

“We’re having a News Conference tomorrow in the White House. I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before. The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social, attaching four pictures to his post.

Two of the photos showed a total of about 10 tents on the side of the road near a highway ramp The Guardian identified as about a mile from the White House. One picture showed a person sleeping on the steps of the American Institute of Pharmacy Building on Constitution Avenue. And another was a picture of some trash in the E Street Expressway by the Kennedy Center.

This is the route the president takes to his frequent outings to his Trump National Golf Club in Virginia.

On Monday, Trump unfortunately made good on his threat, announcing that he plans to send the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and invoke Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, a rare move granting him temporary control over the nation’s capital.

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse,” Trump told a packed room of reporters. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re gonna take our capital back. We’re taking it back. Under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States, I’m officially invoking Section 740, of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, you know what that is, and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and you’ll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that.”

While Trump spent much of the press conference focusing on what he thinks is a crime epidemic, he also emphasized his plans for D.C.’s “beautification.”

“We’re going to be removing homeless encampments from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks, which now a lot of people can’t walk on. They’ve been very, very dirty, very, a lot of problems, but we’ve already started that. We’re moving the encampments away, trying to take care of people, some of those people, we don’t know how they even got there, some of those people from different countries, different parts of the world,” Trump opined. “Nobody knows who they are. They have no idea. But they’re there getting rid of the people from underpasses and public spaces from all over the city.”

While every city in America could be cleaner, Trump’s version of “beautification” is forcibly removing homeless people so he doesn’t have to see them on his way to go play golf.

Donald Trump on Monday seemed to forget the location of his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin—once again raising concerns about the cognitive ability of the 79-year-old president.

The president had announced the summit, which will take place in Alaska, in a Truth Social post Friday. “The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska,” Trump wrote.

But on Monday, the president, twice, erroneously claimed the summit would take place in Russia. The mistake came during a press conference where Trump discussed a nonexistent crime wave in Washington, D.C. The fictitious scourge, he said, harms America’s reputation on the world stage.

“It’s embarrassing for me to be up here, you know,” the president said. “I’m going to see Putin. I’m going to Russia,” he continued, putting particular emphasis, amid otherwise soft-spoken and listless remarks, on the name of the incorrect country.

Trump repeated the error later, suggesting it wasn’t just a misstatement but a memory lapse. “It’s going to be a big thing,” the president said. “We’re going to Russia. It’s going to be a big deal.”

As Trump has grown older, he’s shown an increasing propensity for such gaffes, be that forgetting names of people, forgetting where is, or, recently, forgetting actions he took during his first term, such as appointing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell or signing a 2020 trade deal.

When Trump first announced his meeting with Putin in Alaska, critics spoke out against the choice of location, with some observing that hardline Russian nationalists have long called for Russia to retake Alaska, which the U.S. purchased in 1867.

Criticizing Trump last week for his perceived tendency to cave to Putin, commentator David Frum wrote on X, “Let’s all hope that Putin doesn’t ask to take Alaska home with him as a souvenir, or Trump might give that away too.” With Trump’s Monday slip-up, many on social media were quick to joke that the president had, in a way, accidentally done just that.

The Trump administration is deploying the National Guard to Washington over a supposed “public safety emergency”—but it can’t seem to iron out its reason for doing so.

Mere moments after the president claimed Monday that federalization of Washington’s law enforcement was warranted on the basis that the city was a crime-riddled hellscape, FBI Director Kash Patel said that wasn’t the case.

Instead, Patel boasted that the country’s homicide rate had hit an all-time low, effectively unraveling the administration’s rationale for forcing the Metropolitan Police Department and the D.C. National Guard to take over the nation’s capital.

“The murder rates are plummeting,” Patel said. “We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in U.S. history.”

Violent crime has been on the decline in D.C. since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, reported The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

But instead of relying on that data to inform whether to strip Washington of its autonomy, Trump referred Monday to outdated 2023 statistics, claiming that the city was crime-riddled and needed to be under the thumb of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“If our capital is dirty our whole country is dirty, and they don’t respect us,” Trump said.

Trump also suggested that the same fate could befall other cities around the country, though he only specified liberal hubs.

“We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then, of course, you have Baltimore and Oakland. You don’t even mention them anymore, they’re so far gone,” Trump said, before promising that Washington would be cleaned up “very quick.”

Later, when asked explicitly if other cities were next on his list, Trump said, “We’re just going to see what happens. We’re going to have tremendous success with what we’re doing.”

But what is happening in Washington should serve as a dire warning to the rest of the country that the administration will advance its agenda with or without legitimate, fact-founded reason.

“Other cities are hopefully watching this … and maybe they’ll self-clean up and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all the things that caused the problem,” Trump said.

Donald Trump’s usurpation of law enforcement in the nation’s capital carried a warning for America’s liberal bastions.

Speaking at a White House press briefing Monday morning, Trump declared a “public safety emergency,” emphasizing Washington’s supposedly startling rise in crime while citing statistics from 2023 instead of 2025.

In reaction to the outdated numbers, he announced that his administration would deploy the Metropolitan Police Department and the D.C. National Guard, handing control of police over to Attorney General Pam Bondi and leveraging the D.C. Home Rule Act to federalize the district’s law enforcement.

“We will deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence, and you will have more police. And you will be so happy,” Trump said. “We will bring in the military if it’s needed, by the way.”

But Trump also suggested that cities far beyond Washington’s region could experience the same fate.

“We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then, of course, you have Baltimore and Oakland. You don’t even mention them anymore, they’re so far gone,” Trump said, before promising that Washington would be cleaned up “very quick.”

Later, when asked explicitly if other cities were next on his list, Trump said, “We’re just going to see what happens. We’re going to have tremendous success with what we’re doing.

“Other cities are hopefully watching this … and maybe they’ll self-clean up and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all the things that caused the problem,” he continued.

“We’re going to look at New York in a little while. Let’s do this together.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Trump has stepped on states’ rights while deploying the National Guard. In June, while Los Angelenos protested the administration’s ICE raids, Trump ushered in 4,000 National Guard members, ignoring myriad objections by the state and local government.

The trial to determine whether the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes, and the Tenth Amendment is scheduled to kick off Monday in a California courtroom.

This story has been updated.

President Trump on Monday announced plans to send the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and invoke Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, giving him temporary control over the nation’s capital.

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, Bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump told a packed room of reporters. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re gonna take our capital back. We’re taking it back. Under the authorities vested in me as the President of the United States, I’m officially invoking Section 740, of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, you know what that is, and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and you’ll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that.”

This is an unprecedented  decision that may very well lead to even more extreme overreaches of police and executive power on behalf of the Trump administration. As a federal district and not a state, the Home Rule Act gives D.C. the right to elect a mayor, legislate and enforce local police, and approve the city’s budget. Trump’s decision Monday puts the local Metropolitan Police Department under federal control. Rule 740, initially designed to be used in case of an all out violent uprising, allows Trump himself to control the MPD for two days at a time. 

Meanwhile, Trump announced, 800 National Guard troops will also be sent to patrol the district.

This press conference was the culmination of days of statements from the president in which he expressed the kind of far-right takes on crime in D.C. that people tend to develop after watching hours of Fox News every night. From clearing out homeless encampments to trying 14-year-olds as adults, Trump has begun to initiate his authoritarian vision  on the grounds that crime is at an emergency level. 

“You don’t want to get mugged and raped and shot and killed. And you all know people and friends of yours that that happened.... You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something, and you don’t have that now,” Trump said. “The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on earth. Much higher.” (In reality, violence crime in D.C. has been declining since 2023.) 

Trump also expressed deep, dogwhistle-laden disdain for the city’s Black and Latino youth, who he and his cast of press conference characters all threatened to clamp down on by increasing the level of force police can use and eliminating cashless bail. 

“We have slums here. We’re getting rid of them. I know it’s not politically correct. You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we get rid of the slums where they live. Caravans of mass youth rampage through city streets at all times of the day. They’re on ATVs, motorbikes. They travel pretty well,” Trump said. “They fight back, until you knock the hell out of them. Because it’s the only language they understand.”

D.C. residents should expect an increased police presence in popular areas like Dupont Circle and Malcolm X Park, as well as in triangle parks. Homeless people, immigrants, and young people of color, whom the administration sees as “young punks,” may likely face increased harassment.  

“This is just a list of some of the people … that were removed from the D.C. streets this weekend. They were rough, rough and tough. But we’re rougher and tougher,” Trump said, holding up a piece of paper with some unclear pictures on it. “Look at this. People here … they’re not going to be your local school teacher. This guy has killed people numerous times. They’re not going to be an asset. They will never be an asset to society. I don’t care.”

This story has been updated.

The president wants to federalize law enforcement in the nation’s capital—but his favorite mainstream media channel isn’t on board.

Fox News contributor Ted Williams, a criminal and civil trial attorney and former member of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, issued an acute fact check for Donald Trump Sunday. Williams informed the network that he found Trump’s plan “troubling” because “crime is not out of control in the District of Columbia.”

“Yes there is crime, and there will always be crime,” Williams said, identifying minors as some of the major perpetrators of robberies over the last several years. “In any major metropolitan city you’re going to have, unfortunately, juveniles committing crimes.”

Trump has turned his attention toward Washington’s crime since 19-year-old DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, better known as “Big Balls,” was attacked a week ago by a couple of 15-year-olds who stole his iPhone. On Sunday, Trump said he would force the homeless out of the city “IMMEDIATELY” and that his administration would imprison criminals “very fast.”

“I would like to ask Mr. Trump,” Williams said. “Where were you last month when a three-year-old child, Honesty Cheadle, was shot and killed as the result of crime in the District of Columbia?”

“Don’t use this as a pretext to actually eradicate home rule,” he continued. “And that seemed to be what Mr. Trump is interested in.”

Trump also posted an ominous warning to Washington’s denizens early Monday, claiming that the city would be “liberated” the same day.

“Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN! The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER! I quickly fixed the Border (ZERO ILLEGALS in last 3 months!), D.C. is next!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT.”