When President Trump announced his plans to mobilize Washington, D.C.'s National Guard and take control of its local police force, he suggested that other liberal-leaning cities could be next.
"You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is," Trump said Monday. "We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore, they're so far gone. … We're not going to lose our cities over this, and this will go further."
The mayors of those cities — all of whom are Black and Democrats — have pushed back against Trump in recent days, pointing to data that shows crime is down in their communities.
"I think it's very notable that each and every one of the cities called out by the president has a Black mayor, and most of those cities are seeing historic lows in violent crime," Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN. "The president could learn from us instead of throwing things at us."
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have declared they will not allow federal law enforcement to take over their cities.
"We're not going to allow a military occupation of the city," Lee told ABC7. "This is part of [Trump's] effort to dismantle democracy, to militarize cities where people live which he does not recognize, understand or see."
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says Trump doesn't have the authority to federalize local law enforcement in the first place.
"He is provoking on sending federal troops, the National Guard, into cities to plunder them, though those entities do not have policing power," Johnson said. "They can't even do the very thing that he claims that he wants them to do."
Legal experts agree. Rick Hills, a professor of law at NYU Law School, told NPR that Trump "cannot repeat what he's doing in any other cities" — but talking about it scores political points for both sides.
"Just as Trump, for public relations reasons, likes to make a big noise about taking over cities, so too mayors in blue cities like to make a big noise about resisting Trump," Hills says. "Both are vote-getters for their respective constituencies."
White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers told NPR over email that all of the cities Trump mentioned "are considered to be some of the most dangerous cities in America."
"So, instead of criticizing the President's actions to Make DC Safe Again, Democrat-run cities plagued by violent crime should focus on cleaning up their own streets," Rogers added. "This is why Democrats continue to be so unpopular among everyday Americans — they think the President of the United States cracking down on crime in our nation's capital is a bad thing."
While most elected officials in D.C. have been publicly critical of Trump's law enforcement takeover of their city, there are some leaders and locals who have embraced it or been more restrained in their criticism.
While D.C. is unique, civil rights groups warn of a broader threat
Trump has a lot more power over D.C. than he does over other cities.
That's because D.C. is a "federally created and controlled city," Hills explains. The 1973 Home Rule Act gave D.C. its limited form of self-governance while retaining certain powers for Congress and the president.
Among them, the president controls D.C.'s National Guard and can use the D.C. police force for "federal purposes" if he determines there are "special conditions of an emergency nature," though he needs authorization from Congress to do so for more than 30 days.
That's not the case anywhere else in the country, Hills says.
"Other cities are the creatures of state law, and there's a longstanding constitutional doctrine of state autonomy that bars the commandeering of state enforcement personnel for federal purposes," he explains.
For instance, governors have control over their state guards. But presidents can federalize state guards in an emergency, as Trump did when he deployed the National Guard to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles in June — a controversial move whose legality is now being tested in federal court.
Civil rights groups warn that Trump's long-running threats to federalize D.C. could have implications far beyond the nation's capital, even if the administration's playbook varies between states.
Maya Wiley, the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement that Trump's actions in D.C. are "another beta test for nationwide authoritarian control." Monica Hopkins, the executive director of the ACLU of DC, called it "a threat that should concern everyone across the country."
"Congress and the president target D.C. because they can sort of take a stand here," Hopkins told NPR just before Trump's Monday announcement. "But it really is a testing ground for what they might attempt in any other jurisdiction."
All of the mayors Trump targeted are Black
As in D.C., the mayors of Baltimore, New York, Oakland, Los Angeles and Chicago are all Black, which Trump's critics see as no coincidence.
In her statement criticizing Trump's "hostile takeover" in D.C., Wiley accused the administration of "scapegoating Black and Brown people," noting that they make up a large share of the city's population.
Savannah, Ga., Mayor Van R. Johnson II, the president of the African American Mayors Association (AAMA), said in a statement that D.C. and other cities across the country have made progress in public safety, thanks to collaboration between mayors, police and community members.
"While challenges remain, the portrayal of widespread unrest does not align with the reality on the ground and risks distracting from the real work being done to keep our neighborhoods safe," Johnson said.
Crime is down in the cities Trump mentioned
Trump cited "out of control" crime as the basis for his actions in D.C., even though violent crime reached a 30-year-low in 2024 and is down 26% from this time last year, according to data from D.C.'s Metropolitan Police.
"Now, if the priority is to show force in an American city, we know he can do that here," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told MSNBC over the weekend. "But it won't be because there's a spike in crime."
The mayors of the other cities on Trump's list say their crime rates have dropped as well.
In Baltimore, for example, Scott said homicides are down 28% this year, the lowest level of any year on record. Additionally, local police data confirms that violent crime is down 17% from this time last year and property crimes are down 13%.
"When it comes to public safety in Baltimore, [Trump] should turn off the right-wing propaganda and look at the facts," Scott said. "Baltimore is the safest it's been in over 50 years."
In California, Lee said overall crime in Oakland is down 28% from last year, while a Los Angeles Police Department report released in July said the city is on pace for its lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years.
LA Mayor Karen Bass acknowledged that even though statistics show an improvement, it's also true that people may not feel safe all the time — but said sending in federal law enforcement is not the way to solve that.
"You do other things to help make them feel safe," she told CNN. "You don't use the military to help people feel better."
Mayors say they would welcome federal help with violence prevention
While mayors are stressing that crime is under control, many of them say there is more the federal government can do to help — just not in the way Trump is suggesting.
In Chicago, where police data shows that the crime rate has gone down by 15% compared to 2023, Johnson hailed the city's "historic progress," saying it drove down homicides by more than 30% in two years and reduced shootings by almost 40% in the last year.
At the same time, he said he learned last week that Trump cut $158 million in funding for violence prevention programs in cities including Chicago. He noted how earlier this year the Trump administration dismantled the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and terminated more than $800 million in grants for violence prevention programs across the country.
"If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence," he wrote.
Adams in New York says what's needed is federal gun control legislation, not National Guard intervention. After telling reporters that homicides and shootings are down, as are "all the major crime categories" in the subway system, he acknowledged the city is still reeling from a shooting at a Midtown Manhattan office building that killed four people.
The shooter was legally able to buy and bring an automatic weapon across the country despite known mental health issues, Adams said, "so there is some assistance we can get from the federal government."
Johnson, the AAMA president, told CNN that mayors across the country want to partner with the federal government to address issues such as human, drug and gun trafficking, including sharing best practices and funding. But that's not what's happening now, he said.
"This is certainly not a partnership as we would see it, this is something totally different," he added.
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