President Trump’s decision to deploy hundreds of National Guards to Washington has put California officials on high alert, with concerns that he intends to activate federal forces in the Bay Area and Southern California, especially during the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Trump said he used the National Guard with the crime strike to expand to other cities and suggested that local police could not do the job.
Legal experts say deploying troops in the absence of major crises, such as civil strife or natural disasters, is very unusual and disturbing. Experts say Washington’s deployment is another example of Trump’s search to use the military for domestic efforts, similar to his decision to send the National Guard to Los Angeles in June, which sparked protests.
Washington has been in a long battle for crime, but has dropped significantly in recent years.
Officials in Oakland and Los Angeles (two cities mentioned by the president) have slammed Trump’s comments on city crime. Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said in a statement that the president’s characteristics are not actually rooted, but rather “ratify cheap political views based on fear.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass calls it “performance” and “stunt.”
Trump said he would consider deploying the military to Los Angeles to protect the 2028 Olympics. This month, he signed an executive order to appoint him as president of the White House contingent for the Los Angeles Olympics.
The White House has not yet made clear what role Trump will play in the security arrangements.
Los Angeles City Councilman Imelda Padilla, sitting in the city group that runs the Olympics, admitted last week that the city was “a bit nervous” about federal government plans to secure events.
Congress recently approved $1 billion in gaming security and plans. Representatives of the Department of Homeland Security refused to explain to the Times how funds were used.
Padilla said her focus was based on the unpredictable nature of the government and the recent use of masks, armed agents rounding up people in the Home Depot parking lot and car washrooms.
“Everything we see in the raids is the real curve ball of our city,” Padilla said at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum event. It handles the “real curve ball” [efforts] Focus on things people care about, such as homelessness, like transportation… economic development,” she said.
The bass appeared on CNN this week, and he said it was “completely appropriate” to use the National Guard during the Olympics. She said the city expects “When we have over 200 countries here, the federal response means governors in more than 200 countries. Of course, you will be involved in the military. It’s routine.”
But the bass makes a difference between LA Olympics security and what she calls “political stunts,” she said, adding that Trump introduced the National Guard and the U.S. Marine Corps after protesting the federal government’s immigration crackdown. The deployment faces ongoing legal challenges, with the appeals court ruling that Trump has legal authority to send the National Guard.
“At that time, I believed, now I believed Los Angeles was a test case, and I think DC was a test case,” Bass said. “To say, well, we can take over your city at any time, and I’m the commander-in-chief and I can use the troops anytime, anywhere.”
On Monday, Trump linked his actions to a topic familiar to him: the perceived urban decline.
“You look at Chicago, how bad it is, look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other very bad cities. New York has problems. Then, of course, you have Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore – so far, they’ve gone,” he said. “We’re not going to let it happen. We’re not going to lose the city for it.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said officials and agents deployed in the District of Columbia have been arrested so far, including homicide, intentional distribution of narcotics, Lewd Acts, reckless driving, evading driving, evading fares and crimes without permission. She said she caught six illegal pistols.
Experts say crime is a reason to deploy the National Guard without the support of the state governor. The National Guard has been deployed to Southern California, especially after George Floyd’s 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 1992 during the riots and civil unrest in Los Angeles.
“It will be terrible because he will obviously violate his legal institutions, and there is no doubt that the mayor of Los Angeles and Oakland will sue him again,” said William Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University. “Citizens in these cities will work together. They will shock soldiers to patrol the streets.”
The District of Columbia has no control over its National Guard, which provides the president with a wide range of latitudes to deploy these forces. In California and other states, the National Guard is headed by the governor, with legal restrictions on how to use federal forces.
The POSSE COMITATUS Act was passed in 1878 after the end of reconstruction, largely prohibiting federal forces from being used in civilian law enforcement. The law reflects a tradition that dates back to the age of revolutionary wars that sees military intervention as a threat to liberty and democracy.
“We have such a strong tradition that we don’t use the military to enforce domestically, which is a characteristic of an authoritarian state to use the military in this way,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley School of Law at UC Berkeley. “This has never been the case in the United States, and many people care about how President Trump acts in the way he or she ruled.”
Whether federal immigration attacks that violate the POSSE COMITATUS Act were used in domestic law enforcement forces in federal immigration attacks this week in federal court in San Francisco.
Banks said that if Trump was to send troops to California, the only legal leverage he could pull was to declare an uprising and invoke the Uprising Act.
Unlike Trump in Washington, Trump will not be able to be in federal police departments in other parts of the country. Northern California Sheriff’s Deputy Sheriff and Legal Counsel Ed Obayashi said in some cases the federal government has placed the department under the consent ordinance, a reform tool for institutions engaged in illegal practices — but in this case the government allegedly allegedly violated certain civil rights acts.
“You won’t be able to come in and take over because you say the crime is rising in a particular place,” he said.
Oakland MP Ken Houston, a third-generation resident elected in 2024, said his city does not need federal help in public safety.
Oakland has been fighting crime for years, but Houston cites progress. According to city data, violent crimes including homicides, aggravated assaults, rape and robbery have fallen by 29% so far this year compared to the same period in 2024. Real estate crimes including theft, motor vehicle theft and theft are also trending down, according to city data.
“He wants old numbers, he put forward a little bit,” Houston said of Trump. “Oakland doesn’t need the National Guard.”
Times worker Noah Goldberg contributed to the report.
