Trump fires back as progressive report claims DC National Guard deployment failed

A year into the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration points to falling crime numbers as proof its "Safe and Beautiful" mission is working to reduce violent crime.

But the Center for American Progress, an openly progressive think tank, says the timeline tells a different story.

'Another Radical Left SCAM.'

The CAP's analysis found violent crime and murder rates were already falling sharply — 14% and 22% — across the 11 targeted cities before the first deployment. Its statistical model found no significant change tied to the deployment in Los Angeles or D.C., with the lone exception being Memphis, where an initial drop reversed within two months.

The CAP flags one caveat: The deployments overlapped with other federal and immigration enforcement surges, so the model can't isolate the Guard's effect from the others. The CAP says this fact makes the "no effect" finding more conservative, not less.

Chandler Hall, who authored the research, put it plainly on C-SPAN: "Both things can be true. Violent crime and homicides in the district absolutely are going down. ... That being said ... what our research meant to show was whether or not the deployments and the tactics the president is using to drive down crime have evidence to support their effectiveness. We find none."

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If there's anything about the Guard deployment that's actually working, Hall told NBC Washington, it's this: The visible presence may have deterred opportunistic, low-level street theft — phones, purses, crimes of convenience that a uniformed presence on a corner can spook someone out of attempting.

That's hard to square against the numbers the U.S. Marshals Service touted Monday: more than 16,000 arrests in the deployment's first year, including 35 homicide suspects, over 100 known gang members, and more than 3,200 narcotics arrests, plus nearly 2,000 firearms seized and 25 missing children recovered.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro says prosecutions are up 67% since she took the D.C. post.

The CAP's report — published under the "Advancing Racial Equity and Justice" section — calls on policymakers to "reject out of hand" the administration's public safety claims and argues the deployments' "primary goal was never to stop crime."

Trump responded to Hall by calling the CAP's research "another Radical Left SCAM," accusing its funders — including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, and several major banks and corporations — of bankrolling "this gaggle of Lunatics" and saying he intends to sue and go after some of the group's contributors.

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D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has previously acknowledged that Trump's takeover helped reduce crime — even signing an executive order encouraging cooperation with federal officials.

But marking one year since the surge began, Bowser last week called the continued Guard presence and immigration enforcement "problematic," crediting D.C.'s own Emergency Operations Center for the crime drop.

The D.C. deployment has been extended through 2029, and the administration's FY2027 budget request asks for $3 billion to "[Combat] Violent Crime in the Nation's Cities" — explicitly citing D.C. and Memphis as the model to expand nationwide.

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