Updated August 20, 2025 at 12:14 PM AKDT
In the days since declaring a "crime emergency" in Washington, D.C., President Trump has spoken repeatedly of extending federal control over the city, even as it fights back with protests and legal challenges.
Trump took control of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and deployed D.C.'s National Guard last week after a former DOGE staffer was injured in an attempted carjacking. Trump has cited "out of control" crime, despite the fact that city data shows violent crime is at a 30-year low.
The 1973 Home Rule Act gives the president command of D.C.'s National Guard. It also allows him to use local police for federal purposes during emergencies — but only for up to 30 days without authorization from Congress, which is on recess until early September.
"We're going to do this very quickly, but we're going to want extensions," Trump told reporters last Wednesday, referring to MPD control.
That has left many in D.C. wondering: How long can Trump's law enforcement takeover last?
"That is actually a question that we don't really have an answer to, because there is very little case law about the proper uses of the D.C. National Guard or about the authority that the president is relying on to invite other states to send their National Guard forces into D.C.," says Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
No other president has taken control of the MPD since the passage of the Home Rule Act. And while there are no clear time limits on his use of the D.C. National Guard, previous deployments — including responding to civil rights protests in 1968 and 2020 — have addressed more specific crises.
Trump's focus on crime, in contrast, seems much broader and more politically motivated, says Goitein, noting that the president has suggested other Democratic-run cities, like New York and Chicago, could be next.
"It just seems like this is a flexing of federal muscle to intimidate jurisdictions across the country," she says. "And so it's not clear what could bring this to an end, other than intervention by the courts, by Congress or overwhelming public disapproval."
Last week, after D.C.'s attorney general sued the Trump administration to block its police takeover, a federal judge effectively halted its plan to replace D.C.'s police chief.
But the federal government has oversight over local police for now. And hundreds of National Guard members, some armed, are patrolling the city, with more on the way. The Republican governors of at least six other states say they are sending their own National Guard troops to the nation's capital — raising questions about what they will do and how long they will stay.
"If crime is already down, then at what point do they say, 'Mission accomplished'?" says Meryl Chertoff, an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. "Or is the mission going to last endlessly because you're never going to drive crime down to zero?"
The White House declined to answer questions about its timeline for withdrawing National Guard troops from D.C., telling NPR on Monday: "We wouldn't get ahead of any potential announcements from POTUS."
Chertoff says the fact that Trump is already talking about extending his control over MPD, and inviting governors of other states to deploy their National Guard troops, suggests he is not making his decisions based on data.
"If the president were really serious about this as law enforcement, as opposed to intimidation or provocation of people who live in D.C., he would wait to see whether the current activation was enough to solve the problem which he says exists in D.C.," she adds.
What are the limits on Trump's use of D.C. police?
Section 740 of the Home Rule Act allows the president to temporarily use D.C. police if he determines that "special conditions of an emergency nature exist which require the use of the Metropolitan Police force for Federal purposes."
He can only do so for 30 days, at which point the House and Senate would need to pass a joint resolution authorizing an extension. Trump's Aug. 11 executive order declared such an emergency and requested the services of the police "for the maximum period permitted."
That initial window would run through Sept. 10, unless Trump ends it sooner. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week that "we will reevaluate and reassess and make further decisions after this 30-day period is up."
Mere days later, Trump himself said his administration would ask for "long-term extensions."
"I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously," he added.
Indeed, many Republican lawmakers — including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune — have complained of crime in D.C. and embraced Trump's efforts to address it.
"Give Trump a third term, give him a Peace Prize, and let him run D.C. as long as he wants," Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., tweeted Friday, despite the fact that the Constitution limits presidents to two elected terms.
Many Democrats — both in Congress and in local government — strongly oppose Trump's takeover, painting it as a threat to democracy in D.C. and beyond.
Last week, several House Democrats introduced a resolution that would terminate Trump's federalization of the MPD. Home rule allows Congress to end the president's control of local police through a joint resolution, though it would face an uphill battle in a Republican-controlled Congress.
Legal challenges pose a more likely obstacle to Trump's takeover, as was the case last week. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the U.S. Justice Department to block what he called a "hostile takeover" after it tried to put a federal official in charge of the MPD.
At an emergency hearing on Friday, Judge Ana Reyes — appointed by former President Joe Biden — suggested she would grant Schwalb's request unless the Justice Department rewrote its memo to leave the existing police chief in charge. She indicated she will hold another hearing on the broader legal questions this week.
"I still do not understand on what basis the president … can say, 'You, police department, can't do anything unless I say you can,' " Reyes said, according to reporting from Politico, USA Today and others. "That cannot be the reading of the statute."
What would need to happen for the National Guard to leave?
Home Rule gives the president command of the D.C. National Guard, a power that goes to governors in other states. It does not limit how long the Guard can be deployed.
Experts say there are a few ways that the Guard's time in D.C. could come to an end.
Lawsuits are one of them. Goitein, of the Brennan Center, says they would likely center around the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which largely limits the military's role in domestic law enforcement — and has several potential loopholes.
"President Trump is trying to exploit a couple of those loopholes," she says. "And we don't know yet whether the courts are going to endorse what he's doing."
For example, she says the administration might argue the D.C. National Guard is operating under non-federal status (despite being under the president's command), which would make it exempt from Posse Comitatus. Or it could argue that the National Guard is not directly involved in law enforcement in D.C. (The Army said last week that guard members will not conduct arrests, but serve as a "visible crime deterrent.")
Chertoff says that as long as Reyes has jurisdiction over the police case, D.C.'s attorney general could theoretically go back and "ask for additional rulings with respect to the use of the National Guard." While it has "limited cards to play," she says the influx of troops from states could lend support to a potential abuse-of-power argument.
There are also more practical considerations. For example, National Guard forces are at the forefront of responding to natural disasters, and could be needed more urgently at home during Atlantic hurricane season.
When South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced the deployment of 200 troops to D.C. on Saturday, with Hurricane Erin approaching the East Coast, he said, "should a hurricane or natural disaster threaten our state, these men and women can and will be immediately recalled home to respond."
Goitein says there's also the power of public opinion, citing videos of masked agents conducting operations going viral and disruptions to local businesses; Data from online dining platform OpenTable showed a 25% drop in D.C. restaurant reservations in the days after Trump's takeover.
She says the public response, from protests to polling, could potentially shape Trump's decisions.
"As it becomes increasingly clear that D.C. is essentially under military occupation and that what's happening here, if replicated elsewhere, basically is moving this country toward a police state, that can move public opinion," Goitein says. "And public opinion can move the president."
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