President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to double the number of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., as part of his continued crackdown on crime and homelessness.
Currently, about 800 Guardsmen are stationed in the capital, with an additional 200 from Mississippi, 200 from South Carolina, 200 from Ohio, and 300 to 400 from West Virginia expected to join them, The Hill reported.
The expanded deployments follow Trump’s request for support from state National Guard units, a call that Republican-led states have been quick to answer.
“I’ve approved the deployment of approximately 200 Mississippi National Guard Soldiers to Washington, D.C., to support President Trump’s effort to return law and order to our nation’s capital,” Gov. Tate Reeves, R-Miss., confirmed on X.
“Crime is out of control there, and it’s clear something must be done to combat it. Americans deserve a safe capital city that we can all be proud of,” he added. “I know the brave men and women of our National Guard will do an excellent job enhancing public safety and supporting law enforcement.”
Trump initiated the federal takeover of Washington, D.C., through an executive order declaring a “crime emergency” in the city. The order placed the local police department under federal control and deployed agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, and Secret Service to patrol the streets.
Democrats continue to complain about Trump’s crime-fighting effort, and left-wing media regularly claim that statistics show crime in the nation’s capital has fallen dramatically since 2023. But they are citing faulty figures, experts have noted.
“These Democrats are citing statistics from the FBI, from its uniform crime report. And the problem with that is that they’re portraying it as if it’s a record of violent crime,” Jim Agresti, president of the nonprofit research institute Just Facts, told Fox News Digital shortly after Trump announced he was sending federal resources to the nation’s capital to confront crime in the city.
“But really what it is is a record of crimes that are reported to the police and then those of those crimes that get reported to the FBI. It’s not a full record of all violent crimes, and this is a problem. And the FBI is very explicit about this when they present the data in their formal report every year, where they say, ‘Do not directly compare the data from year to year because there are differences in how frequently people report crimes and how frequently the FBI gets that data from the local police agencies,’” he said.
The real stat to look at is the murder rate, Agresti went on. “When we look at the murder data for DC, we see that it is not a situation that is lower now than it’s been in the last 30 years. Quite the opposite,” Agresti told Fox News. “It is currently 83% higher than it was at its low point a dozen years ago. So, there is a serious problem with serious crime, violent crime in D.C., and the city now, the nation’s capital, has a murder rate that is five times the U.S. average.”