A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The attorney general for the District of Columbia has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The lawsuit calls the use of the National Guard in the district a, quote, "illegal deployment." National Guard troops have been patrolling certain streets in Washington, D.C., for the past three weeks since the president declared what he calls a crime emergency in the city.
MARTÍNEZ: Alex Koma covers D.C. politics for member station WAMU. He joins us now. So, Alex, what is the lawsuit alleging?
ALEX KOMA, BYLINE: D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is basically calling this unconstitutional, saying that this is an improper use of the military on home soil, you know, here in the U.S. And he's drawing out this point that normally D.C., while it doesn't have control of its National Guard, can request it. And only in cases of a natural disaster, a riot, some sort of emergency. And they haven't done that here. And instead, you've got National Guard troops who aren't trained in policing patrolling the streets here in D.C. But the White House pushed back. They released a statement basically saying that the president was well within his lawful authority to deploy the guard here and called Schwalb's lawsuit an attempt to undermine the president's operation.
MARTÍNEZ: You know, I'm going to be in D.C. next week, Alex, so I'm kind of interested to see what the city looks like. But remind us why National Guard troops were deployed to D.C. in the first place.
KOMA: Well, this is all part of Trump's emphasis on crime in the city. Basically, his claim that, you know, crime is out of control here, even though the numbers, of course, show otherwise that many violent crimes are actually at historic lows. And as I said before, you know, he's the one who controls the Guard. D.C. is not a state, so there's no governor to control it. It's solely in the president's authority.
So whether or not people here think it's needed, he's got the power to send them in. And he has done so along with Guards from other states, about 2,300 of them. All part of this broader surge of federal law enforcement officers into the city, whether it's FBI, ICE, DEA, the whole alphabet soup. And, you know, many people here aren't really thrilled to see them. Many feel that it's kind of unsettling to see...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
KOMA: ...Uniformed troops on the metro. It's unsettled people. But that hasn't changed the fact that Guard officials are saying they should probably be here until at least the end of November if not longer.
MARTÍNEZ: Well, OK, so has their presence helped reduce crime?
KOMA: Well, Trump, of course, said that the city's crime-free now, but we know that's not true. The D.C. Police Department has found that crime overall has decreased. But I'd still add that the troop themselves, you know, they're not authorized to make arrests. They can merely notify police if they see a crime, or in some instances, simply call 911. So it's kind of difficult to draw any, you know, direct correlation here when a lot of times they're doing things like spreading mulch and cleaning up parks.
MARTÍNEZ: President Trump, though, has said he wants to send troops to other cities. So what could this lawsuit mean for the Guard's deployment in other cities and the deployment in D.C.?
KOMA: Well, you know, federal court will hash this out. It could send the Guard home entirely. But a complicating factor is that House Republicans are even trying to get rid of D.C.'s elected independent attorney general. And it's worth mentioning that a federal judge ruled that Trump's actions in California were illegal. So for people in places like Chicago or Baltimore, where Trump has also threatened to send the Guard in, this is something they'll be watching very closely.
MARTÍNEZ: That's WAMU's Alex Koma. Thanks a lot.
KOMA: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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