Trump sending federal troops to control D.C.

Saying 'bloodthirsty criminals' have taken over the city, he uses same tactics as in L.A.

- JENNY JARVIE, MICHAEL WILNER AND SONJA SHARP

PRESIDENT Trump takes questions from the media after announcing plans to deploy 800 National Guard troops in Washington.

In an expansion of tactics started in June during immigration raids in Los Angeles, President Trump on Monday announced he would take federal control of Washington's police department and activate 800 National Guard troops in the nation's capital to help "reestablish law and order.

"Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people," Trump said at the White House.

"This is liberation day in D.C.," he declared.

Trump, who sent roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June in a move that was opposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, issued an executive order declaring a public safety emergency in D.C. The order invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that places the Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control.

The California governor decried Trump's move in D.C., warning that what happened in L.A. was now taking place across the country.

"He was just getting warmed up in Los Angeles," Newsom said on X. "He will gaslight his way into militarizing any city he wants in America. This is what dictators do."

In his briefing, Trump painted D.C. in dark, apocalyptic terms as a grimy hellhole "of crime, bloodshed, bedlam, squalor and worse." He said he planned to get tough, citing his administration's stringent enforcement on the nation's southern border.

Already, Trump said, his administration has begun to remove homeless people from encampments across the city, and he said he planned to target undocumented immigrants, too. He vowed to "restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be."