Trump Holds a Press Conference Announcing the Federal Takeover of Policing in Washington, D.C., Aug. 11, 2025
August 11, 2025 · The White House · 2:10:36
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
President Donald Trump held a press conference at the White House on August 11, 2025, to announce what he called a historic action to rescue the nation’s capital from crime. “I’m officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control,” he said, “and in addition, I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, D.C.” He called the day “Liberation Day in D.C.” — “We’re taking it back.”
The President presented the capital’s crime figures as he stated them: a murder rate he said was higher than Bogotá’s or Mexico City’s — “D.C., 41 per 100,000, number one that we can find anywhere in the world” — car thefts doubled over five years, carjackings more than tripled, and 2023 murders at their highest rate in at least 25 years. He also said the administration would look into a report that a city official had been pressed to produce phony crime numbers, and contrasted the capital with the southern border, where he said crossings had run at zero for three straight months.
Why it matters
The August 11 announcement is the founding act of the D.C. federal intervention — the Section 740 invocation and Guard deployment that the rest of August’s record (the Aug. 21 thank-you visit, the Aug. 25 orders, the crime statistics briefings) carries out. It is the primary-source statement of the legal basis, the personnel, and the case the President made for taking the capital’s policing into federal hands.
Scoreboard candidate
Scoreboard candidate: the August 11, 2025 invocation of Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act placing the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control, with the National Guard deployed — a dated, checkable action flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.
Sources: The White House, “President Trump Holds a Press Conference, Aug. 11, 2025” (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President at the press conference.
On this page