Members of the National Guard were stationed before the Union Station in Washington, August 18, 2025 (photo of Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
On Thursday, the Prosecutor General Prosecutor General of the District of Colombia sued Trump’s administration for the continuous presence of national guard soldiers in the capital of the country, arguing that the distribution is a military occupation, which violates the District’s right to self -government.
DC DC and DC branches and units by the President of DC Trump United States It violates the provisions against the exploit of the army for national law enforcement agencies and federal law of 1973, allowing the district to rule the DC, DC Brian L. Schwalb wrote complaint in a federal court in a district.
“No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subject to military occupation,” says the complaint, adding that “command and control over Trump’s national guard units, when they are the status of state militia, violates the constitution and federal law.”
Administration activities that Trump characterized as an attempt to control crime in the city, “disregard the act on Posse Comitatus”, nineteenth-century law and other sections of federal law, which “record a fundamental ban on the nation regarding the participation of military forces in the national authority of the law of absence in the most extreme executions, such as invasion or collection.”
“The accused established a mass, seemingly unspecified operation of law enforcement agencies in a district subject to direct military command. The danger that such an operation is individual freedom and democratic rules is obvious,” the complaint said.
Despite Tuesday morning a ruling from a federal judge In California, which called the exploit of military personnel by Trump for law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles, the president continued to study the further exploit of guard units in the field of preventing crime in other American cities.
The lawsuit asks the American district judge Jia Cobb to block the administration before the further exploit of national guard soldiers for law enforcement and blocking the national guard soldiers in the district.
A spokesman for the White House did not return the news about the commentary on Thursday.
Detachables of guards outside the state
Louisiana, southern Dakota, Ohio, Western Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Karolina are the states of military presence in a suit.
According to the complaint, Republican Governors of the states responded to Trump’s requests to send guards.
But Trump did not federalize any of the units of the National Guard of the State Patrolling District, which means that they remain legally under the command of their governors and cannot enter another state or circle without the request of the governor or mayor of Washington, in accordance with the claim.
At the end of last month, the Schwalba office sent letters to the leaders of the states that arranged troops in the district, asking for information “regarding the actual and legal basis” of their decision to send soldiers.
Only Tennessee replied and offered only circumscribed information, as the complaint said.
Although legally under the control of their governors, the lawsuit claims that soldiers outside the state are in practice under the control of Trump and the US Department of Defense.
Police and military separation tested by Trump
As President Trump, he controls the DC National Guard. However, he cannot exploit its members for national law enforcement agencies pursuant to the Act on Posse Comitatus, as the complaint said.
DC and the branches of the National Guard from outside the state are doing this, as the complaint said.
American marshals, a federal law enforcement agency, replaced at least some soldiers in the district. Soldiers, armed with official weapons, patrolled the streets of Dystryt, including residential areas, a complaint said.
“These are law enforcement agencies,” said the lawsuit.
While the 9th American Court of Appeal ruled this year that Trump has a wide power to federalize the soldiers of the National Guard – even in connection with the governor’s objection – US regional judge Charles R. Breyer said this week that the army still cannot get involved in the activities of law enforcement agencies.
Trump, who was thinking about sending soldiers to other cities, including Chicago, Baltimore and Nowy Orleans, testing the legal limits of the guard’s ability to aid police forces, said the professor of the Houston University Center, Christopher Mirasola in an interview this week before the Colombia district.
While Mirasola said that although the principle of American democracy, separating the army from law enforcement agencies, is more ruled by standards than laws, giving administration to at least try to extend what was considered permissible.
“The administration shifts the boundaries of every existing legal theory that is available to national military distribution,” he said. “This is absolutely corrosion for our democracy, because I think that there is the potential of a real change in how we think about the role of the army in our national matters.”
