With years as a prosecutor under his belt, Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey (D) is pushing back on the decision to deploy the National Guard — many from southern states with Republican governors — and continue working with them in order to quell crime in the nation’s capital.
While President Donald Trump’s 30-day deployment of the D.C. National Guard was set to expire Sept. 10, District Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) signed an executive order on Sept. 2 promising “indefinite cooperation” between Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officials and federal agencies, through December.
“Since August 11, 2025, due to the cooperative efforts between District and federal officials, violent crime in the District has noticeably decreased,” Bowser wrote in an order introducing the Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center (SBEOC). “In addition to the current federal law enforcement surge, federal law enforcement continues to independently enforce federal law.”
Ivey argued that military deployments are not a sustainable or long-term solution to crime in the nation’s capital.
“I first became a federal prosecutor here in 1990, and we had nearly 500 homicides annually during that time frame. We still have violent crime 30 years later, and a 30-day presence for the military doesn’t fix it,” he said. “We all know that: you need long-term solutions with long-term people in place, and you need intervention programs. Not people in camouflage and armored vehicles who aren’t able to take things to court or do arrests.”
While Bowser reported the National Guard’s presence has helped to lower crime in D.C. neighborhoods, the Maryland congressman praised federal and local efforts that decreased crime in recent years, which was reportedly at a 30-year low at the time Trump announced the MPD takeover.
“They have been doing an outstanding job of integrating enforcement with intervention and prevention programs,” he said. “We want to reach out to kids who are in trouble before it gets to a bad point. The Biden administration put programs in place to do just that, and one of the first things the Trump administration did was eliminate these programs.”
