Federal Court Slaps D.C. – Trump Scores BIG Win

A unanimous federal appeals court just told Washington, D.C., that when crime spins out of control, the Constitution still expects the president to keep the capital’s streets safe.

Story Snapshot

Federal appeals court unanimously pauses an order forcing Trump to pull National Guard troops from D.C.
Judges highlight the president’s “unique power” over the federal district amid a severe crime emergency.
Violent crime drops sharply after the Guard arrives, and even D.C.’s mayor concedes the streets are safer.
The ruling draws a hard line between real public safety and ideological “defund” experiments.

The crime emergency that forced Washington to admit the obvious

Washington, D.C., did not end up with National Guard troops on its streets because things were going “mostly fine.” Years of soft-on-crime policies and the 2020 “defund-the-police” cuts hollowed out the Metropolitan Police Department just as carjackings, robberies, murders, and random assaults began to spike. City leaders slashed $15 million from MPD over warnings that it would not improve safety, and reality did what reality always does when politics collides with common sense.

By the summer of 2025, the nation’s capital had become the country’s most embarrassing evidence that fashionable slogans do not stop armed teenagers from taking your car at gunpoint. Federal workers, tourists, and residents all lived with the same basic question: can you cross town after dark without rolling the dice? When the city that houses all three branches of the federal government cannot keep its own streets under control, the issue stops being local and becomes constitutional. At that point, the Commander-in-Chief does not just have an option; he has a duty.

Trump’s deployment: what actually happened on the ground

President Trump signed an executive order in August declaring a crime emergency in the District of Columbia and deployed more than 2,300 National Guard troops from eight states plus D.C. to patrol alongside the Metropolitan Police Department. Federal agents joined them, forming a layered presence on the street. This was not Portland or Los Angeles—cities in sovereign states that rejected federal help but a federal district where the Constitution squarely gives Congress and, by delegation, the president ultimate responsibility for public order.

Guard units and MPD formed visible patrols in areas long ceded to fear. Within days, the numbers moved. By August 20, D.C. logged its first seven-day stretch without a homicide in years. Carjackings reportedly plunged by 83 percent, and murders dropped markedly over the following two months as the deployment continued. These are not think-tank hypotheticals; they are measurable outcomes. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, no friend of Trump, issued an order on September 2 acknowledging that violent crime had “noticeably decreased” due to the Guard’s presence and set up an operations center to capitalize on the gains.

The legal fight: local control vs. federal duty in a federal district

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb responded very differently. On September 4, 2025, he filed suit claiming the deployment illegally infringed on local law enforcement authority and effectively “federalized” MPD without consent. Civil liberties groups like ACLU-DC echoed that line, accusing the administration of seizing the city “under false pretenses” and dressing up a political takeover as a safety operation. Their argument leaned on federalism rhetoric that normally applies to states, even though D.C. is not a state and has never held the same constitutional status.

On November 20, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb accepted much of Schwalb’s theory and ordered the administration to withdraw the Guard. That ruling framed Trump’s move as an illegal overreach into local affairs. But as soon as the order landed, a Constitutional collision became inevitable. If the president lacks authority to shore up security in the federal district at the precise moment violent crime threatens government personnel and functions, then the framers’ plan for a capital city under federal protection collapses. The Trump administration appealed, arguing that the order both misread the law and ignored hard realities on D.C.’s streets.

Why the appeals court sided with Trump—for now, and likely for good

On December 17, 2025, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously issued a stay of Judge Cobb’s order, allowing the Guard deployment to continue at least into February 2026 while the appeal proceeds. The panel, which included Obama appointee Judge Patricia Millett, did not mince words about the president’s “unique power” and responsibility in the federal district. Unlike in states, there is no competing sovereign here; there is a city that exists to host the federal government and depends on it for ultimate security.

Trump Scores Major Court Win In Bid To Keep D.C.’s Streets Safehttps://t.co/iPVr5xFNPr

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) December 18, 2025

The judges concluded that D.C. officials had not shown any concrete, ongoing injury from the deployment that would justify pulling more than 2,300 service members off the streets after four months. They also stressed the disruption and risk that an abrupt withdrawal would create, particularly after a recent terror attack that killed a Guard member was cited in the government’s filings. Schwalb’s office insisted this is just a “preliminary ruling” and vowed to keep litigating. But the thorough 32-page opinion reads less like a reluctant pause and more like a preview of final judgment.

What this ruling signals about safety, sovereignty, and common sense

The decision does more than keep Humvees parked near the Capitol. It draws a constitutional and philosophical line in the sand. On one side stand officials and activists who view local autonomy as an absolute, even when their own policies helped fuel a crime wave and their own mayor admits the Guard made the streets safer. On the other side are judges who recognize that a capital city exists to serve the nation first—and a president who acted accordingly, backed by measurable reductions in violence.

From a conservative, common-sense perspective, the appeals court applied the standard test most Americans use every day: what works, and what aligns with the law as written, not as ideologues wish it to be. The Guard deployment has coincided with fewer murders and fewer carjackings in a city that had become a byword for lawlessness. The Constitution gives the federal government special responsibility for D.C. for exactly these moments. When theory collides with families walking safely to dinner again, the choice should not be hard.