Muriel Bowser: ‘I don’t think it’s legal’ for ‘National Guard to police Americans on American soil’
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) is questioning the legality of deploying the National Guard to cities across the country, objecting to an effort President Trump has described as part of a crackdown on crime.
“I don’t think it’s legal, let me start there, for the National Guard to police Americans on American soil,” Bowser said Wednesday when asked at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference in Washington about not supporting “the use of the National Guard for public safety.”
“The mission and the way we use the National Guard — unlike most states where a governor can call up the chief of his National Guard or her National Guard — in D.C., our D.C. National Guard reports to the president,” the mayor added.
“While I can request the National Guard, they are completely federally operated. And so D.C. is a little different than in other places for the D.C. National Guard,” she said.
“We use the Guard to respond to emergencies. We use the Guard for large scale events. We do not use the Guard or to police our local laws,” Bowser said.
Trump issued an executive order in August that declared a crime emergency in the nation’s capital and activated the National Guard. He has since deployed troops to several other Democratic-led cities.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court partially restored Trump’s control of the National Guard in Chicago and across Illinois, but it blocked him from being able to deploy troops there.
On Wednesday, Bowser said Washingtonians as well as people across the country should be alarmed by what the deployments mean “for our democracy.”
“We should all be concerned about the military being used because it’s a slippery slope,” she said.
“You use it for crowd control one day, or presence the next day — it’s not a long jump to using it in other ways that could interfere with the very nature of American democracy,” Bowser said.
Bowser also discussed the push for D.C. statehood, saying, “There are 700,000 Americans who don’t have a voice in Congress, and that voice could impact a larger national agenda.”
“Now it’s assumed that we would have two Democratic senators — that’s probably true — but maybe it’s not. And having those two more voices in the Senate may make a difference in how we approach war and peace in the world, who sits on the Supreme Court, who the director or secretary of this or that agency is,” she said.
Asked if it was an issue she was “advocating for actively” for in her conversations with Trump, Bowser replied to applause from the audience, “I’m actively trying to keep them out of our affairs.”