On Thursday, November 20, 2025, a federal judge delivered a significant blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to deploy National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., declaring the move unlawful and a violation of the District’s right to self-governance. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—has reverberated through the nation’s capital and beyond, setting off a fresh round of debate over presidential authority, local autonomy, and the appropriate use of military forces on American streets.
Judge Cobb’s decision comes after months of escalating tensions between the Trump administration and D.C. officials. In early August, President Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the city, announcing a plan to take over the D.C. police department and send in more than 2,000 National Guard troops. The deployment, which included troops from the District’s own National Guard and from nine Republican-led states—South Carolina, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, and South Dakota—was pitched by the White House as a necessary step to curb rising crime and protect federal assets.
But the city’s leaders saw things very differently. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb quickly filed suit in September, arguing the deployment undermined the District’s autonomy, threatened public safety by inflaming tensions, and hurt the local economy. According to NPR, Schwalb’s lawsuit asserted, “From the beginning, we made clear that the U.S. military should not be policing American citizens on American soil.” In a statement following the judge’s ruling, Schwalb described the decision as “a victory for DC, Home Rule and American democracy.” He added, “It is long past time to let the National Guard go home – to their everyday lives, their regular jobs, their families, and their children.”
Judge Cobb’s 52-page opinion left little doubt about where the court stood. She ruled that the Pentagon’s deployment of National Guard members for “non-military, crime-deterrence missions” and the call-up of out-of-state troops likely exceeded federal authority and violated the law. “At its core, Congress has given the District rights to govern itself,” Cobb wrote, as reported by The Hill. “Those rights are infringed upon when Defendants approve, in excess of their statutory authority, the deployment of National Guard troops to the District.”
The judge was particularly critical of the administration’s reliance on Title 32 of the U.S. Code, which allows for federal funding of National Guard deployments while keeping troops under the command of state governors. In this case, however, Cobb found that the administration had “usurped” the city’s sovereign powers under the Home Rule Act—the law that governs the District’s control over its local affairs. “The Court finds that the District’s exercise of sovereign powers within its jurisdiction is irreparably harmed by Defendants’ actions in deploying the Guards,” she wrote, as cited by Democracy Docket.
One of the more striking aspects of the ruling was Cobb’s rejection of the administration’s claim that the president has broad constitutional authority to deploy the D.C. National Guard for crime deterrence. “The president has no free-floating Article II power to deploy the (D.C. National Guard) for the deterrence of crime,” Cobb stated. She also emphasized that the deployment’s sheer scale—more than 2,000 troops, roughly two-thirds the size of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department—posed a risk of becoming a permanent or at least enduring presence, which would run contrary to the statutes that govern the Guard’s use.
For the Trump administration, the ruling was met with defiance. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson insisted, “President Trump is well within his lawful authority to deploy the National Guard in Washington, DC, to protect federal assets and assist law enforcement with specific tasks.” She dismissed the lawsuit as “nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of DC residents — to undermine the President’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in DC.” The administration has maintained that the National Guard’s presence has provided a much-needed deterrent to crime and helped stabilize the city.
Yet, as CNN and NPR reported, local Democratic leaders have repeatedly refuted the administration’s claims of a “crime emergency,” arguing that the deployment has done more to stir tensions than to improve safety. Guard personnel, they noted, have often been tasked with routine patrols and even beautification efforts like clearing trash and pruning trees—hardly the stuff of urgent crime-fighting missions.
The legal battle over the National Guard’s role in D.C. is part of a broader national conflict over the Trump administration’s use of federal forces in American cities. Similar deployments in Chicago, Portland, and Memphis have faced court challenges, with judges in Oregon and Tennessee recently blocking or ordering the withdrawal of troops. In each case, the core issue has been the same: whether the president can override local authorities and use the military as a tool of domestic law enforcement without clear statutory backing or local consent.
Judge Cobb’s ruling also highlighted the unique constitutional position of the District of Columbia. Unlike states, D.C. does not have full self-governance under the Constitution, but Congress has granted the District certain home rule powers. Cobb’s opinion made clear that these powers must be respected, writing, “Congress would not bury such an expansive authority—in their view, a more flexible version of Title 10—in a subsection of a statute in a chapter focused on training.”
For now, the judge has paused her order until December 11, 2025, giving the Trump administration time to appeal. That means the more than 2,000 National Guard troops—many from out of state—will remain in the city for at least a few more weeks. But the legal reasoning behind the decision stands, and it sends a clear signal to the administration and to other cities facing similar deployments.
As the Supreme Court prepares to weigh in on a related case involving troop deployments in Chicago, the stakes could hardly be higher. The outcome will likely shape the limits of presidential power, the future of local self-government, and the delicate balance between security and civil liberties in America’s cities.
In the meantime, Washington, D.C. finds itself at the center of a legal and political storm—one that raises fundamental questions about who gets to decide how a city is governed, and whether the military should ever be used to police American streets. For many in the District, the hope is that the courts will continue to uphold the principle that local communities, not distant officials, should have the final say over their own affairs.
