The Justice Department delivered a sharp rebuke to the D.C. Council this week after council members sent letters to 20 governors requesting the withdrawal of National Guard troops from Washington by September 1, 2026. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald called the effort “impotent theatrics not worth the paper it’s written on” and told the council it has no authority to make such demands.
The clash pits the District’s elected legislature against the Trump administration’s year-old public safety initiative, and it comes as the mother of a Capitol Hill intern killed in the city last summer publicly backed the Guard’s continued presence, saying the deployment is “working.”
McDonald’s letter, first reported by Fox News Digital, did not hold back. He accused the council of “callousness” toward its own constituents and credited the National Guard and the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force with driving historic reductions in violent crime since the initiative launched on August 11, 2025.
In late July, D.C. Council members co-signed identical letters to the governors of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The office of Councilmember At-Large Robert White confirmed the details.
The letters opened with a direct request:
“We write as elected officials representing the District of Columbia to respectfully request that you withdraw all troops currently deployed to the District by September 1, 2026.”
The council argued that roughly 5,148 Guard personnel remain stationed in the District “under the premise that an extraordinary military presence was necessary to address public safety.” Their letters cited analysis finding “only a modest decrease in property crime and no measurable reduction in violent crime attributable to the Guard’s presence since August 2025.” They pointed to a Congressional Budget Office figure pegging the deployment’s cost at more than $3 million per day, a tab that could run “in the billions, if maintained for years at its expanded scale.”
The council also invoked the cost-of-living squeeze facing families nationwide. Their letter stated that “at a time where families in each of the states and across the country are struggling with the cost of groceries, housing, health care, and other necessities, wasting those resources on an ineffective, indefinite deployment that neither District residents nor officials asked for is disrespectful to American taxpayers.”
The letters characterized the Guard members as “outside military forces”, a phrase McDonald seized on in his response.
“While you slander these men and women as ‘outside military forces,’ I refer to them as true American heroes.”
That framing captures the broader fault line. The council frames the deployment as an unwanted federal occupation draining taxpayer resources with no measurable benefit. The Justice Department frames it as a life-saving intervention that the council refuses to acknowledge because acknowledging it would mean crediting the administration that ordered it.
McDonald opened his response by noting that the council’s letter “feigns ignorance of the historic public safety strides made in our Nation’s capital since August 11, 2025.” He then laid out the administration’s case in blunt terms, citing “thousands of arrests,” the recovery of “substantial numbers of illegal firearms,” and the location of “lost and missing children.”
He also pointed to the Guard’s medical interventions, stating that National Guard personnel have “personally intervened in numerous assaults and provided medical aid on innumerable occasions, including repeatedly administering life-saving NARCAN to citizens in peril.”
The political context in the District has only sharpened in recent months. A self-described socialist won the D.C. mayoral primary earlier this year, all but guaranteeing further friction between the city’s incoming leadership and the Trump White House.
McDonald’s most pointed passage left no room for diplomatic ambiguity:
“Let me be clear, your council has no power to demand that governors remove their brave men and women from serving in uniform in our Nation’s capital. Your politically-motivated letter is impotent theatrics not worth the paper it’s written on, and D.C. is a much safer place no matter what you say.”
He closed by urging the council to “withdraw your letters and dedicate your remaining time in public service to correcting D.C.’s laws to ensure criminals are punished and the public is protected, not the other way around.”
FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital this week that “homicides in D.C. are down an incredible 44% from last year.” That figure, if accurate, represents a dramatic shift for a city that had struggled with violent crime for years before the Task Force’s arrival.
The D.C. Council’s letters did not dispute the homicide numbers directly. Instead, they drew a narrower conclusion: that there was “no measurable reduction in violent crime attributable to the Guard’s presence.” The distinction matters. The council appears to argue that the decline would have happened regardless of the Guard, a claim the letters do not substantiate with competing data or methodology.
Neither side published the underlying analysis. The council did not name the source of its “analysis.” Patel cited the 44% figure without pointing to a specific FBI report. And the CBO cost estimate of $3 million per day, cited as coming from a “nonpartisan” source, was not linked to a published CBO document in the council’s letters.
The result is a dispute in which both sides make sweeping claims and neither fully shows its work. But the raw trajectory, a 44% drop in homicides, is a hard number for the council to talk around, which may explain why the letters focused on “violent crime attributable to the Guard” rather than on the overall trend.
The pattern of local Democratic officials resisting federal enforcement actions extends well beyond the District. In nearby Montgomery County, Maryland, the county council recently approved sweeping concealed carry bans and ghost gun restrictions on a lopsided 10-1 vote, another example of progressive local governments moving aggressively on public safety policy in ways that clash with the administration’s approach.
Tamara Jachym, the mother of a Capitol Hill intern killed in Washington last summer, has publicly backed the Guard’s continued presence. Fox News Digital placed her support at the center of its reporting, though the article did not include an extended direct quote from Jachym beyond the characterization that she believes the deployment is “working.”
Her voice matters precisely because the D.C. Council’s letters claim to speak for the people who live in the District. Jachym is a reminder that the people most affected by violent crime, the families who have buried someone, may see the Guard very differently than the elected officials drafting letters to governors in other states.
The DOJ posted its response on X through the official Justice Department account, stating: “This Department of Justice will not stand for these politically motivated demands.” The post added that the department would “continue standing with @POTUS and the Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to deliver historic results for the community.”
The council’s letters pegged their withdrawal request to September 1, 2026, the day after the conclusion of America 250 celebrations, which the council acknowledged “present significant public safety and logistical challenges.” The letters expressed gratitude to Guard members who supported the capital during “this exceptionally busy period” but asked that they “be permitted to return home to their families, careers and communities, rather than remain indefinitely assigned to a costly mission.”
McDonald made clear the administration has no intention of complying. His letter told the council that “because you refuse to speak the truth about the life-preserving work of the Task Force, the truth will speak for itself.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to D.C. Council representatives for comment but noted no response. The silence is worth marking. The council was willing to send letters to 20 governors but, at least as of publication, was not willing to answer questions from the press about the DOJ’s rebuttal.
The Trump administration has shown a consistent willingness to use executive authority to reshape the federal landscape, from clearing out the Election Assistance Commission to deploying the National Guard in the capital. Whether one views these moves as overreach or overdue depends largely on whether one trusts the institutions that existed before them to do the job.
The D.C. Council’s argument boils down to cost and jurisdiction. The DOJ’s argument boils down to results. A 44% drop in homicides is not a talking point. It is the difference between people who are alive today and people who would not be.
Progressive officials across the country, from Massachusetts to the District of Columbia, have made a habit of prioritizing ideological positioning over measurable outcomes. The D.C. Council’s letters fit that pattern neatly: long on grievance, short on alternative solutions, and silent on the families who no longer have to bury their children.
When the people who write the letters don’t have to live with the consequences, the letters come easy. It’s the people who do live with the consequences, people like Tamara Jachym, who deserve the last word.
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