President Donald Trump announced plans to wrest control of the Metropolitan Police Department and said he will dispatch 800 D.C. National Guard troops to patrol the city’s streets.

In a press conference Monday, the president — flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other administration officials — claimed the moves were necessary with Washington overrun by “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth.”

Data shows violent crime is falling, not rising, in D.C. The city’s Metropolitan Police Department reported a 30-year low in 2024 with rates dropping by an additional 26 percent in early 2025, and homicides down 12 percent year-over-year.

A White House official said the takeover is supposed to last for 30 days. White House staff secretary Will Scharf said the president signed two executive orders Monday morning, the first using a section of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to place the city’s police department under federal control, and the second allowing Hegseth to deploy the National Guard.

Trump and the secretary said the military will be called in “if needed.”

Local officials disputed the president’s characterization of crime in Washington and objected to his takeover of policing in the city. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb called Trump’s actions “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,” pledging to “do what’s necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents.”

During an interview on MSNBC Sunday, D.C Mayor Muriel Bowser said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s claims that the nation’s capital was “more violent than Baghdad” were “hyperbolic and false.”

“We’re going to keep talking to the president, working with his people on the issues that are high priority for him,” Bowser said. “Now, if the priority is to show force in an American city, we know he can do that here. But it won’t be because there’s a spike in crime.”

At the same time, the mayor acknowledged that there was a spike in crime in 2023, when D.C. recorded its highest homicide total in more than two decades and saw significant increases in carjackings and other offenses. The city has continued to grapple with youth-involved crimes, particularly armed robberies and car thefts committed by teenagers.

The District’s LGBTQ residents are protected from discrimination under the tenets of the D.C. Human Rights Act, and from bias in the criminal justice system through the Metropolitan Police Department’s LGBT Liaison Unit.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment beyond the president’s statements on the MPD when asked whether the administration is considering any action that would affect the law or MPD’s LGBTLU.

Cesar Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation, which provides housing services for homeless LGBTQ youth, told the Blade “I’m definitely concerned about the future for the LGBTQ+ community here in the District.”

“Overall, we’ve been seeing an unprecedented scale of attacks on the community from the federal government,” Toledo said. “So, an overtake of the District of Columbia, which has long been a safe haven for members of our community, is definitely concerning.” 

“This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said, adding that National Guard and law enforcement are “going to be allowed to do their job properly.”

Criminals “love to spit in the face of the police as the police are standing up there in uniform,” he said. “They’re standing and they’re screaming at him an inch away from their face, and then they start spitting in their face. And I said, ‘You tell them, you spit and we hit.’ And they can hit real hard.”

“This dire public safety crisis stems directly from the abject failures of the city’s local leadership,” the president said later during the press conference. “The radical left City Council adopted no cash bail, which has been a ‘disaster’ in ‘every place in the country’ that has enacted such a policy.

“We’re going to change the statute,” Trump promised, adding that he had spoken with Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about getting Congressional Republicans to vote in favor of re-instituting cash bail in Washington.

The effort “probably won’t get one Democrat vote, because they have no idea what they’re doing,” the president added. “That’s why they want men playing in women’s sports. That’s why they want transgender for everybody, everybody transgender, and they they just got walloped in an election, in a landslide, and they haven’t changed.”

He continued, “One thing I saw the other day, a certain gentleman who is a very well known politician, a Democrat, was fighting like hell that men should be allowed to play in women’s sports. They just don’t get it. They said it’s an 80-20 issue, and I think it’s a 97-to-three issue. And I don’t know who the three are. I’ve never heard anybody come — nobody’s ever come up to me, ‘sir, you have to let men play in women’s sports. You have to do it, sir.’ Nobody’s ever approached me. I don’t know where this issue even comes from.”

The White House, U.S. federal agencies, and Congress are honoring Pride month with a slate of official and unofficial events this year, many taking place this week.

Details for some events have not yet been announced, so this article will be updated when new information becomes available – such as details about the U.S. State Department’s Pride reception, which is expected to happen later this month.

• The U.S. Department of the Interior kicked off Pride month with a celebration on June 1, where DoI Secretary Deb Haaland raised the Progress Pride Flag alongside members of Interior’s LGBTQ community.
• Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs hosted a flag raising ceremony on June 1 at the John A. Wilson Building. The Mayor’s Office is also sponsoring a District of Pride Showcase at the Lincoln Theatre on June 29.
• On June 2, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security held a flag raising ceremony at the agency’s headquarters with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
• Speaker Emerita U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will throw out the ceremonial first pitch during the Washington Nationals Night OUT game on Tuesday, Major League Baseball’s longest-running annual Pride event. The Speaker will be honored this year for her advancement of LGBTQ civil rights throughout her career in Congress.
• The U.S. Department of Defense’s DoD Pride, an LGBTQ employee resource group for service members and DoD civilian employees, will hold its annual Pride month event on June 7 at the Pentagon.
• President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden are hosting a Pride month celebration on the South Lawn of the White House on June 8, which will feature a performance by singer-songwriter Betty Who.
• The LGBTQ Victory Fund’s June 22 Federal PAC Reception will feature LGBTQ members of Congress: U.S. Reps. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Robert Garcia (D-Calf.), and Sharice Davids (D-Kan.).
• On June 28, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff are hosting a reception in celebration of Pride at the Vice President’s residence, in collaboration with GLAAD.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Monday rejected a therapist’s request for the court to reconsider its previous decision upholding Washington State’s law protecting minors from so-called conversion therapy by licensed health professionals.

Conversion therapy is a dangerous and discredited practice that attempts to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Washington prohibited licensed mental health professionals from subjecting minors to conversion therapy in 2018, as more than 20 other states have also done.

Last September, the 9th Circuit wrote: “In relying on the body of evidence before it as well as the medical recommendations of expert organizations, the Washington Legislature rationally acted by amending its regulatory scheme for licensed health care providers to add ‘performing conversion therapy on a patient under age eighteen’ to the list of unprofessional conduct for the health professions.”

“The 9th Circuit has affirmed that states can require licensed mental health providers to comply with ethical and professional standards prohibiting the use of unnecessary, ineffective, and harmful treatments on their minor patients,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter. “These are common sense protections that unfortunately are necessary to prevent unethical therapists from defrauding parents and causing severe harm to LGBTQ youth. Every major medical and mental health organization in the country supports these laws, which are supported by decades of research and clear standards of care.”

“We applaud the 9th Circuit for permitting states to protect survivors like myself from the unethical practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ which has wreaked havoc on thousands of LGBTQ youth and their families,” said Mathew Shurka, a conversion therapy survivor and co-founder of Born Perfect. 

In 2018, Washington passed a law prohibiting state-licensed therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with a patient under 18-years-old. Every leading medical and mental health organization in the country has warned that these practices do not work and put young people at risk of serious harm, including depression, substance abuse and suicide. Twenty-five states and more than 100 localities have laws or administrative policies protecting youth from these practices or preventing the expenditure of state funds on conversion therapy.

In 2021, an anti-LGBTQ legal group filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new law on behalf of Brian Tingley, a therapist and advocate of conversion therapy.

Tingley, who is represented by the Scottsdale, Ariz.,-based anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom, identifies himself as a “Christian licensed marriage and family therapist” and alleges in the court filings that the provided definition of “conversion therapy” is “vague, content-biased and biased against one perspective or point of view.”

NCLR successfully moved to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of Equal Rights Washington, the state’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization and a primary supporter of the law during the legislative process. ERW and Washington State urged the court to uphold the law in light of the overwhelming consensus of medical and mental health professionals that conversion therapy poses a serious risk to the health and well-being of Washington’s youth. In August 2021, the federal district court for the Western District of Washington upheld the law and rejected Tingley’s challenge.

In September 2022, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, ruling that state laws protecting minors from conversion therapy by licensed health professionals are constitutional. Tingley then asked the full 9th Circuit to order the September decision to be reconsidered by a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges. Today, the court rejected that request. 

The court’s order means that the September 2022 panel decision upholding the Washington law will be the 9th Circuit’s final decision in the case.