Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Sunday that 68 people were arrested overnight in Washington, D.C., as part of a federal effort to fight crime. This comes after President Trump sent the National Guard to the capital and put the police under federal control.
“Over 300 arrests in D.C. — and counting: Just last night, our federal and DC law enforcement partners made 68 arrests and seized 15 illegal firearms,” Bondi said on the social platform X. “Homicide suspects, drug traffickers, and more are being charged. I’ll continue to stand with you as we make DC safe again!”
Last week, Trump said he would take control of D.C.’s police department and send the National Guard to the city. His actions have been strongly criticized by Democrats and residents of Washington, D.C.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who recently compared the city to several foreign war zones, said on X, “graffiti is coming down in Washington, DC.”
“Graffiti left untouched to scar public spaces is the visual declaration of a society’s surrender,” Miller wrote in his Sunday post.
On Sunday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called Trump’s crackdown on the capital a “stunt.” He suggested, like other Democrats, that it is meant to distract from other news.
“What’s happening here in Washington, D.C., is just a stunt. Donald Trump didn’t like the fact that the walls were closing in on him, that his own base was questioning why he wouldn’t release the Epstein files, why he was protecting very powerful people,” Murphy told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.”
“He didn’t want to talk anymore about the fact that our health care system is about to collapse because of the cuts that they have made, that premiums are going to go up by 75 percent on Americans,” he added.
Republicans and the Trump administration, however, say the federal crackdown is needed because of high crime and murder rates in D.C. They also suggest that Democrats running cities have not handled crime well.
A White House official told The Hill’s sister network NewsNation on Sunday that Saturday night’s law enforcement operation in D.C. involved 1,800 participants. The official added that the National Guard was “not making arrests at this time.”
