President Donald Trump has placed Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and ordered National Guard troops onto the streets of the U.S. capital, saying the measures are needed to confront what he called an urgent public-safety crisis. Announcing the move late Monday, the president vowed a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.” Guard units began reporting to district headquarters on Tuesday. District officials disputed the basis for the emergency declaration. Mayor Muriel Bowser called the takeover “unsettling” and said residents “know that access to our democracy is tenuous.” The White House said the troops would protect federal assets and create a “safe environment” for arrests, but it did not specify the duration or scope of the deployment. Civil-rights advocates warned that the federalization of local policing could erode constitutional protections and serve as a template for interventions in other majority-Black cities. “If these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU’s D.C. chapter. NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the order “an unjustified distraction” that threatens self-government in the district. Critics also said Trump’s description of urban “lawlessness” revives rhetoric used for decades by politicians seeking tougher policing in non-white or progressive-led cities. Maryland Governor Wes Moore labeled the plan “deeply dangerous,” noting Baltimore’s violent-crime rate is at a 30-year low, while Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee denounced the president’s remarks as “fearmongering.”