Trump to hold press conference after ordering homeless to leave Washington DC – US politics live

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President Donald Trump’s news conference is due to take place in about two-and-a-half hours and it follows his Truth Social promising the new measures“will, essentially, stop violent crime” in the capital district, without explaining how.

In a subsequent post, he said that the news conference at 10am on Monday, “will not only involve ending the Crime, Murder, and Death in our Nation’s Capital, but will also be about Cleanliness”.

The District of Columbia, established in 1790, operates under the Home Rule Act, which gives Congress ultimate authority but allows residents to elect a mayor and city council. Trump said last week that lawyers are examining how to overturn the law, a move that would likely require Congress to revoke it and him to sign off.

Trump has cited a recent assault on a federal staffer and viral videos of youth crime to argue the nation’s capital is in crisis. His response marks a renewed focus on crime as a political priority and grounds for increased federal intervention, which could challenge Washington’s autonomy and reshape the balance of local and federal power.

While details of the plan remain unclear, the administration is preparing to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, a US official told Reuters, a controversial tactic Trump used recently in Los Angeles to tackle immigration protests over the objections of local officials.

The Democratic mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, pushed back on Trump’s claims, saying the city is “not experiencing a crime spike” and highlighting that violent crime has fallen to a 30-year low.

President Trump called Bowser “a good person who has tried” but said she’s been given many chances while crime numbers continue to worsen, Reuters reported.

Violent crime fell 26% in the first seven months of 2025 and overall crime dropped 7%, according to the city’s police department. But gun violence remains an issue. In 2023, Washington had the third-highest gun homicide rate among US cities with populations over 500,000, according to gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Over the past week, Trump has intensified his messaging, demanding the swift eviction of homeless residents and vowing to jail offenders. He has raised the prospect of stripping the city of its local autonomy and signaled a possible full federal takeover.

The Trump administration is also preparing to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, a US official told Reuters, a controversial tactic that Trump used recently in Los Angeles to respond to immigration protests over the objections of local officials.

Trump has not made a final decision, the official said, adding that the number of troops and the role they would play are still being determined.

Trump orders homeless he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DC

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with news that president Donald Trump is promising new steps to tackle homelessness and crime in Washington, prompting the city’s mayor to voice concerns about the potential use of the National Guard to patrol the streets in the nation’s capital.

Trump wrote in a social media post that he planned a White House news conference at 10am today to discuss his plans to make the District of Columbia “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before”, AP reported.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”

The post was illustrated with four photographs, all apparently taken from the president’s motorcade along the route from the White House to his golf course.

Two of the images showed a total of 10 tents pitched on the grass along a highway on-ramp just over a mile from the White House. The third image showed a single person sleeping on the steps of the American Institute of Pharmacy Building on Constitution Avenue.

The fourth image showed the line of vehicles that whisk Trump to his golf course passing a small amount of roadside litter on the E Street Expressway, near the Kennedy Center.

Last week, the Republican president directed federal law enforcement agencies to increase their presence in Washington for seven days, with the option “to extend as needed.”

On Friday night, federal agencies including the Secret Service, the FBI and the US Marshals Service assigned more than 120 officers and agents to assist in Washington.

Read our full report here:

In other developments:

• Four days after JD Vance reportedly asked top Trump administration officials to come up with a new communications strategy for dealing with the scandal around the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the vice-president appears to have put his foot in it, sparking a new round of online outrage even as he tried to defuse the furor.

• The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has stepped up his war of words with Democratic lawmakers who have left the state to foil an aggressive redistricting plan aimed at giving his Republican party five additional seats in Congress, saying on Sunday that the fight “could literally last years”.

• Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of their revenues from chip sales in China, under an unprecedented arrangement to obtain export licenses for the semiconductors, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

• The United States, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN security council, offered support for Israel and accused those nations who supported Sunday’s meeting of “actively prolonging the war by spreading lies about Israel”. “Israel has a right to decide what is necessary for its security and what measure measures are appropriate to end the threat posed by Hamas,” said the US envoy to the UN, Dorothy Shea.

• The United States has pledged to consult its European partners before a meeting between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said on Monday.

• The US and China have not yet announced an extension to their tariff deadline, with tensions flaring up again just as a fragile truce nears its expiry. Following the latest bilateral meeting in Stockholm in July, Beijing said that both sides would work toward extending the tariff truce by another 90 days.

• A federal judge in Hawaii has ruled that commercial fishing is illegal in the Pacific Islands Heritage marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean.