To the Editor,
President Trump recently signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., deploying 800 National Guard soldiers to “take our capital back,” saying that the city has been “taken over by violent gangs and blood-thirsty criminals.”
Official crime statistics published by D.C Metropolitan police show that violent offences in the city fell between 2023 and 2024 and are continuing to fall in 2025. And yet, the president claims that “rising violence in the capital now urgently endangers public servants, citizens, and tourists, disrupting safe and secure transportation and the proper functioning of the federal government.”
It is incredibly ironic that the president is citing “rising violence” and “lawlessness” as reasons for sending armed forces into our nation’s capital, considering that he was responsible for the single most deplorable act of organized lawlessness in our nation’s history since the Civil War.
When President Trump sent an angry mob to the Capitol building on Jan. 6 of 2021 in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election, Americans watched in horror as police officers were attacked and trampled by Trump supporters and members of Congress and the vice president had to flee for their lives.
The National Guard was finally called hours into the riot, but not at the president’s urging.
There are countless examples in other countries in which leaders have used emergency powers in order to abuse and extend their authority, but it is terrifying to see our own president use the same tactics.
If we as Americans want to preserve the freedoms that our founding fathers fought so hard for and which we hold so dear, we must stand up with a resounding cry that such tyranny can never happen here.
Daniel Begg
Moorestown
