President Trump says National Guard soldiers will be deployed on the streets of Washington, D.C., and he asserted federal control over the city's Metropolitan Police Department. He said the moves were necessary to quell what he has described repeatedly as an epidemic of crime and homelessness in the nation's capital.

"This is liberation day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back — we're taking it back," Trump said during a news conference at the White House. He said the Metropolitan Police Department would now be led by a federal team, which he described as "very good people, but they're tough."

The move comes over the objections of local leaders and despite the fact that violent crime plunged to a 30-year low last year, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice. A DOJ announcement posted this year boasted that crime in Washington had plunged across a wide range of indicators.

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