Trump sent the National Guard to LA in June. It was the busiest protest month in 5 years Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAYAugust 19, 2025 at 12:55 AM President Donald Trump received widespread backlash for his decision to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C.
- - Trump sent the National Guard to LA in June. It was the busiest protest month in 5 years
Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAYAugust 19, 2025 at 12:55 AM
President Donald Trump received widespread backlash for his decision to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C., but it isn't the first time the move has stoked controversy in this term.
Following a high profile assault on a 19-year-old former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee known as "BigBalls," Trump announced his administration would take control of the Metropolitan Police Department and ordered 800 members of the guard to the nation's capital. In June, protests against widespread immigration arrests and raids prompted Trump to send the National Guard to Los Angeles, California.
Trump said the guardsmen were sent to quell mostly peaceful protests, but he did so without the governor's consent or invitation. That was shortly before the "No Kings" protests that popped up on Trump's birthday all over the country, and organizers predicted Trump's militarized response in LA, which also included deploying marines in the city, would inspire more protesters.
It ended up being the busiest protest month since 2020. Here is what to know:
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Why did Trump deploy the National Guard in DC?
Trump said he was taking over Washington, D.C., to address crime and homelessness, despite the fact that violent crime is down 26% in 2025 compared with last year. He deployed hundreds of National Guard troops and also moved to put the Metropolitan Police Department under control of the Department of Justice.
Trump does have special authority to deploy the National Guard in D.C., and he did so in 2020 as well.
"We're not going to lose our cities over this. This will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C.," Trump said, adding that he may set his sights on other cities like Chicago in the future.
The move drew harsh criticism from Democrats across the country.
"Violent crime in D.C. is at its lowest level in 30 years. We had an unacceptable spike in 2023, so we changed our laws and strategies," Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a televised community meeting on Aug. 12. "Now, crime levels are not only down from 2023, but from before the pandemic. Our tactics are working, and we aren't taking our foot off the gas."
On Aug. 15, the District of Columbia sued the administration in an attempt to halt Trump's police takeover. The DOJ previously declined to comment.
June was the busiest month of protesting since 2020
Protests in the first half of the year were already trending higher than the first months of previous administrations before Trump sent the military in to largely peaceful protests in Los Angeles in early June. Dave Clark, a professor of political science at Binghamton University who collected global mass mobilization data, previously said the militarized response to protests could make a difference.
"I would say that using the military for civil control is the wild card here," he said in June, explaining there is little relevant precedent for it in the U.S. "In many cases, the move to authoritarian kinds of tactics will actually bring out more protesters."
Days later, people across the country participated in the "No Kings" protests that happened on Trump's 79th birthday and the day of the Army's 250th anniversary parade in D.C.
Data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project between the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut, show the first five months of this year have seen more protests than the first years of former President Joe Biden's term and Trump's first term. The consortium project collects publicly available information from political crowds in the U.S. at marches, protests, riots and more.
The data also shows June 2025 saw more than 4,600 protests, the most in a calendar month since June 2020 when nearly 7,500 protests happened around the country following the police killing of George Floyd.
Clark noted the data from protests after June 1 show a trend of objecting to "heavy handed" tactics, with the titles, notes and claims included in the data showing words like "militarized," "police state" and "sweep."
Trump warned people who planned to protest against the district takeover that they, too, would be met with heavy force.
"You spit and we hit," he said at his Aug. 11 press briefing.
Are National Guard still in Los Angeles?
Trump has pulled back all but a few hundred National Guard members it sent to Los Angeles.
California sued the Trump administration after Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles amid the immigration arrest protests. Gov. Gavin Newsom has argued the deployment was an unlawful use of the military, according to Reuters.
A multi-day trial took place ending Aug. 13, Reuters reported, and a ruling is expected in the coming weeks.
Contributing: Bart Jansen, Joey Garrison, Trevor Hughes, Michael Loria, Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at [email protected]. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Anti-Trump protests ongoing in 2nd term, June busiest month since 2020
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