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President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting with members of his administration in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Aug. 26, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump on Aug. 26 called for the death penalty for anyone who commits murder in the nation’s capital city.
“If somebody kills somebody in the capital—Washington, D.C.—we’re going to be seeking the death penalty,” he said during a Cabinet meeting.
Trump said that it would be “a very strong preventative.”
The District of Columbia abolished the death penalty in 1981, but a federal murder charge could lead to the death penalty.
The Epoch Times reached out to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
The death penalty exists in 27 states.
The District of Columbia had gone 12 days without a murder. There was a deadly shooting in southeast Washington on Aug. 26.
Trump announced on Aug. 11 the activation of hundreds of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital to deal with the issue of crime.
Trump invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, granting the president control of the Metropolitan Police Department for 48 hours. The president can renew this control for up to 30 days by notifying Congress. After 30 days, Congress must approve extensions.
Trump put Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge of the Metropolitan Police Department and Terry Cole, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as interim federal commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Department.
In response to a question from Iris Tao of NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, who earlier in the Cabinet meeting shared her story of being robbed at gunpoint in the district, Trump said he wants the law enforcement and National Guard presence to be longer than 30 days. He said he does not want to have to declare a national emergency.
Trump signed an executive order declaring a crime emergency in the District of Columbia and signed a presidential memorandum to mobilize Washington’s National Guard.
The National Guard troops do not have the authority to arrest people, but they can detain people until law enforcement arrives.
Since Trump’s federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, as of Aug. 26, there have been 1,094 arrests and 115 guns taken off the streets, according to Bondi. There were 87 arrests and four illegal firearms confiscated by law enforcement on Aug. 25, she said in a post on X.
The FBI arrested 28 people in Washington on Aug. 25, according to the agency’s director, Kash Patel. Additionally, there were four illegal firearms recovered and seven illegal drug seizures.
Homicides in the nation’s capital have decreased by 15 percent from last year, while robberies have gone down by 31 percent, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Overall, violent crime has decreased by 27 percent, burglaries have dropped by 22 percent, and property crime has declined by 5 percent.
Jackson Richman is a Washington correspondent for The Epoch Times. In addition to Washington politics, he covers the intersection of politics and sports/sports and culture. He previously was a writer at Mediaite and Washington correspondent at Jewish News Syndicate. His writing has also appeared in The Washington Examiner. He is an alum of George Washington University.
