When President Trump announced his plan Monday to send 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to crack down on what he described as 'crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor' in the nation’s capital, he also issued a warning to other cities around the country.
'We're going to take back our capital,' Trump said. 'And then we'll look at other cities also.'
But can Trump actually send federal forces elsewhere? And what cities might he target? Here’s everything you need to know about the president’s warning.
During his news conference on Monday, Trump singled out Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and Oakland, Calif. as 'other cities also that are bad, very bad.'
'They’re so far gone,' he continued. 'We’re not going to let it happen. We’re not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C. and we’re going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.'
Beyond that, the president didn’t elaborate on his plans. But he did issue what amounted to an ultimatum: 'self-clean up' or else.
'Other cities are hopefully watching this,' Trump said. 'Maybe they’ll self-clean up, and maybe they’ll self-do this.'
But 'if they don’t learn their lesson, if they haven’t studied us properly,' he continued, 'then I’m going to look at New York in a little while. … And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster.'
What does the law say about Trump's plans?
Trump’s actions in Washington, D.C., are legal. As you may remember from elementary school, D.C. isn’t a state. It isn’t part of any other state either. It doesn’t have a constitution of its own. Instead, D.C. is what’s known as a 'federal district,' and it’s been mostly under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress since its founding in 1791.

But Trump doesn’t have the same powers across the rest of the country. Under current law, governors are in charge of each state’s National Guard and the police are largely controlled locally.
Trump has already challenged some of these rules. Over the objections of state and local officials, he deployed nearly 5,000 National Guard members and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in June after a new round of ICE workplace raids sparked protests marred by sporadic violence.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom swiftly sued the administration to end the mobilization, claiming that Trump was violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the president from deploying the armed forces to participate in domestic law enforcement operations unless he declares that an insurrection is underway." -(From the YouTube page).