Metropolitan police officers stand between the National Guard and protesters during a demonstration at the National Mall, weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and ordered an increased presence of federal law enforcement to assist in crime prevention, in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 30, 2025. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
During a Sunday, August 31 appearance on CBS News' "Face the Nation," Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wouldn't divulge information about President Donald Trump's plans to deploy federalized National Guard troops in more U.S. cities but declared, "We haven't taken anything off the table."
Noem aggressively championed Trump's policies during the interview, claiming that he is protecting U.S. cities from "those that are perpetuating murder and rape and trafficking of drugs and humans across our country."
The New York Times' David W. Chen, in an article published on Labor Day 2025, emphasizes that some of the most violent cities in the U.S. are in red states.
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"When Tennessee's Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump's crackdown on crime," Chen reports, "Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn't keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation's capital, according to FBI statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well."
The New York Times reporter continues, "The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri, since cities under their purview all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation's capital. Yet no Republican governor has asked for federal intervention."
Chen notes that the "image of red-state governors mustering uniformed troops for duty in blue-state cities" has "left many Americans with the foreboding sense of a nation dangerously divided, perhaps even drifting toward open conflict."
Chen explains, "Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, Mo.; Birmingham, Ala.; Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo, Ohio; Tulsa, Okla.; Memphis and Nashville; Houston; Little Rock, Ark.; Salt Lake City; and Shreveport, La., all have crime rates comparable to Washington's, according to FBI statistics…. Indeed, Republican governors who have so far declined to ask the president for an intervention in their cities might be tempted to rethink that stance."
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Democratic governors, including California's Gavin Newsom and Illinois' JB Pritzker, maintain that Trump has no business sending federalized National Guard troops to states that didn't ask him to.
"Red-state governors sending their National Guard troops to blue-state cities is just another example of the political divide in the country that has become the standard," Chen notes. "It is also another example of Republicans going out of the way to curry favor with Mr. Trump."
Jeffrey A. Butts, executive director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, told the Times, "If you accept the premise that it is OK to use military resources in the name of securing public safety —
which is very debatable and I think historically, should be rejected — they would be in the communities with the highest rates of gun violence. They're not doing it to improve public safety. It's designed to humiliate political opponents."
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Read David W. Chen's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).