The city’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit calling for an emergency restraining order to block the move, accusing the Trump Administration of implementing a “hostile takeover” of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) that would lead to “imminent, irreparable harm”.

The National Guard presence in D.C. is set to increase in the coming days after the governors of some Republican states deployed troops to the capital.

Residents in one Washington, D.C., neighborhood lined up to protest the increased police presence after the White House said the number of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital would ramp up and federal officers would be on the streets around the clock.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he will seek more permanent federal control of the Washington, D.C., police force as he continues his efforts to ramp-up crime enforcement in the nation's capital.

For a city whose population is 41% Black, D.C.’s homeless population is disproportionately Black, at 82.5%. Compare that to the city’s white population: 39.6%, with 6.6% homeless, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Sixty percent of all homeless people are men.