President Trump says New Orleans could be next on list for National Guard troops

President Donald Trump on Wednesday floated sending federal agents and National Guard troops to patrol New Orleans, part of a series of threats the president has leveled against Democratic-led cities to deploy troops and law enforcement officers on their streets.

“We’re making a determination now: Do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite tough, quite bad,” Trump said in an interview aired on C-SPAN.

The Republican president has threatened to put federal boots on the ground in an array of American cities with Democratic leaders in recent weeks.

Already, National Guard troops, FBI agents and other federal officers have patrolled the streets of Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles on Trump’s orders. On Wednesday, he touted what he described as those efforts’ successes in curbing liberal cities’ crime rates as he proposed a similar plan for New Orleans.

“So, we’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana, and you have New Orleans which has a crime problem,” Trump said. “We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks, it’ll take us two weeks, easier than D.C.”

Crime in New Orleans plummeted in recent years after a surge in violence during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2025, the city is on pace to log a historic, 50-year low in murders — a remarkable reversal that law enforcement officials and outreach workers attribute to better community interventions, national trends and a flood of concern and cash funneled to anti-violence efforts in cities nationwide.