'Leave our kids alone': Schools reopen in DC with parents on edge over Trump's armed patrols

WASHINGTON (AP) — Public schools reopened Monday in the nation’s tense capital with parents on edge over the presence in their midst of thousands of National Guard troops — some now armed — and large scatterings of federal law enforcement officers carrying out President Donald Trump's orders to make the District of Columbia a safer place.

Even as Trump started talking about other cities — “Do not come to Chicago,” was the Democratic Illinois governor's clipped response — the president again touted a drop in crime that he attributed to his extraordinary effort to take over policing in Washington, D.C. The district's mayor, meanwhile, was lamenting the effect of Trump's actions on children in her city.

"Parents are anxious. We’ve heard from a lot of them," Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference, noting that some might keep their children out of school because of immigration concerns.

“Any attempt to target children is heartless, is mean, is uncalled for and it only hurts us,” she said. “I would just call for everybody to leave our kids alone.”

As schools opened across the capital city, parental social media groups and listservs were buzzing with reports and rumors of checkpoints and arrests.

The week began with some patrolling National Guard units now carrying firearms. The change stemmed from a directive issued late last week by his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Armed National Guard troops from Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee were seen around the city Monday. But not every patrol appears to be carrying weapons. An Associated Press photographer said the roughly 30 troops he saw on the National Mall on Monday morning were unarmed.

Armed Guard members in Washington will be operating under long-standing rules for the use of military force inside the U.S., the military task force overseeing all the troops deployed to D.C. said Monday. Those rules, broadly, say that while troops can use force, they should do so only “in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm” and “only as a last resort.”

The task force has directed questions on why the change was necessary to Hegseth’s office. Those officials have declined to answer those questions. Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Hegseth said that it was common sense to arm them because it meant they were “capable of defending themselves and others.”

Among their duties is picking up trash, the task force said, though it's unclear how much time they will spend doing that.

Bowser reiterated her opposition to the National Guard's presence. “I don’t believe that troops should be policing American cities,” she said.

Trump is considering expanding the deployments to other Democratic-led cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and New York, saying the situations in those cities require federal action. In Washington, his administration says more than 1,000 people have been arrested since Aug. 7, including 86 on Sunday.

“We took hundreds of guns away from young kids, who were throwing them around like it was candy. We apprehended scores of illegal aliens. We seized dozens of illegal firearms. There have been zero murders,” Trump said Monday.

The possibility of the military patrolling streets of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, prompted immediate backlash, confusion and a trail of sarcastic social media posts.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a first-term Democrat, has called it unconstitutional and threatened legal action. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker deemed it a distraction and unnecessary as crime rates in Chicago are down, as they are nationwide.

Trump suggested multiple times earlier Monday that he might dispatch the National Guard to Chicago regardless of Pritzker’s opinion, calling the city a “killing field."

Pritzker and other Illinois officials said the Trump administration has not reached out to Chicago leaders about any federal initiative to deploy military personnel to the city to combat crime. They cited statistics showing drops in violent crime in Chicago and cast Trump’s move as performative, partisan and racist.

“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” Pritzker said, standing in a park about a mile from the Chicago skyscraper that features Trump’s name in large lettering. The governor said he would fight the “petty whims of an arrogant little man” who “wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents and score political points.”

Others raised questions about where patrols might go and what role they might play. By square mileage, Chicago is more than three times the size of Washington, and neighborhoods with historically high crime are spread far apart.

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who also worked for the New York Police Department, wondered what the National Guard would do in terms of fighting street violence. He said if there was clear communication, they could help with certain tasks, like perimeter patrol in high-crime neighborhoods, but only as part of a wider plan and in partnership with police.

National Guard troops were used in Chicago to help with the Democratic National Convention last summer and during the 2012 NATO Summit.

Overall, violent crime in Chicago dropped significantly in the first half of 2025, representing the steepest decline in over a decade, according to police data. Shootings and homicides were down more than 30% in the first half of the year compared with the same time last year, and total violent crime dropped by over 22%.

Still, some neighborhoods, including Austin on the city’s West Side, where the Rev. Ira Acree is a pastor, experience persistent high crime.

Acree said he’s received numerous calls from congregants upset about the possible deployment. He said if Trump was serious about crime prevention, he would boost funding for anti-violence initiatives.

“This is a joke,” Acree said. “This move is not about reducing violence. This is reckless leadership and political grandstanding. It’s no secret that our city is on the president’s hit list.”

In June, roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines were sent to Los Angeles to deal with protests over the administration’s immigration crackdown. California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other local elected officials objected.

Tareen reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker speaks during a news conference at River Point Park, Monday, Aug.. 25, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

National Guard soldiers stand outside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, as part of President Donald Trump's order to use federal law enforcement to expel homeless people and rid the nation's capital of violent crime, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Armed members of the Ohio National Guard pass by children playing in a water feature at The Wharf, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, center, attends a celebration of the first day of school at Oyster-Adams Bilingual School Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Members of the Louisiana National Guard patrol Union Station, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Armed members of the South Carolina National Guard are positioned outside of Union Station in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

Armed members of the South Carolina National Guard talk with a man while positioned outside of Union Station in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

NEW YORK (AP) — Up until this week, Wall Street has generally benefited from the Trump administration’s policies and has been supportive of the president. That relationship has suddenly soured.

When President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law in July, it pushed another significant round of tax cuts and also cut the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, at times the banking industry's nemesis, by nearly half. Trump’s bank regulators have also been pushing a deregulatory agenda that both banks and large corporations have embraced.

But now the president has proposed a one-year, 10% cap on the interest rate on credit cards, a lucrative business for many financial institutions, and his Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that many say threatens the institution that is supposed to set interest rates free of political interference.

Bank CEOs warned the White House on Tuesday that Trump’s actions will do more harm than good to the American economy. But in response, Trump did not back down on his proposals or attacks on the Fed.

BNY Chief Executive Officer Robin Vince told reporters that going after the Fed’s independence “doesn’t seem, to us, to be accomplishing the administration’s primary objectives for things like affordability, reducing the cost of borrowing, reducing the cost of mortgages, reducing the cost of everyday living for Americans.”

“Let’s not shake the foundation of the bond market and potentially do something that could cause interest rates to actually get pushed up, because somehow there’s lack of confidence in the Fed’s independence,” Vince added.

The Federal Reserve’s independence is sacrosanct among the big banks. While banks may have wanted Powell and other Fed policymakers to move interest rates one way or another more quickly, they have generally understood why Powell has done what he's done.

“I don’t agree with everything the Fed has done. I do have enormous respect for Jay Powell, the man,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told reporters Tuesday.

Dimon's message did not seem to resonate with President Trump, who told journalists that Dimon is wrong in saying it’s not a great idea to chip away at the Federal Reserve’s independence by going after Chair Jerome Powell.

“Yeah, I think it’s fine what I’m doing,” Trump said Tuesday in response to a reporter’s question at Joint Base Andrews after returning from a day trip to Michigan. He called Powell “a bad Fed person” who has “done a bad job.”

Along with the attacks on the Fed, President Trump is going after the credit card industry. With “affordability” likely to be a key issue in this year’s midterm elections, Trump wants to lower costs for consumers and says he wants a 10% cap on credit card interest rates in place by Jan. 20. Whether he hopes to accomplish this by bullying the credit card industry into just capping interest rates voluntarily, or through some sort of executive action, is unclear.

The average interest rate on credit cards is between 19.65% and 21.5%, according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. A cap of 10% would likely cost banks roughly $100 billion in lost revenue per year, researchers at Vanderbilt University found. Shares of credit card companies like American Express, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Capital One and others fell sharply Monday as investors worried about the potential hit to profits these banks may face if an interest rate cap were implemented.

In a call with reporters, JPMorgan’s Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Barnum indicated the industry was willing to fight with all resources at its disposal to stop the Trump administration from capping those rates. JPMorgan is one of the nation's biggest credit card companies, with its customers collectively holding $239.4 billion in balances with the bank, and having major co-brand partnerships with companies such as United Airlines and Amazon. JPMorgan also recently acquired the Apple Card credit card portfolio from Goldman Sachs.

“Our belief is that actions like this will have the exact opposite consequence to what the administration wants in terms of helping consumers,” Barnum said. “Instead of lowering the price of credit, it will simply reduce the supply of credit, and that will be bad for everyone: consumers, the broader economy, and yes, for us, also.”

Even the major airline and hotel partners who partner with banks to issue their cards were also not pleased with the White House's push to cap interest rates.

“I think one of the big issues and challenges with (a potential cap) is the fact that it would actually restrict the lower end consumer from having access to any credit, not just what the interest rate they’re paying, which would upend the whole credit card industry,” said Ed Bastion, CEO of Delta Air Lines, to analysts on Tuesday. Delta has a major partnership with American Express, and its co-brand credit card brings in billions of dollars in revenue for Delta.

Trump seemed to double down on his attacks on the credit card industry overnight. In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, he said he endorsed a bill introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, that would likely cut into the revenue banks earn from merchants whenever they accept a credit card at point-of-sale.

“Everyone should support great Republican Senator Roger Marshall’s Credit Card Competition Act, in order to stop the out of control Swipe Fee ripoff,” Trump wrote.

Trump told reporters Tuesday that he was not going to back down the credit card interest rate issue.

“We should have lower rates. Jamie Dimon probably wants higher rates. Maybe he makes more money that way,” Trump said.

The comments from Wall Street are coming as the major banks report their quarterly results. JPMorgan, the nation’s largest consumer and investment bank, and The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., one of the world’s largest custodial banks, both reported their results Tuesday with Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others to report later this week.

President Donald Trump arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

FILE - Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, speaks at the America Business Forum, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, file)