GOP Governor Begs Trump to Invade Blue Cities in His State

After sending his state’s National Guard troops to help garden in Washington D.C., Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is now begging President Donald Trump to deploy more soldiers in his own cities.

In a letter sent to War Secretary Pete Hegseth Monday, Landry urged the Defense Department to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops “to urban centers” throughout Louisiana. “Louisiana currently faces a convergence of elevated violent crime rates in Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans coupled with critical personnel shortages within local law enforcement,” Landry wrote.

But in August, Landry approved sending 135 members of the Louisiana National Guard to Washington to assist in Trump’s federal takeover there. After finishing a sweeping crackdown on the city’s poorest, least white areas with high crime rates, service members have since been enlisted to help Trump’s effort to beautify the nation’s capital.

Like many of the Democratic-led cities targeted by Trump’s federal takeovers, Louisiana’s urban centers have majority-Black populations. But unlike those cities, Louisiana actually has a crime problem.

Louisiana’s homicide rate in 2023 was 19.3 per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than 300 percent higher than the homicide rate of the most recent site of Trump’s federal law enforcement takeover: Oregon, which had a homicide rate of 4.6 per 100,000 people that same year.

Shreveport, which is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district, landed at number 25 on Newsweek’s recent list of the 30 U.S. cities (with at least 100,000 residents) that had the highest number of violent crimes against people. In 2024, Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 people per 100,000 and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000. Baton Rouge’s murder rate is twice the rate in Washington. Meanwhile, Portland, Oregon, saw a 51 percent decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025.

While appearing on Fox News Monday night, Landry struck a sycophantic tone. “President Trump has amassed the best Cabinet of public servants and folks who really want to fight crime,” he said.

“Why would you not want your citizens to be safe?”

But Landry’s plea doesn’t detract from the lawlessness of Trump’s campaign to intimidate Democratic-led cities, and concerns that Trump’s sweeping crackdown and cuts to crime prevention programs could undermine already decreasing crime rates.