West Virginia governor says deploying national guard to Washington DC is ‘show of commitment to public safety’ – US politics live

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Three states to deploy hundreds of national guard troops to Washington DC

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines.

The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.

West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.

The statement came after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.

Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. “You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

• A Texas judge has expanded a restraining order against former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization over its fundraising for Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to prevent a legislative session on congressional redistricting.

• The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.

• When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files. Read the full story here.