The mayor of Washington’s biggest city and the state’s attorney general implored President Donald Trump on Monday, Sept. 29 not to send federal troops here.
This comes after Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed plans over the weekend to dispatch Oregon’s National Guard to nearby Portland. Local leaders fear Seattle could be next as the president federalizes National Guard troops and deploys them to major American cities.
“We do not need the federal government bringing in armored vehicles, semiautomatic weapons, military personnel to make us ‘safer.’ There is not an insurrection here,” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a Monday morning press conference at City Hall.
“Our message today is very clear: Stay out of Seattle,” Harrell added.
Federal officials have repeatedly called Seattle unsafe, including last week when Trump suggested moving 2026 FIFA World Cup matches out of the city due to safety concerns.
Donald Trump Jr. last month called Seattle and Portland “craphole cities” and raised the possibility of sending federal troops.
Harrell appeared alongside Attorney General Nick Brown, Police Chief Shon Barnes, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and City Council members Sara Nelson and Alexis Mercedes Rinck.
Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican, was not there, though city officials made clear she’s been involved in discussions about how to respond to a troop deployment.
Harrell and Brown emphasized they haven’t heard anything from the federal government about its plans for Seattle.
In the coming days, Harrell plans to issue an executive order that “will establish how we will specifically communicate and protect our communities, preserve our local control,” and “will strengthen our policies to prevent unconstitutional and unlawful encroachment” in the city.
On Sunday, Hegseth told Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek that he was sending 200 members of the Oregon National Guard for two months to protect federal property and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Portland. The state and city quickly sued the Trump administration over the deployment. Hundreds protested Sunday outside Portland’s ICE facility.
Trump has launched similar military crackdowns in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Federal troops are also expected to arrive in Memphis this week.
The deployments to Los Angeles and the nation’s capital resulted in legal battles. In California, a federal judge this month ruled sending troops there violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that bars using troops for domestic policing with limited exceptions.
In that case, Trump cited federal law allowing the president to call out National Guard troops if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” The statute also allows for deployments in the case of foreign invasion or if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
Washington, D.C., also sued this month over the deployment there.
After the deployment in California in June, Gov. Bob Ferguson, Harrell and other leaders pleaded for peace at local protests to avoid giving Trump a pretense to send troops here.
Brown said attorneys in his office have been working to “make sure that we will be ready to respond if Washington state is ever put into the same position.”
“The only thing consistent from the president’s policy is that he indeed is attacking the people in places that didn’t vote for him or that he views as an opposition,” he said. “And it’s entirely possible, based on the president’s comments and those in his administration, that what we are seeing in Portland will be attempted here.”
Brown attended a conference last week in Washington, D.C., where he saw what the military policing a city looks like.
“To see American troops walking the streets and what that does for that city, and the tension that the residents of Washington, D.C., are feeling, and the fear that business leaders and community members and people who are just visiting that city are experiencing is unprecedented,” he said. “It is un-American and I think it’s ultimately unlawful.”
Harrell was set to talk Monday afternoon with state Adjutant General Gent Welsh, who leads Washington’s National Guard. He said he talked to Ferguson earlier Monday morning. Ferguson posted to social media that his office has been in communication with Kotek’s team in Oregon. Ferguson, a first-term Democrat, was set to be out of state on vacation this week, and then on work-related travel on the East Coast through Oct. 9.
In February, Ferguson’s top aides debated sending 200 troops from the state’s National Guard to the Canadian border to combat drug trafficking — and get ahead of the president potentially federalizing the Guard.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on Facebook and Twitter.
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