A day after President Donald Trump said he would deploy the National Guard in the nation’s capital, federalized the local police department and issued officers a far-reaching mandate to “do whatever the hell they want” to curb crime, it remained unclear what new directives, if any, D.C. police would receive from their new federal managers.

District officials said they were still in command of the department, operating as usual having received no new orders from the Trump administration. The city’s police chief, Pamela A. Smith, has been supplying ideas about how federal law enforcement could be used by D.C. - not the other way around, according to a D.C. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive, ongoing talks.

The White House, however, continued to project c

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