President Trump is growing more aggressive in his posture towards Washington, D.C, threatening to exert more control over the local affairs of the nation's capital.
The president signed an executive order (EO) to work to make Washington “safe and beautiful” last week, and conservatives in the House are pushing for Congress to have more power over the city, which has operated under “home rule” for half a century.
The push comes as D.C. is waiting on Congress to pass a fix that would let the city spend its local tax dollars under its currently approved budget, after a government funding bill apparently inadvertently forced it back to 2024 levels.
Trump has said Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) is doing a good job with the city but threatened that if that changes, the federal government will have to step in, raising alarms over how far he can go.
“President Trump’s thoroughly anti-home rule EO is insulting to the 700,000 D.C. residents who live in close proximity to a federal government, which continues to deny them the same rights afforded to other Americans,” D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) said in a statement.
The EO Trump signed last week launches a task force focused on deporting migrants, cleaning up crime and managing homelessness. It would work towards “effective federal participation” in the enforcement of immigration laws, redirect resources to deport migrants and monitor D.C.’s sanctuary-city status to comply with federal immigration laws.
It would also help to “increase the speed and lower the cost of processing concealed carry license requests,” and work to remove and clean up all homeless encampments on federal land.
The order was met with anger from local officials, who pushed back on the idea of federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, coordinating with D.C. officials on city management from metro fare evasion to removing graffiti.
“The task force created by the EO would not include a single D.C. official to represent the interests of the people who reside within the District,” Norton said. “The Revolutionary War was fought to give consent to the governed and to end taxation without representation. President Trump’s rhetoric runs counter to this history. D.C.’s population is larger than that of two states.”
A former aide to Trump in his first term said the order is in line with how the president approached the city at that time, which included a fixation of “aesthetics and crime in D.C.”
The president has wanted D.C. to reflect “national pride, not local progressive policies,” the former aide outlined, and it’s a place where he can flex his power to show his policies can transform a liberal city.
“I think this task force gives him a way to reassert that mindset — giving people a direct contrast between his populist, ‘law-and-order’ style and what he’ll portray as liberal neglect. DC is the perfect foil for that: a progressive city, led by Democrats, that also happens to be under unique federal jurisdiction,” the former aide said. “It lets him escalate immigration enforcement and crime messaging in the heart of the nation’s capital without needing permission — and he knows it gets media and wide attention when he does.”
At the same time, the president has leaned on Congress to pass legislation to fix what lawmakers have described as an accident in a recent funding measure that D.C. officials say could force the District to cut its local budget by about $1 billion.
The District was ...
