This week in the D.C. takeover: What comes next?

Believe it or not, we’re almost through a month since President Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C., allowing him to largely take over the Metropolitan Police Department and deploy both hundreds of federal law enforcement agents and more than 2,000 National Guardsmen into the city. (As we've previously reported, crime is down in the city, and the "emergency" framing is political rhetoric.)

Next week’s 30-day mark – which falls on Wednesday, Sept. 10 – isn’t only symbolic. Under the city’s Home Rule Act, Trump’s commandeering of MPD can only last that long, unless Congress grants him an extension. And while the president initially hinted that he would be looking for one – and some Republicans on the Hill have said they would grant it, potentially lasting as long as his whole term – it’s now looking like that won’t happen.

Even if Trump doesn't seek an extension, that wouldn’t stop him from keeping federal agents and National Guardsmen in the city. And that’s hardly the only concern that D.C. is facing moving forward: Congress is also considering a massive slate of bills that could do everything from repeal existing criminal justice laws in D.C to tossing out the city’s elected attorney general and replacing him with one appointed by the president.

MPD: Back to local control?

Over the last month, MPD has largely operated at Trump’s behest. He doesn’t technically have day-to-day control over the local police department – though he unsuccessfully tried to get it – but he can request that it provide him with police services, and MPD has to comply. Once the 30 days end, that power goes away and, theoretically, everything returns to normal.

Will that happen? Per Politico, Republican leaders in the House won’t be holding a vote on a bill that would extend Trump’s control over MPD. That would mean that full control of the department will revert to Mayor Muriel Bowser and Chief Pamela Smith next Thursday – thus ending the first time in the city’s 50-year experience with home rule that a president commandeered the local police department. 

Of course, it would be unwise to rule out the alternative option: Trump could try to unilaterally declare another emergency and claim another 30 days of control over MPD. (In August he did muse about doing just this.) If that happens, a legal challenge from the city wouldn’t be out of the question. 

Over the last week D.C. officials have been angling for Trump to declare victory in his war on crime so that he didn’t see a need to extend his control over MPD. This week he seemed to do as much, calling the city a “safe zone.” Bowser has also been playing nice with his administration, crediting the federal surge for an apparent drop in crime.

But a large part of her push to reclaim control over the police department stemmed from growing uneasiness over the federal mandates that MPD cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on immigration enforcement. (As we reported last week, this cooperation has forced some immigrant residents to question whether or not they can even call MPD.) When pushed by reporters, Bowser conceded that ICE had been “terrorizing communities,” and this week said that immigration enforcement hasn’t helped with the broader goal of making the city safer. “I can’t say the ICE activity is getting violent criminals,” she said. Once the 30 days end, her administration's thinking goes, so too will the requirement that MPD actively cooperate with ICE on immigration enforcement.

In the meantime, D.C. officials announced on Wednesday a 13% pay raise for MPD officers, along with a slate of new measures to increase hiring and retention. (MPD has some 3,200 officers; Bowser wants closer to 4,000.) That pay raise doesn’t come out of the blue; it had been negotiated earlier this year but was delayed, in part because of the congressional snafu that cut $1.1 billion out of the city’s budget. 

Still, it’s hard not to miss the strategic timing of the announcement: Bowser wants out of the crime “emergency” Trump declared, and showing that she’s prioritizing the city’s current cops and hiring more is one way to try and get there. 

Federal agents: Still around

This week Bowser somewhat stepped into hot water when she issued a Mayor’s Order creating what she calls a Safe and Beautiful Operations Center (note that the name uses Trump's own framing), which will allow D.C. to “ensure coordination with federal law enforcement to the maximum extent allowable by law.” Critics quickly pounced, accusing the mayor of essentially endorsing the permanent deployment of more than 800 federal officers from an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies in the District. At-Large Councilmember Robert White tore into Bowser, accusing her of “surrender” to “oppression.” 

Bowser and her aides insist that the purpose of the order isn't to endorse the continued presence of federal agents in D.C., but rather to try and create a system to manage a deployment of agents that she has no control over and no power to boot out of town. (Recall that while Trump’s takeover of MPD is limited to 30 days, he can send as many federal agents into D.C. whenever he wants – and for however long he wants.) It also, they say, helps achieve her first goal: getting Trump to pass on extending his control over MPD.

“The order does not extend the Trump emergency,” she said on Wednesday. “In fact, it does the exact opposite. What it does is lays out a framework for how we will exit the emergency. The emergency ends on Sept 10. I want the message to be clear to the Congress: We have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city. We don’t need a presidential emergency.”

In a sense, Bowser is trying to message that she’s created a formal structure to have MPD work with federal agents into the future as a means to encourage Trump to back off any attempts to keep control over MPD. Critics, though, see her as just signing on to Trump’s push to have federal agents continue aggressively policing D.C. residents.

“There's no need for the House to vote on cooperation between federal and local authorities because the Mayor’s Order this week says there shall be cooperation to the highest extent possible indefinitely,” tweeted Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker on Thursday.

Still, Bowser did slyly sneak in a dig at ICE in her order, leaving it off the list of agencies that the city would be happy to continue working with. (The list included the U.S. Marshals Service, FBI, ATF, U.S. Park Police, DEA, U.S. Capitol Police, and Secret Service.) The mayor hasn't been saying it loudly, but she wants ICE to depart the city.

Bowser’s approach seems to have landed well at the White House. “The Trump Administration is grateful to continue partnering with Mayor Bowser to make D.C. the safest city in the country,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday on X.  

National Guard: Still around, but for how long?

Much like the federal agents that have been active in D.C., how long the 2,000 National Guardsmen stay here is largely up to Trump. The Associated Press is reporting that the deployment of the 800 or so members of the D.C. National Guard has been extended through December, though that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see them around that long. 

Whether they stick around could come down in part to the price tag; it costs an estimated $1 million a day to keep all of the different Guardsmen (from D.C. and a half-dozen states) in the city. That might be worth it if they seemed to have more to do, but in recent weeks they’ve been seen picking up trash and otherwise tending to federal parks – the sort of thing that regular staff or contractors would usually do before federal workforce cuts. According to a CNN report, these somewhat menial duties have impacted morale amongst the Guardsmen serving in D.C. – many of whom come from many states away and have normal jobs and lives that are currently on hold. 

Attorney General Brian Schwalb doesn’t just want to wait until Trump pulls the Guard out of D.C., though. On Thursday he sued the Trump administration over its deployment of the National Guard in the city, arguing that it violated the longstanding prohibition on the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. The lawsuit follows a ruling from a federal judge who found that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles earlier this year similarly broke the law. (That ruling has been put on hold pending an appeal.)

The lawsuit drew support from various members of the D.C. Council, including Ward 4’s Janeese Lewis George and At-Large Councilmember Robert White, while Bowser largely avoided commenting on whether or not she agreed with Schwalb’s approach. (Axios reports that she urged him to wait a week before filing the lawsuit to avoid provoking Trump into trying to extend his control over MPD.) She did, though, say that the Guard should head home. “The deployments themselves are running their course,” she said.

Congress: Taking a huge whack at D.C.’s laws

It didn’t take but a few days back from their summer recess for congressional Republicans to make clear they will happily push to rewrite, replace, or repeal as many of D.C.’s criminal justice laws as they can – and take a big ol’ swing at the city’s home rule while they’re at it. 

“Our Oversight Committee is going to be going to work next week to pass a package of bills to address a lot of those problems that D.C. created to fix it so that criminals can't just walk free if they want to go commit tough crimes, they'll have to do the time for what they do on the streets,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise this week.

That package of bills came into focus mid-week – and it’s absolutely staggering, with more than a dozen legislative proposals. While many D.C. residents may be used to Congress getting unpleasantly involved in the nuts and bolts of the city's laws, this new attempt also aims to further restrict D.C.'s already limited home rule.

One measure stands out in particular: A bill that would immediately remove D.C.'s elected attorney general from office and replace him with someone appointed solely by the president. (The position has been elected by D.C. residents since 2014; before that, it was appointed by the mayor.) This would be a huge hit for home rule; the president, not the mayor or residents, would essentially be dictating many local law enforcement priorities. (Do you think Trump would aggressively enforce D.C.'s consumer protection laws, go after slumlords, or sue employers for wage theft? Yeah, neither do we.)

Now, it isn’t that difficult to understand why Republicans want to do this: Schwalb, who is running for re-election, has come under intense criticism for claims that he goes easy on juvenile offenders. (His office only prosecutes minor adult crime and juvenile crime; all serious violent crime is handled by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., a federal office.) Replacing him with someone appointed by Trump would ensure the city’s attorney general could go harder on juveniles. (Whether that would make D.C. safer is up for debate.) But two other bills that Republicans may consider would drop the age of eligibility for juveniles to be tried as adults for violent offenses (to 14 from the current 16) and limit the ability of D.C. judges to offer more lenient sentences for juvenile offenders.

Some of the Republicans' bills would also reinstate cash bail (which was eliminated more than 30 years ago), require pre-trial detention for people accused of violent offenses (current data shows most people released pre-trial don't reoffend), increase mandatory minimum sentences for certain offenses, repeal a D.C. law that allows some incarcerated felons to petition a judge for early release after they serve 15 years in prison, repeal restrictions on car chases by police, and impose a $500 fine for camping on public property. 

Another set of bills in the package would allow the president to directly nominate judges to serve on D.C. Superior Court (currently the D.C. Judicial Nominations Commission recommends nominees to the president), increase the congressional review period of all bills passed by the D.C. Council to 60 days (it’s currently 30 days for bills that don’t deal with criminal laws, and 60 days for those that do), and increase the power of Congress to reject bills passed by local lawmakers.

And if that wasn’t enough, congressional Republicans have moved forward with a spending bill that takes aim at a number of existing D.C. laws and programs. If passed as is, the spending bill would repeal D.C.’s physician-assisted suicide law, prohibit the city from using its traffic cameras, forbid city funds from being used to subsidize abortions, extend the prohibition of D.C. legalizing the sale of recreational cannabis, end non-citizen voting in local elections, and more. 

For now, these are just proposals. Congress would have to take up and vote in favor of all these provisions and bills – and local officials are pushing to ensure they don’t. On Wednesday, a number of local lawmakers met with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who pledged to fight Republican efforts to interfere in the city’s local affairs. Still, the real political battle will be in the Senate, where it would take only a handful of Democrats to join unified Republicans to overcome any filibuster. And if history is any guide, moderate Democrats do side with their GOP colleagues when it comes to crime in D.C.

To that end, this month D.C. Council hired a well-connected Democratic lobbying firm to help consult on how to fight off congressional attempts to rewrite D.C.’s laws. And activists seem to understand that the fight has now moved to the halls of Congress: On Thursday Free D.C. helped lead a lobbying day on the Hill.

Need weekend plans? There's a big protest

On Saturday, September 6 at 11 a.m. the "We Are All D.C." national march against Trump's takeover will kick off in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park.