Wilson Building Bulletin: Jeanine Pirro brings her brand of justice to D.C.

Here’s a sentence I never expected to write: A significant part of D.C.’s criminal justice system is now in the hands of a former Fox News personality. Judge Jeanine Pirro was sworn in as the Interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. on Wednesday, taking over the largest such federal office in the country – and one that is responsible for prosecuting most violent crimes in the city.

Pirro replaces Ed Martin, a Trump acolyte who was too controversial even for some Senate Republicans to confirm. Martin had something of a rocky four-month run: He threatened legal action against everyone from Georgetown University and medical journals to Wikipedia and a D.C. medical cannabis dispensary; he equated drawing on Teslas with washable markers to domestic terrorism; and he waffled on his apparent ties to a neo-Nazi sympathizer. 

The 51st was on hand when he made his first public appearance at a D.C. community meeting, where he promised to move more gun cases into federal court (where penalties are harsher) while getting tripped up on a trick question about how many gun stores there are in the city. (Answer: none.) More recently, he said President Trump was responsible for a 25% decrease in violent crime in the city, despite crime having dropped last year by even more than that.

While Martin was less bombastic locally than on national issues, that seemed to change this week as he headed for the door. At his final press conference on the job, he called for a discussion on D.C.’s status as a sanctuary city for immigrants and “if that means that home rule is on the table to go away, well then so be it.” (He later conceded that he didn’t know whether Trump shares that view.) Martin also appeared on Tucker Carlson’s online TV show, where he strangely declared that upwards of 90% of the city’s residents live in poverty. (The overall poverty rate is closer to 14%.)

Pirro herself is a former prosecutor and judge, but no less a devoted supporter of the president (and, like Martin, supporter of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him). And while it remains to be seen whether she continues Martin’s unpredictable churn, CNN reported this week that some employees in the office hope that “despite her public persona as a bellicose cable news host, Pirro will bring a more stable leadership presence to the position responsible for running federal criminal investigations in D.C.”

The final (budget) countdown

It’s often a big deal when the proposed annual D.C. budget is unveiled, but this year the bigger deal is that we finally know when the budget will be unveiled. (May 27, for those who choose to celebrate.)

There’s been plenty of turmoil in the Wilson Building in recent weeks over the fate of the proposed budget for 2026, which Mayor Muriel Bowser was initially supposed to present to the D.C. Council in early April. That never happened, albeit for a reason most people agreed with: Congress had just blown a $1.1 billion hole in the current year’s budget, forcing the city’s number-crunchers into an unexpected scramble to deal with likely service cuts and possible furloughs.

The delay in getting a budget out continued through April and into May, though, with little apparent clarity from Bowser’s office on when, exactly, lawmakers might get to see one. Most other council work stalled (since councilmembers had been expecting to be reviewing the budget, itself an all-encompassing 70-day slog). Council Chairman Phil Mendelson set deadlines and briefly threatened to sue Bowser, and frustrations reached something of a boiling point this week as the council demanded some type of timeline from the mayor.

The great denouement came Wednesday, when Bowser, the council, and the city’s independent CFO locked themselves in a room (we tried to get in, to no avail) for what seemed like a peace summit of sorts, or maybe intragovernmental marriage counseling. Whatever it was, it worked: A budget-release date has been set. 

"We are in very unprecedented times... and so we all have been working in earnest and good faith to deliver a budget that's good for our city. That will impact schedules," said Bowser after the meeting. "We have approached this process with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer."

Peace reins once again in the Wilson Building, though it may be short lived – the 2026 budget is expected to be a tough one, likely full of spending cuts that lawmakers probably won’t like. Additionally, the council will have to consider a revised budget for the current year, and that one is going to spell out the painful measures the city will be taking to address the spending mess caused by Congress. 

A cell phone ban for D.C. schools… but when?

Arlington County already does it, as does Montgomery County. Many D.C. schools also ban cell phone use by students in some capacity. But what the city doesn’t have is an overarching policy prohibiting the use of cell phones across all public and charter schools – and it remains unclear when one could take effect.

On Tuesday the D.C. Council advanced a bill that would create such a citywide policy, requiring that all 251 public and charter schools ban cell phones – with limited exceptions depending on specific school and student circumstances. But at the behest of city officials, the bill was amended to delay the implementation of the cell phone ban by 15 months, until the start of the 2026-27 school year. That, they said, would give individual schools additional time to determine how they would enforce such a ban and absorb any costs of doing so.

But the prospect of a delay has frustrated a number of lawmakers, who say the arguments in favor of the ban also make the case for imposing it quickly. “Academic outcomes are on the line

Why are we waiting a whole other year to help our children?” said Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, the original author of the bill. “I would say to schools: You don’t have to wait, because it is beneficial,” agreed Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker.

Some of their colleagues, though, urged a slower-going approach. At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie said that the costs of implementing a ban could be significant for some schools; he pointed to Paul Public Charter School, where the cost of the cell phone ban included $200,000 to buy pouches that students use to store their phones during the day. He also said that schools need to think through the disciplinary consequences of enforcing the ban, especially in a city where the impacts of discipline have disproportionately fallen on Black students.

Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George took the side of some students who testified on the bill in March, telling lawmakers that cell phones can help keep kids safe. “The nature of our city sometimes lends us to national events. Wanting to have some flexibility to be able to contact family may be a necessity,” she said, referencing security scares she remembers when she was a student like the September 11 attacks and the D.C. sniper.

But At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson seemed less sympathetic to student concerns over a possible cell phone ban. “We’re literally asking you to put down your phone for seven hours and you're having such a visceral reaction? That indicates you may have a problem being able to disconnect,” she said.

Pinto says she will try to split the difference ahead of a first formal vote on the bill in June; she tells The 51st that she’s considering January 2026 as a possible date for the citywide policy to take effect. 

The background on the bill, plus all the public testimony that was received, is available here.