How Trump’s D.C. takeover reveals Republicans’ misplaced legislative priorities
By Michael Jones
When Congress returns from its monthlong break after Labor Day, it will have a long to-do list to complete before the end of the year.
Government funding expires at the end of September and there’s currently little optimism among Democrats that the Trump administration and congressional Republicans will negotiate in good faith an agreement to avoid a shutdown. The House and Senate must also unite around the same version of the annual defense policy before the end of the year. Both of these are must-pass pieces of legislation that require cooperation from both parties.
Additionally, bipartisan efforts to force votes on legislation to release the Epstein Files and to ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from trading stocks will likely demand floor time. And these are just the domestic issues. We haven’t even touched on Congress’s role in facilitating an end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
But these pressing matters haven’t stopped some Republicans on the Hill from promising to offer legislation that would further strip Washington, D.C., of its home rule, a movement that’s accelerated in the wake of President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the District’s police department and militarization of the National Guard.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has introduced a resolution to eliminate the 30-day limit on presidential control of the Metropolitan Police Department under a provision of the 1973 law that allowed D.C. residents to elect a mayor and city council. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has joined Ogles in proposing a bill named after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that would dismantle the District’s mayoralty and council, effectively erasing its local self-governance and placing all authority under Congress.
While the administration’s immediate justification centers on public safety, Democratic sources I’ve spoken to tell me the deeper story is about misplaced Republican priorities and the broader drift reshaping the party.
“It says they’re cowards carrying his water,” a House Democrat texted me last night about their colleagues across the aisle.
When Congress passed the Home Rule Act in the early 1970s, it established a limited form of self-government for the nation’s capital for the first time in nearly a century. While the law gave D.C. control over local affairs, Congress retained ultimate authority to override local legislation, control the city’s budget and hold exclusive jurisdiction over federal matters.
The act was an attempt to strike a fragile balance between democratic self-rule and congressional oversight. But this tension is now under renewed strain as congressional Republicans and President Trump aggressively seek to reassert federal control over the city’s governance and law enforcement.
To be clear, GOP attempts to end home rule aren’t new, but it’s worth revisiting how we arrived at this current episode.
Earlier this month, a 19-year-old former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, who goes by the nickname “Big Balls,” was allegedly attacked in Logan Circle, one of D.C.’s most expensive neighborhoods, while intervening to defend a woman from a suspected carjacking by a group of approximately 10 juveniles.
He reportedly pushed the woman into her vehicle and then confronted the teens, who assaulted him before scattering when the police arrived. (Officers arrested two 15-year-olds for unarmed carjacking.) The former employee, who now works at the Social Security Administration, sustained a concussion; his iPhone 16—estimated at $1,000—was said to have been stolen.
President Trump posted a graphic photo of the bloodied victim on his Truth Social app and repeated claims of widespread juvenile crime, demanding that minors aged 14 and up be prosecuted as adults.
As a result of the incident, Trump invoked Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which provides a narrow window for presidential intervention in emergencies, to federalize MPD and activate the National Guard, which he can do for 30 days unless extended by Congress.
The administration has deployed 800 National Guard troops and hundreds of federal law enforcement agents to D.C. streets, including officers from the DEA, ICE, FBI and ATF. Governors from Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia have contributed state Guard personnel as well, in a dramatic show of force. (The governors of Vermont and Maryland rejected Trump’s request to send state troops.)
Trump’s action triggered a wave of legal, political and public backlash. D.C.’s attorney general immediately filed suit against the Trump administration, calling the takeover a violation of the city’s limited right to self-governance. A federal judge partially sided with the District, blocking Trump’s emergency appointee from assuming full control of MPD operations and affirming that its police chief must remain in her role since Section 740 does not extend to wholesale management or personnel decisions.
Mayor Bowser also condemned the takeover and residents have taken to the streets in protest, gathering in Dupont Circle and outside the White House to voice opposition to what many view as an unconstitutional power grab. Civil rights advocates and D.C. statehood supporters have characterized the move as a direct attack on the city’s Black-majority population and its right to local autonomy.
Meanwhile, Trump has suggested that cities like New York, Baltimore and Chicago should be subjected to the same kind of federal oversight he’s imposed on D.C., reflecting a pattern hard to ignore: All three cities are led by Black mayors, and each has long been the target of conservative rhetoric about crime, disorder and “Democrat-run cities.”
It’s worth noting that Trump’s response to the Big Balls incident echoes many of the same punitive and inflammatory themes that defined his earlier views on criminal justice. During the Central Park Five case in 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York after five Black and Latino teens were arrested for the assault of a white jogger in the Manhattan park. Even after DNA evidence cleared the men and the real perpetrator confessed, Trump refused to apologize, saying in 2016, “They admitted they were guilty.”
In both instances, the president targets youth of color as inherently criminal or dangerous, using dehumanizing language such as “thugs” and calling for harsh punishment, including treating minors as adults while advocating for long prison sentences and eroding legal protections for minors, despite due process concerns.
While Trump and his allies have framed the takeover as a response to spiraling violent crime, official data shows that homicides and violent offenses in D.C. have actually fallen to their lowest levels in decades. The MPD has come under scrutiny, however, amid internal investigations into whether commanders manipulated crime statistics to paint a more favorable picture. (These allegations prompted the administrative leave of its commanding officer.)
“I think people are tired and have checked out. We need to change the [narrative],” the member told me. “It’s soldiers on our streets when crime has gone down.”
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) have reintroduced legislation that would strip the president of authority under Section 740, fully vesting control of the MPD and D.C. National Guard in the local government, mirroring the authority governors hold in states.
Simultaneously, Norton, along with House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), and Van Hollen, have put forth a joint resolution to terminate Trump’s takeover of the MPD, arguing that no genuine emergency exists and that the move undermines D.C. self-governance.
But for Norton, the pattern of Republican interference in local governance only reinforces what she’s long argued: The fight for D.C. autonomy can’t be fully won without statehood.
“There are more than 700,000 D.C. residents, and they are worthy and capable of governing themselves,” Norton said in a statement last week. “The ultimate solution to ensure D.C. has control of its own resources is passage of my D.C. statehood bill, which would provide D.C. the same protections the states enjoy.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
