Trump steps up efforts to exert control over DC

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 granted “home rule” in the 1970s, allowing D.C. to have a local government. Congress maintains authority over D.C., however, and still approves the District’s annual budget. Historically, Congress has included language in stopgap funding bills that allow D.C. to continue spending at the budget it approved for the current year, even as the federal government is held to previous years’ funding levels.

But D.C. officials say that under a stopgap bill passed earlier this month to keep the government running at 2024 levels through September, D.C. is treated like a federal agency and is being forced to revert back to its previous fiscal year’s budget levels.

Trump has urged the GOP-led House to “immediately” bring up the bill, which has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support. In his call to the House, the president said he planned to work with Bowser to “clean up” the Capital and make the District “tough on crime like never before,” while also adding: “We need our Great Police back on the street, with no excuses from the Mayor, or anyone else.”

But conservatives have already been coming out against the measure, voicing frustration with the Democratic-led District and demanding “requirements” for D.C. to be able to spend its own local tax dollars.

It’s unclear how soon the House will move on the legislation, though recent reporting indicated members could consider the bill before lawmakers’ scheduled recess in April. The Hill has reached out to House GOP leadership for comment.

Members on both sides have said the omission of the longstanding language allowing D.C. to operate at its own budget was a “mistake.” But the bipartisan effort to address the matter has become a target of renewed criticism of the District on the GOP side.

“D.C. is such a broken bureaucracy that I would like to see a lot of reforms done,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) said last Tuesday when asked about the D.C. bill. Asked if D.C. should be able to operate under its own budget, he added, “I think D.C. should be retrograded to Maryland, like the Arlington part was done to Virginia.”

The House’s delay in bringing up the D.C. bill has prompted concern from Democrats, who had been pessimistic about its chances of passage in light of growing opposition from conservatives. Others have also pointed to the recent error to emphasize the District’s case for statehood.

While Norton said in a recent statement that she agreed with Trump that “D.C. should be able to spend its own local funds at its own locally enacted levels,” she also said the current “ordeal” highlights “the need for D.C. statehood so that D.C. can finally govern itself to the same extent afforded to the states, including making decisions about how to use its own local funds.”

D.C., which is governed by a council of elected representatives and a mayor, operates under a law that stipulates Congress review all legislation passed by the D.C. Council before it becomes law.

The president has the authority to appoint D.C. judges and can join in with Congress to step in on local legislation, which former President Biden did in 2023 when he signed into law legislation to overturn a D.C. crime bill.

Republicans had championed a resolution of disapproval that blocked implementation of a D.C. law and Biden, as well as 33 Senate Democrats, also supported it. Bowser also tried to veto the crime bill but the city council overrode it.

But Biden’s move, which was the first time in more than three decades that a D.C.-passed bill was nixed by Congress and the White House, raised questions over the Democratic Party’s typical support for D.C. home rule.

“They’ve been attacking home rule for quite some time,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said of Republicans last week. “They started chipping away at it last term with some of the overrides on criminal justice measures that were decided on by the city.”

“And so, no matter how a person feels about it, those were the first real violations of D.C.’s kind of sovereignty and ability to govern themselves,” she told The Hill.

Meanwhile, Trump has flirted with the idea of increasing the federal government’s control over D.C. since inauguration day.

Trump suggested earlier this month that the federal government could take over D.C. and that he wants to make the nation’s capital “the talk of the world” during a speech at the Department of Justice.

“We’re working with the administration, and if the administration can’t do the job … we’re gonna have to take it back and run it through the federal government,” the president said. “But we hope the administration is going to be able — so far, they’ve been doing very well. The mayor has been doing a good job.”

And, in February, Trump told reporters that the federal government “should govern the District of Columbia,” arguing that then it would be “absolutely flawless.”