President Trump Asserts Federal Control Of Washington, D.C.

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House.

And NPR's Brian Mann is with us too.

Hi, Hi, Brian.

Hi, hey there, guys.

Today, we're talking about President Trump's move to exercise more control over Washington, D.C.

The president held a news conference to discuss his plans this morning.

I'm announcing a historic action to

rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.

This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're

going to take our capital back.

We're taking it back.

Now, Trump says he's deploying the National Guard and that the federal government is taking control of the city's police department.

That's for up to the next 30 days.

Tam, what did you hear from Trump during that news conference?

Yeah, so he is invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.

That goes back to the 1970s.

And Washington, D.C.

is a unique place because it isn't a state and it is a city that is basically the capital city where the president has much more power to do things than he does in any other American city.

And so what he is doing here is flooding the zone.

He says that the city has been overtaken by violent gangs, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people and he's not going to let it happen anymore.

Another thing that stands out from this is that he is clearly sending a signal to other American cities.

He wants them to see what he is doing and to change.

Yeah, I think one of the things that you heard Trump doing in that press conference was laying out that there is an emergency in Washington, D.C.

He declared a formal crime emergency, and that's necessary in order to invoke this clause that gives him this power to take over the city police department for 30 days.

And yeah, he clearly also was laying out this indictment of the way that blue democratic cities are governed.

He says that under his leadership, it's going to be a lot tougher.

He talked about the police and the National Guard really, really coming in with full force to sweep away what he describes as a totally lawless city.

Yeah, and how about that claim, Brian?

I mean, what do the data say about violent crime in D.C.?

Yeah, this is really not supported by the facts.

We have facts from the city of Washington, D.C.

They, of course, track their data, And this has been validated by the Justice Department.

Under the Biden administration, back in January, the DOJ released a detailed statement talking about crime, violent crime hitting a 30-year low.

Robberies are down in the city, carjackings, which have been a focus for the president, those are down, assaults with dangerous weapons down.

So this is one of those instances where President Trump is unveiling a sweeping new policy, you know, troops on the streets of the nation's capital based on claims that aren't borne out by facts.

President Trump often governs by anecdote.

And in this case, he has some personal stories that are driving him here.

Someone who was part of the first Trump administration, who was killed in a carjacking some time ago, as well as a former Doge employee who stepped in during an attempted carjacking and was beaten up by

Washington, D.C.

youth.

And so the president is taking the anecdotes as well as, you know, like homeless encampments that he sees along the side of the freeway, and he is projecting this to be a massive emergency where the entire city is unruly and unsafe.

And it's important to say, Sarah, that once again, what the president does is he just says that those crime numbers he doesn't like are fake.

He, in this press conference today, dismissed them.

He said that he doesn't trust those numbers.

And so you have this very different narrative that is now causing this huge shift in the nation's capital.

Aaron Powell, so from a practical standpoint, Trump's talked about bringing in the guard, taking over the city police force.

What does that really look like?

How will this play out?

Well, what we've already seen, Sarah, is federal agents out on the streets in the nation's capital.

I was out last night walking with FBI agents, DEA agents, agents from Homeland Security, doing patrols, just walking.

And at times it was a little bit surreal.

I mean, you're talking about Washington, D.C.

in the summertime.

It's peaceful.

In most areas, it's very safe.

There were tourists and locals out, you know, eating ice cream and just enjoying its summertime.

And there amongst them were these men and women in uniform, some carrying rifles, some wearing masks.

Now it appears that this will escalate pretty quickly.

We're talking hundreds of National Guard soldiers on the streets of the Capitol.

We've already seen this earlier this summer in Los Angeles.

And so we're going to have to see exactly how these troops deploy and exactly what their mission will look like.

Tam mentioned Trump's focus on homelessness.

What happens to the people who are living out in public in D.C.?

Do we have any indication?

Experts I've spoken to, people who work with people who are unhoused, people who have mental illness and addiction, say they're really troubled by this piece.

The president says he's going to flush unhoused people out of Washington, D.C.

He says there's going to be some kind of new housing that's going to be made available to them far away from Washington, but there are no details here.

And I was in one of those homeless camps yesterday and people said they were frightened by the president's rhetoric.

They're angry that he's targeting them.

But at this point, we have absolutely no idea where federal officials will send people who don't have any place to live.

And this is another thing that President Trump campaigned on.

He talked about wanting to move homeless encampments out, away from the cities, creating some sort of other place where they would go.

There was never a lot of clarity or specifics about how this would work or even whether it was legal, but this is part of the vision that he outlined when he was campaigning.

Obviously, the federal government has a unique role in D.C.

They can exercise more control there than other parts of the country.

But does Trump have the power to do what he's doing here?

As you say, in Washington, D.C., it's a unique situation, and the president can absolutely exercise more power.

We saw this in the first term when he also deployed federal law enforcement during the George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C.

There are checks, though.

Taking over of the police force, you're required to notify Congress within 48 hours.

And Congress is supposed to have a say if this is going to continue longer.

Some in Congress, some Republicans in Congress, have agitated for ending D.C.

home rule.

It's not clear that the votes are there to actually do something like that, but this is Trump asserting power and asking for permission later.

This is something that he has done in any number of other ways in the federal government since taking office in his second term, often using declarations of emergency of various types to move forward, sort of act first and get permission later or dare people to sue, even in cases where there are open questions about whether it meets the definition of an emergency.

And this, Sarah, is going to be one more place where we're going to see whether Congress, controlled by Republicans, are willing to assert what is clearly their authority.

The president has a very short window of time where he can take this kind of action.

Congress is supposed to step in within about a month, but we'll see.

All right, we're going to take a quick break.

More in just a moment.

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We were just talking about the fact that Congress could step in here, although that may be less likely given that Republicans control Congress.

But what has the political reaction been so far, Tam, to the president's announcement?

I think it's been fairly predictable, which is that Democrats are pointing to these crime statistics that say, you know, crime is down in Washington, D.C.

And they are raising concerns about the president's desire to assert authority in all reaches of of American life.

But Republicans are cheering him on.

And many, particularly, Republicans in Washington are upset about crime in the city, have anecdotal experiences with crime in Washington, D.C.

over their time in the city, and they are perfectly happy to have the president doing this.

Representative James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee in the Republican majority, issued a statement a short time ago saying he is going to hold hearings on this in September, but also applauding the president.

He issued a statement saying, I'm quoting here, President Trump is rightly using executive power to take bold and necessary action to crack down on crime and restore law and order in Washington, D.C.

You know, in taking these actions, the White House has been comparing these decisions to Trump's immigration enforcement tactics.

I wonder what you both make of that comparison.

I think it's bigger than just immigration.

President Trump likes to use power.

He likes to show force.

He has done this repeatedly.

You know, he talked about having this meeting coming up with Russian President Vladimir Putin and how disappointing it is that he has to be focused on urban crime when this meeting is coming up.

He talks about wanting the world to perceive the United States

in a positive light.

And in many cases, wanting to have the authority that others have

to just clean things up.

Yeah, I think there's another way that a lot of experts, Sarah, see this as a really big escalation, right?

When you're talking about the U.S.-Mexico border, you're talking about enforcement actions against non-citizens.

Here, what you're talking about is using the U.S.

military against American citizens.

And in many cases, we're talking against people who are poor and homeless.

They're in many cases mentally ill and experiencing drug addiction.

A lot of the experts I've been talking to, not just today, but over the last couple of weeks since President Trump issued an executive order cracking down on people who are unhoused, who have mental illness and addiction, a lot of the experts I've been talking to say they really worry about these kinds of sweeping actions using law enforcement, using this kind of very tough rhetoric.

I think there is a concern.

You know, we've seen migrants being swept off American streets by people wearing masks.

Right now, the president is talking about

sweeping unhoused American citizens off of the streets.

There's no clear signal about where they're going to go or where they're going to be sent.

So I'm hearing a lot of alarm from people who are saying that this is something that could look very similar to the immigration enforcement actions we're seeing, only this time very vulnerable people and very vulnerable people who are American citizens are really the focus of this.

What does that messaging suggest about what to expect here, what might come next?

I covered a specific rally in 2016 in rural Wisconsin where then-candidate Trump was rolling out his strategy for addressing urban crime.

And this is a playbook he has come back to again and again and again.

This is central to his narrative about this country, about American carnage, which he has repeatedly promised he will end.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, Tam, when I was watching this press conference, just about the really many years over which Trump has talked about democratic-controlled cities and sort of raised the specter of crime in these cities and suggested that Democrats essentially don't know how to run things.

He's also talked about these issues in racialized terms.

I think it's important to note.

Today, he talked about several other cities besides Washington, D.C., among them Oakland and Chicago and a couple of others.

And of course, the federal government does not have that unique relationship with those cities.

That said, could we see Trump try to take similar steps outside D.C.?

During his remarks today, he mentioned several cities, as you say, and he says, we're not going to let it happen.

We're not going to lose our cities over this, and this will go further.

We're starting very strongly with D.C., which certainly indicates that there's more to come.

He was asked about it later, and he said, well, you know, maybe some of these other cities will self-clean up.

They will end cashless bail and other policies that he credits with creating more crime in American cities, particularly run by Democrats.

So he certainly wants more of this.

Whether he can get it is not totally clear.

He certainly sent in the National Guard in California, in Los Angeles, without the request of the state's governor and against the wishes of the mayor and the governor.

In the end, that kind of fizzled out and many of those National Guard troops have been deactivated.

But it is something that the president is

continuing to dangle out there.

Before I let you go, what else are you both watching for as this unfolds?

I'm really focused on what's happening to people in severe addiction and people experiencing mental illness.

That's a lot of the people who are living unhoused in America.

The President has made it clear he wants them off the streets.

But in speaking with the White House, officials there tell me they don't want to spend more money on this.

They don't want to expand the institutional care available for people in this kind of severe medical crisis.

And so this is a really immediate thing that's going to happen to a lot of families.

A lot of people in the U.S.

are going to see loved ones caught up in these sweeps.

But as of this moment, we simply don't have a clear signal about where people who are homeless in the U.S.

are going to be sent, where people who are in addiction are going to be sent, people with severe mental illness, what will happen to them.

This White House hasn't given us any clear idea.

I am just watching to see whether it works and

how even that is defined.

It is a very dramatic escalation to have this level of force on the streets of an American city.

Does it lead to a reduction in crime?

Does it affect tourism?

You know, is it this overnight sensation that the president is promising or not?

Does he lose

interest?

Or does he try to spread this to the rest of the country?

And what does that look like?

All right.

Well, let's leave it there for today.

Brian, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

And I'm Tamra Keith.

I cover the White House.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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