Led by Trump, GOP plans to reassert control over D.C. at stake in election

July 09, 2024

On a sweltering Saturday in D.C.’s Lincoln Park, at a 50th-anniversary celebration for the bronze statue of pioneering civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) took the stage with a plea for the crowd.

Amid D.C.’s “ongoing push for statehood,” Bethune’s legacy on voting rights remains particularly resonant in the city today, Bowser said. “And more than that, what we anticipate is many months to come of an assault on our very autonomy and home rule.”

The out-of-towners in the crowd could do something about it, she said — by voting. “Can we count on you to stand shoulder to shoulder with us to defend our autonomy?”

The mayor’s message was clear: For D.C., the stakes of the 2024 election are as high as they’ve ever been. Former president Donald Trump has threatened to “take over” the city, which he denigrated as a “horrible killing field” at the Republican National Convention. And Republicans have promised in their national platform to “reassert greater Federal Control over Washington, DC to restore Law and Order.”

Washingtonians don’t need to look far to speculate what that could mean for the deep-blue city: Over the past two years, Republicans in Congress have attacked D.C. policies with historic success and stunning regularity, particularly on crime and policing — providing a clear precursor to what a Republican trifecta in the White House and Congress could look like should Democrats flounder in November and Trump win the presidency.

“If he gets back in power, more than any president before him, we think he will focus on D.C. and do everything from taking back our home rule to trying to get rid of whatever bills we have passed,” Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting delegate to Congress, said in an interview this month. “It would be a terrible catastrophe for D.C.,” she said.

Norton had previously doubted President Biden’s ability to defeat Trump, but that was before Biden’s seismic move on Sunday, in which he dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Harris to take his place as the Democratic presidential nominee.

With a notable exception, Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate have provided a buffer against most Republican-led efforts to block D.C. policies. But if that buffer disappears, Republicans will have much less trouble blocking liberal D.C. policies they oppose, particularly if Trump is in the White House.

The former president has frequently threatened to exert his will on D.C. if he is elected to another term — rhetoric that D.C. officials have at times written off as bluster but that increasingly worries them as the election gets closer.

At a campaign rally in Florida this month, Trump said his administration would “take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C.” — down to the granularity of repairing roads and medians and removing graffiti, Trump said — “and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime.”

Trump has previously broached sending in the National Guard to combat crime in cities “until law and order is restored” — of special concern to city officials in D.C. Unlike in states, the president controls D.C.’s National Guard, which Trump mustered outside the White House in 2020 to disperse protests against police brutality. His administration also had considered taking control of the D.C. police force, alarming city officials — though he did not ultimately take this drastic step.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), has been among the most outspoken Senate Republicans against D.C. policing policies. He led the charge in the Senate last year to block D.C.’s major police accountability legislation, saying at the time it was “a disgrace that the capital of the most powerful nation on earth has become so dangerous.” Though violent crime is down this year, a historic spike in violent crime last year helped fueled congressional action on D.C. crime and policing. And Vance’s disapproval measure succeeded, with some Democrats voting to nullify the policing bill, too. But Biden vetoed the effort. Trump would have been expected to sign it.

Sharing the clip of Trump’s comments at the Florida rally on social media, D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) countered that if Republicans “truly cared” about public safety in D.C., they would do their part in Congress by swiftly confirming D.C. judges to the bench — a perennial issue for D.C. no matter what party is in charge — and, among other things, by boosting staffing for the U.S. attorney’s office, which prosecutes adult D.C. crime.

“Don’t forget what’s at risk in this election for D.C.,” she added.

Trump has called for major changes to the federal workforce that could also affect D.C., such as eliminating civil service protections, which could lead to the firing of thousands of federal employees, and shuttering the U.S. Education Department. The remote-work revolution spurred by the pandemic had already hurt D.C.’s economy, as commercial and federal office buildings sat vacant or underused. Such a plan could add insult to injury and affect thousands of families in the region.

Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that while the president does have broad law enforcement and military power in the nation’s capital, the president can’t unilaterally direct D.C. policy like a kind of “super mayor.” Congress, however, has more power in that regard — though the Senate filibuster would still be a hurdle in advancing drastic proposals affecting D.C.

“The politics around D.C. have changed since the first Trump administration,” Thorning said. “Congressional Republicans have paid a lot more attention to what’s been going on in the District. The District has really become a microcosm, or a political laboratory, around which members of Congress have tried to exert an unusual amount of influence compared to recent years.”

Like Trump, congressional Republicans have similarly threatened to take over the District — by repealing the D.C. Home Rule Act, essentially abolishing local D.C. government.

This month, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced that moonshot proposal in the Senate, joining a trio of House Republicans who premiered an identical proposal last year. Like theirs, Lee’s legislation omits any contemplation of how Congress would plan to run a city of roughly 700,000 people if it repealed D.C. home rule. (His office didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) reacted incredulously to Lee’s proposal.

“He has no concept of what he’s doing,” Mendelson said to The Washington Post. “That Congress is going to take over the District? They can’t pass a budget on time.”

House Republicans once again proposed a bevy of budget riders, or policy restrictions, in the House appropriations bill affecting D.C. — and they are slated to debate even more of such amendments, many of which are not expected to become reality but offer a window into Republicans’ fixation on D.C. policy.

In the appropriations bill, House Republicans would continue years-long restrictions that prevent D.C. from subsidizing abortions for low-income women and from taxing and regulating recreational-use marijuana, which Mendelson and Bowser have long argued creates an unsafe “gray market.” But Republicans would also undo D.C.’s bans on right turns on red at many intersections, prohibit the use of automated traffic enforcement cameras, block new vehicle emissions standards, block noncitizen voting in local elections, allow people with weapons permits from any state to carry concealed handguns in D.C. and on the Metro, and block the police accountability law, among other things.

One rider that could cause some major fireworks would prohibit enforcement of a D.C. law protecting people from discrimination based on their reproductive health-care choices, such as using birth control or getting an abortion. This provision caused a rift in the Republican Party last year that ultimately tanked the entire financial services appropriations bill after a group of moderate Republicans strongly objected. There are signs that same battle is brewing again: A group of the same five Republicans from California and New York filed an amendment seeking to strip the provision from the bill.

As Republicans work out lingering disagreements and seek to avoid the same downfall as last year, it’s unclear when House leadership will put the appropriations bill up for a vote, which was supposed to happen this week but has been postponed.

Most other Republicans proposed adding more riders aimed at the District. Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) would like to defund the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, noting it offers some services that aid migrants. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) would like to get rid of D.C. rules prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, while also prohibiting racial equity training and defunding the mayor and council’s offices of racial equity. She would also reverse D.C. requirements for child-care workers to have higher-education degrees or certifications, accusing D.C. of “overregulating” the child-care industry.

“Our amendments aim to refocus the D.C. government on real issues affecting residents and visitors, rather than turning our nation’s capital into a far-left experiment,” Mace said in an emailed statement. She accused the District of focusing on “DEI” or “allowing biological men into women’s restrooms” rather than addressing violent crime, which is down in D.C. by 33 percent compared with this time last year.

Several of the proposed amendments by Rep. Andrew R. Garbarino (R-N.Y.) focus on police accountability and transparency efforts, drawing applause from D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton. One seeks to block D.C.’s ability to carry out a recently passed (though not yet funded) law that would create a searchable database of sustained allegations of police misconduct, including the names of disciplined officers.

Two other proposed amendments involve the Office of the D.C. Auditor: One seeks to restrict the auditor’s office from investigating certain alleged police misconduct, a move D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson said would not actually hinder any of the office’s evaluations of D.C. policing. Another would defund the deputy auditor for public safety, calling the position part of the council’s “anti-police agenda.” The auditor’s office and the police union have been embroiled in litigation over a 2022 audit about officers terminated for misconduct who later got their jobs back.

“These amendments are part of my ongoing efforts to support law enforcement officers who have long been under attack through anti-police policies and rhetoric,” Garbarino wrote in an emailed statement. “It is past time we end the left’s war on our brave men and women in blue.”

Norton said she expected many of the amendments to fail. The Democratic-controlled Senate has typically kept the “legacy” riders on abortion and marijuana but has not entertained Republicans’ wish list of D.C. restrictions.

“It’s hard to think about being in worse shape than we are now, but losing control of the Senate would certainly do it,” she said.

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