Trump and the District of Columbia

As I suggested would be the case yesterday, today I am going to discuss the actions of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump with regard to the District of Columbia. I have been unsure about whether I should stick to a simple play-by-play about what Trump is doing or provide my own commentary about his actions. Ultimately, I decided to do a bit of both, while still attempting to keep this post at a reasonable length. The bottom line from my perspective is that it is far too early to understand the importance of Trump's actions. Yesterday's moves by Trump could turn out to be a brief flash in the pan or they might end up being extremely consequential. In the parlance of election results, it is too early to call.

By way of background, while I am not a D.C.-native, I have lived in the District for nearly 40 years and long considered it home. So, I am not writing as an outsider, but rather as someone who will probably be personally affected by Trump's actions. This, of course, informs my perspective.

First, let's go over exactly which actions Trump took. Despite the hyperventilating across the political spectrum, he didn't really do all that much. Also, let me stress, everything that Trump has done up to this point has been completely legal. Number 1, Trump increased the number of federal law enforcement officers in the District and assigned them to combatting local crime. This has meant, for instance, taking FBI or DEA agents who might ordinarily be fighting international terrorism or drug cartels and converting them to beat cops. Everyone is welcome to their own opinion about the wisdom of that move. Second, Trump deployed approximately 800 members of the D.C. National Guard. Unlike states in which the governors control their National Guard units, D.C.'s National Guard is controlled by the President. My understanding is that the Guard members will be deployed in shifts and many of them will be utilized in support positions. Therefore, it is unlikely that the streets of D.C. will be filled with National Guard members. We might not even notice them. Third, and most controversial, Trump has invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. This says that if the President determines that there is an emergency, "he may direct the Mayor to provide him, and the Mayor shall provide, such services of the Metropolitan Police force as the President shall deem necessary and appropriate." However, there is an important stipulation in this section which says that the use of the Metropolitan Police is for "Federal" purposes. So, Trump can request that the D.C. police protect federal buildings and/or monuments or patrol the National Mall and other federal property, but he can't really direct them to stand on Swann Street at 3 a.m. so that 19-year-old former U.S. DOGE Service employees can safely get in their cars. Moreover, Trump's direction of the Metropolitan Police can only last for 30 days unless extended by a joint resolution of Congress, something that Senate Democrats would presumably block. It is wrong to say, as much of the press has, that Trump has "federalized" the police. He has, instead, assumed limited powers over the department for a limited time.

There is, of course, the question of whether any of these actions needed to be taken. The short answer to that is "no". The background, as I alluded to above, is that 19-year-old Edward "Big Balls" Coristine, a former DOGE staffer who is now employed by the federal government, was the victim of what has been described as an attempted carjacking at approximately 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning. During the event, Big Balls was bloodied and, reportedly, received a broken nose. But this occurred in a heavily-policed part of D.C. and the police actually arrived almost as soon as the confrontation started. Two of the perpetrators were arrested on the spot. It is really hard to fault the police in this instance. Nevertheless, it was enough to give Trump incentive to follow his authoritarian instincts. More broadly, while crime in D.C. rose during the pandemic, it has been dropping over the past two years and is now at a 30-year low. Nobody in D.C. is likely to say that crime is not a problem. It certainly is, but not the "emergency" that Trump portrayed.

I am compelled to point out some of the many ironies of this situation. The type of "emergency" for which Section 740 appears to have meant to address is much more like the January 6, 2021, attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building than it is today's crime problem. Of course, in that case, it was exactly the D.C. Metropolitan Police who deployed to protect federal interests and ultimately saved the day. In the process, many Metropolitan police officers were victims of crimes committed by those attacking the Capitol. Many of the perpetrators were, in turn, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. While Trump was President that day, he did not invoke Section 740. To the contrary, he had inspired those involved in the attack and took no steps to stop them until very late in the day. Just months ago, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 1,000 of those who were involved in the attacks on police. Now, Trump has taken control over the exact force upon which he has excused attacks.

It is also important when discussing Trump to remember that he is clearly cognitively impaired. He gave a long press conference yesterday, and many people seemed to have taken it seriously. In reality, it was little more than the rantings of a mad king. While I doubt anyone in the media will report it, at one point during the press conference, Trump went into a long digression about a time during his first administration in which he claimed that protesters had put ropes around statues of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson and were in the process of pulling them down. At the same time, according to Trump, protesters were walking towards the Jefferson Memorial. Trump said that, in the midst of all this, he signed a statute which would require 10-year prison terms for even thinking about damaging a monument. As soon as he signed the statute, Trump claimed, the protesters turned around and went home. Let's be clear. This entire story is completely contrived from Trump's imagination. He may believe that these events actually happened, but they did not. Yet, it is the word of someone unable to distinguish fantasy from reality that we are supposed to take as definitive about what federal actions will be taken towards D.C.? I don't think that we can make that assumption. Rather, I think much of what Trump discussed is irrelevant. For instance, he talked about fixing potholes and street medians. Of course, that would probably be welcomed by most D.C. residents, but from where would he get the authority for that and how would it be done? Trump talked about moving unhoused residents out of the city. He does have the authority to clear federal property of tent encampments, but where are they going to go? Nobody knows. My point is that we have the insane ramblings of a man with cognitive struggles on the one hand and the letter of the law on the other. In between are a bunch of Trump administration and D.C. officials trying to figure out what to do. It is anybody's guess where they will come down.

Based on Mayor Muriel Bowser's own press conference yesterday, she is hoping for a close adherence to the law, something that admittedly, when it comes to Trump, may be wishful thinking. She emphasized that she, as mayor, is still the legal head of the Metropolitan Police and that Pamela Smith remains the department's Chief. Bowser and Smith seemed to see Trump's actions as simply providing federal support for their own efforts and, in that regard, not necessarily unwelcome. Smith, in particular, stressed that the MPD has a long history of working closely with federal law enforcement and that she didn't expect the relationship to change much. The real test of this relationship will come if or when federal priorities deviate from those of local officials. What would happen, for instance, if Trump wants D.C. police to remove a tent encampment from D.C. property? That does not seem to directly involve federal interests and, therefore, would not be within Trump's authority. How would Bowser and Smith react then? I would not be surprised if D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwab ends up spending quite a bit of time in federal court contesting some of Trump's actions.

I also want to address an issue that may be the most controversial that I will discuss today. I do not believe that Trump would have taken the actions he did yesterday if he, much of his administration, and indeed, much of America did not view D.C. residents as second-class citizens. There is also a clear racial component to this. The fact that D.C. has a Black Mayor, a Black Chief of Police, and a plurality of Black residents clearly is important to the perception of many that D.C. residents are not capable of governing themselves. It is no coincidence that the provocation for Trump's actions was an attack on a White person by a group of Black teens. The language routinely employed by Trump and many of D.C.'s critics shows that they barely consider young Black people to be human. Trump and others regularly use language to describe D.C. and other urban environments that would be completely unacceptable if used by liberal politicians with regard to rural areas.

One theme that came through in Trump’s press conference is that the residents of DC — people like me — don’t matter. Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the others were fixated on people from elsewhere coming to visit D.C. They wanted the tourists' experience to be wonderful, but didn’t seem concerned about those of us who live here. Trump talked about the right of people to come to petition the federal government. But those of us who are D.C. residents don’t have that right. We don’t have a voting member of Congress or any Senate representation. If anything, Trump is only reinforcing our second-class status. This is a version of the division promoted by many politicians between “real Americans” who live in rural areas and those of us who live in urban areas and are not considered "real" Americans. At one point during yesterday's press conference, Bondi described a person overdosing at the D.C. Wharf and being revived after being administered Narcan. She said, "this won't happen again." It was unclear what she meant would not happen again. Would Narcan no longer be administered and the person, instead, be left to die? Would drug users somehow be prevented from going to the Wharf? I have no idea, but imagine a similar scene involving someone in West Virginia overdosing and being saved by Narcan? Would that person be treated with similar scorn or is it more likely that sympathy would be offered? When Bondi was Attorney General in Florida, the state faced a rash of opioid overdoses. Her reaction was not to blame the victims or local government, but to sue major pharmaceutical companies. She had sympathy for the overdose victims. Why does she view D.C. residents differently?

If I have not made it clear by now, I completely oppose Trump's actions yesterday. I assume that some will argue that means that I am opposed to reducing crime. No, I am opposed to reducing our democracy even further. D.C. residents did not vote to make Trump our mayor — though he is certainly welcome to run for that position if he can meet the eligibility requirements — and we don’t want him running our local government. The people of Midland, Texas would not accept federal control of their local government, so why should we? The question is not whether we support crime — almost nobody does — but whether we support democracy. Those who support Trump’s actions have signaled that they are comfortable with rule by unelected autocrats. They’ve made the same gamble that support for Trump always requires: the expectation that Trump is going to hurt the “other guys” and that those who support him will be fine, if not better off. There is plenty of evidence already that this is not a good bet. There is probably only one D.C. resident about whom Trump cares, and that is Jeff Bezos, and I am not even sure Trump really cares about him. The rest of us are meaningless. The best bet for us is that Trump continues living in his fantasy world and soon gets distracted by another shiny object. As for reducing crime in D.C., our city would be much better off learning what it can from Baltimore, where Mayor Brandon Scott has led two years of major reductions in crime and just observed the city's lowest number of homicides ever recorded in a single month. If the federal government wants to help, the first step should be to restore the $1 billion of our own money that Congress stripped from our budget. With that money, we can fix our own potholes and wouldn't need Trump's help.

The real danger is not what Trump is legally allowed to do, but that he will go beyond the bounds of his authority. If Trump chooses to act unlawfully, who is going to stop him? In that scenario, there are an almost unlimited number of possibilities for what can happen to D.C. But, if Trump ignores the law in D.C., it should be clear to everyone that would not simply be a D.C. problem, but everyone's problem. Trump might first come for D.C. residents and you might not be a D.C. resident and, therefore, you don't care, but, well you know the rest.