Federal becomes local: The nation's capital finds itself at the center of a Donald Trump maelstrom

WASHINGTON (AP) — The questions came fast to the mayor of the nation's capital, many of them designed to get her to say something harsh about Donald Trump — in particular, the president's freshly announced plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and call in the National Guard.

But on Monday afternoon, for the most part, third-term Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser didn’t take the bait. She calmly laid out the city’s case that crime has been dropping steadily and said Trump’s perceived state of emergency simply doesn’t match the numbers.

She also flatly stated that the capital city's hands are tied and that her administration has little choice but to comply. “We could contest that," she said of Trump's definition of a crime emergency, "but his authority is pretty broad.”

Her comments came hours after Trump, flanked by the people who oversee the military and the Justice Department, said he would be taking over Washington’s police department and activating 800 members of the National Guard in the hopes of reducing crime — the same crime that city officials stress is already falling noticeably.

Toward the end, the mayoral composure slipped a bit when Bowser made a reference to Trump’s “so-called emergency” and concluded, “I'm going to work every day to make sure it's not a complete disaster.”

The city and Trump have had a bumpy relationship

While Trump invokes his plan by saying that “we're going to take our capital back,” Bowser and the MPD maintain that violent crime overall in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low after a sharp rise in 2023. Carjackings, for example, dropped about 50% in 2024, and are down again this year. More than half of those arrested, however, are juveniles, and the extent of those punishments is a point of contention for the Trump administration.

Bowser spent much of the Trump's first term in office openly sparring with the president. She fended off his initial plans for a military parade through the streets and stood in public opposition when he called in a multi-agency flood of federal law enforcement to confront anti-police brutality protesters in summer 2020. She later had the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in giant yellow letters on the street about a block from the White House.

In Trump's second term, backed by Republican control of both houses of Congress, Bowser has walked a public tightrope for months, emphasizing common ground with the Trump administration on issues such as the successful effort to bring the NFL's Washington Commanders back to the District of Columbia.

She watched with open concern for the city streets as Trump finally got his military parade this summer. Her decision to dismantle Black Lives Matter Plaza earlier this year served as a neat metaphor for just how much the power dynamics between the two executives had evolved.

Now that fraught relationship enters uncharted territory as Trump has followed through on months of what many D.C. officials had quietly hoped were empty threats. The new standoff has cast Bowser in a sympathetic light, even among her longtime critics.

“It's a power play and we're an easy target,” said Clinique Chapman, CEO of the D.C. Justice Lab. A frequent critic of Bowser, whom she accuses of “over policing our youth” with the recent expansions of Washington's youth curfew, Chapman said Trump's latest move “is not about creating a safer D.C. It's just about power.”

Where the power actually lies

Bowser contends that all of the power resides with Trump, and her administration can do little other than comply and make the best of it. The native Washingtonian spent much of Monday's press conference tying Trump's takeover to the larger issue of statehood for the District of Columbia. As long as Washington D.C., remains a federal enclave with limited autonomy under the 1973 Home Rule Act, she said it will remain vulnerable to such takeovers.

“We know that access to our democracy is tenuous," Bowser said. "That is why you have heard me, and many many Washingtonians before me, advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia.”

Section 740 of the Home Rule Act allows the president to take over Washington’s police for 48 hours, with possible extensions to 30 days, during times of emergencies. No president has done so before, said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's D.C. chapter.

“That should alarm everyone,” she said, “not just in Washington.”

For Trump, the effort to take over public safety in Washington reflects an escalation of his aggressive approach to law enforcement. The District of Columbia’s status as a congressionally established federal district gives him a unique opportunity to push his tough-on-crime agenda, though he has not proposed solutions to the root causes of homelessness or crime.

“Let me be crystal clear," Attorney General Pam Bondi said during Trump's announcement news conference. “Crime in D.C.,” she asserted, "is ending and ending today.”

The action fits a presidential pattern

Trump's declaration of a state of emergency fits the general pattern of his second term in office: He has declared states of emergency on issues ranging from border protection to economic tariffs, enabling him to essentially rule via executive order. In many cases, he has moved forward while the courts sorted them out.

Bowser's claims about successfully driving down violent crime rates received backing earlier this year from an unlikely source. Ed Martin, Trump's original choice for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, issued a press release in April hailing a 25% drop in violent crime rates from the previous year.

“Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the efforts of our ‘Make D.C. Safe Again’ initiative, the District has seen a significant decline in violent crime,” Martin said. “We are proving that strong enforcement, and smart policies can make our communities safer."

In May, Trump abandoned his efforts to get Martin confirmed for the post in the face of opposition in Congress. His replacement candidate, former judge and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, was recently confirmed. On Monday, Pirro — standing next to Trump — called his takeover “the step that we need right now to make criminals understand that they are not going to get away with it anymore."

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Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.