Trump takes on D.C., sort of, in a rambling news conference full of lies

On Monday morning, President Donald Trump held a news conference to attack the capital city where he currently lives, lambasting it as a criminal hellscape.

That’s a lie — and the news conference was full of lies — but, unfortunately, those of us in D.C. don’t experience rights the way that people living in states experience them.

We are subject to congressional oversight and restrictions in our lawmaking and other governance that no other jurisdiction faces.

First, in an executive order, Trump is exploiting a provision of the Home Rule Act, the law that gives us some self-governance. That provision allows the president to “direct the Mayor to provide him … such services of the Metropolitan Police force as the President may deem necessary and appropriate” — but only when he “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist“ and “for federal purposes.”

Under the law, moreover, Trump can only do so for 48 hours unless he informs Congress. Then, he can do so for 30 days. He said he was informing Congress, so expect this to last longer than two days. To go further than 30 days, however, Congress would need to act.

Per Trump, the newly sworn-in administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, is going to be the person responsible for overseeing D.C. police involvement.

Second, as “Commander in Chief of the District of Columbia National Guard,“ and through a memorandum to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump called up the D.C. National Guard “to address the epidemic of crime in our Nation’s capital.“

Finally, he also can — as he started to do last week — deploy increased federal law enforcement within D.C.

This is bad and Trump’s rant at the news conference was alarming — there is no doubt about that — but it is limited.

This isn’t a “takeover” of D.C. It’s not even, not really, a “takeover” of D.C. police; it is the use of D.C.’s police “for federal purposes” for the coming month.

And, for what it’s worth, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is looking at what steps he can take.

“The Administration’s actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful. There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime in DC reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year,” he said in a statement. “We are considering all of our options and will do what is necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents.”

Again, it’s bad. But, there is a lot of show here and little substance — especially in light of the fact that the entire premise of this attack is based on Trump’s old-man-yelling-at-cloud, “tough on crime” lies about D.C.

In short, it’s important to understand both the limits of what Trump did here and the ways in which the actions Trump is taking are possible because D.C. is the District of Columbia — and not a state. (This is particularly relevant in light of Trump’s mention at points in his news conference of other cities.)

Over at One First, Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck dove a ways into the ins and outs of all of these issues this morning:

More on today’s lies and actions from Martin Austermuhle at The 51st.

My final note on this today is that I hope that Democrats — including then-president Joe Biden — who joined with Republicans two years ago to ignore D.C.’s leaders and toss out our criminal reform law are proud of themselves. You weakened home rule and took away our effort to address crime in our way. And, doing so did nothing to stop more extreme steps when the Republicans got a chance to do so.

Bravo.

As this effort by Trump and his band of lawless appointees is implemented, there surely will be problems. I will be watching it and reporting on anything I see that does merit coverage.

But, for today, I ran around downtown and — as usual — all was fine. The only thing of note was how much I love the redeveloped Franklin Park. I’ve noticed it previously, but, this Monday, the people sitting out and enjoying themselves in the downtown park seemed notable.

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