Donald Trump is attempting to seize complete control of the local police force in Washington, D.C., by utilizing a vague emergency clause in federal law. This is not a response to any emergency; rather, it is a simple power grab.
Trump’s stated goal is to curb some out-of-control crime, but we don’t have to believe it simply because he’s selling it. This comes a day after he dispatched federal agents to patrol the streets and pushed to mobilize the National Guard. As he attempts to gain power, it is a component of his effort to intimidate cities that do not support him politically.
We don’t know exactly what Richard Nixon and the Democratic Congress had in mind when they established this authority in 1973, but it was obviously not a president flat-out lying about the city’s crime rates—which are among the lowest in history—to defend an abrupt takeover as a blatant display of force.
The federalization of the police force, or the deployment of the military or roving federal agents—who are not intended to function as a national police force and typically have specialized responsibilities like looking into drug trafficking and other serious federal crimes—is not required by any state of emergency.
Instead, Trump probably wants them to suppress protests in public and serve as a clear indication that he is in charge of the streets. Even while the law only permits him to do so for a certain period of time (30 days), we are confident that he will look for ways to get around it and is already discussing doing so in other places, despite the fact that D.C. is a special location.
In the home of the free, the United States, the word authoritarian is frightening. These core principles of liberty and individual rights are not inherent and need to be actively upheld, even when they contradict our entire founding myths and sense of national identity.
To do that, the facts must be honestly examined, and the unsettling truth is that Trump’s actions continue to meet the criteria.
Trump has repeatedly imposed ideological and political restrictions using state authority. He took action against academic institutions. He targeted legal firms with it. He acted in opposition to the media.
In order to gather all government data while cutting services and profiting himself, he established a quasi-government department headed by his largest donor and largest government contractor.
He had masked ICE agents arrest non-citizen political organizers and deployed the military on the streets of the country’s second-largest city. Now, on clear pretextual grounds, he has taken direct control of the nation’s capital’s police force, a move he notably refrained from taking when a mob of fervent supporters he himself organized in an attempt to stage a coup attacked the federal capital.
Trump has sought authority in each of these cases, and the majority of Republicans in Congress have been too intimidated to oppose him. The only courts that have resisted are the independent ones.
According to Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, she would abide by the 1973 statute and work with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump has named as her interim federal supervisor. Will Bondi and Trump abide by the law as well?
