Congress not planning vote to extend Trump’s 30-day DC police takeover
Leaders in the House and Senate are not planning to hold votes to extend President Donald Trump’s temporary control of D.C. police before it expires next week, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The news arrives on the heels of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) ordering indefinite coordination between local and federal law enforcement officials and projecting confidence in the city’s ability to handle public safety without federal intervention.
In allowing the Trump administration’s grip on the department to come to an end, Congress closes one chapter in the ongoing tussle between local and federal officials vying for control over public safety in the capital. But for now, it appears unlikely fewer federal agents or camouflage-clad troops will patrol city streets.
“This is by mutual agreement with the White House,” a senior senate staffer familiar with the matter said of the decision not to hold an extension vote. The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the White House was “mollified by Bowser’s promise of cooperation and support.”
The congressional decision offers a win for Bowser and her approach with the president, praised by some as strategically collegial and criticized by others as out of touch with the anger and concern in communities across the city. Still, the District continues to face a barrage of attempts by the GOP-led Congress to exert further control over local matters and erode D.C.’s already limited ability to govern itself.
Claiming the nation’s capital was overrun with “bloodthirsty criminals,” Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. last month and placed the police department under direct federal control. He also deployed the D.C. National Guard to patrol city streets — a move not subject to the emergency declaration.
The Trump administration last month tried to effectively replace D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith with Drug Enforcement Administration head Terry Cole — a power grab that prompted D.C. officials to go to court to keep Smith in charge.
Since then, White House and local officials alike have applauded decreasing crime. In a four-week period — stretching from Aug. 7, when Trump first ordered a boosted federal presence in the nation’s capital, through Wednesday — there have been six homicides in D.C., eight fewer than the same period last year, according to D.C. police data. Robberies have more than halved, from 172 last year to 79 this year. Carjackings have plummeted from 39 to nine.
In expressing gratitude for the boosted federal law enforcement presence last week, Bowser stirred swift rebuke from some D.C. Council members while pleasing the Trump administration. Still, she has countered the president’s description of the city as a dangerous hellscape and described the National Guard troops who have poured in from half a dozen Republican states as an inefficient use of resources.
On Wednesday, she made a direct appeal to elected lawmakers on Capitol Hill: “I want the message to be clear to the Congress,” she said at a news conference announcing plans to boost the ranks of D.C. police. “We have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city. We don’t need a presidential emergency.”
Bowser previously pointed to the Trump administration’s efforts to compel local police to participate in immigration enforcement as a central reason the Trump-declared emergency needs to end. “Our deployment and our resources have to be used on violent criminals, and I can’t say that the ICE activity is getting violent criminals for the most part,” she said Wednesday.
When contacted for comment Thursday evening, a spokesperson for Bowser referred to her previous remarks. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. White House officials say their operation in D.C. has yielded more than 1,840 arrests and 188 guns seizures.
By law, Trump’s federalization of the D.C. police force lasts 30 days and is set to expire Wednesday.
The decision in Congress comes as House Republicans weigh a slate of legislation that would overhaul criminal justice policies in D.C. and further restrict home rule — including a proposal that would remove the city’s locally elected attorney general, Brian Schwalb (D), and replace him with a presidential appointee, The Washington Post previously reported. Earlier Thursday, Schwalb sued the Trump administration over the deployment of the National Guard, describing it as an illegal “military occupation” that has turned domestic troops into local police.
That same morning, members of the D.C. Council joined Free DC, an organization that advocates for home rule, outside the Capitol. They decried Trump’s actions in the city and called on members of Congress to join them in their cause, which they say stretches well beyond D.C.’s 61 square miles as White House officials continue to indicate an appetite for deploying troops to other cities.
“The District of Columbia is asking you to stand with us throughout this because this is not our fight,” said Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4). “This is America’s fight.”
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• Theodoric Meyer contributed reporting.