On Monday, President Donald Trump, following years of rhetoric about expanding federal influence over the predominantly Democratic District of Columbia, revealed plans to take a firmer grip on the city by assuming control of its police department and declaring a public safety emergency.
Donald J. Trump walked into the White House briefing room just before noon and, with the ease of a man who thrives on disruption, announced he had taken over Washington’s police force.
The legal mechanism he invoked — Section 740 of the 1973 Home Rule Act — is obscure, rarely discussed outside constitutional circles. But Trump deployed it with casual force, handing control of the Metropolitan Police Department to Attorney General Pam Bondi and naming the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Terrance “Terry” Cole as interim police commissioner. Within days, he promised, hundreds of National Guard troops would join them on the streets.
To Trump, the rationale was obvious. “We’re going to take our capital back,” he declared, his voice rising as if daring the city to resist.
He painted a gloomy portrait of Washington: murders, carjackings, street gangs on motorbikes, and “caravans” of young offenders he claimed were impervious to anything but brute response. “They fight back until you knock the hell out of them — because that’s the only language they understand,” he said, glancing at the rows of reporters as if inviting argument.
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For years, Trump has railed against the city that serves as the seat of federal power, its Democratic supermajority, and its Black plurality. On Monday, though, he cast his intervention in populist terms: “You reporters — even you liberal ones — don’t want to get mugged or shot. You want to be able to walk to the store and come back alive.”
The move startled even some allies, not least because presidents rarely reach for the Home Rule Act’s emergency powers, and never in such sweeping fashion. The American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter quickly noted that those powers are temporary and meant only for “federal purposes” under extraordinary conditions. Whether Trump’s crime narrative meets that threshold is now a matter for lawyers — and perhaps the courts.
Reaction across the capital was swift and split: praise from those who see the city’s crime statistics as justification for drastic action, condemnation from those who view the takeover as a federal overreach cloaked in law-and-order rhetoric.
Trump, for his part, seemed uninterested in the nuances. “We will bring in the military, if needed,” he said, before stepping away from the podium. It was less a parting comment than a promise, hanging in the air long after the room had emptied.