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President Donald Trump announced Monday that his administration would take over the District of Columbia police and also deploy 800 national guard soldiers and new federal law enforcement units in the nation’s capital.
“This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said at a White House news conference flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration officials. “It’s going to be a model. And then we’ll look at other cities also. But other cities are studying what we’re doing,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a safe, beautiful capital, and it’s going to happen very quickly.”
Democratic leaders responded with their usual eloquence. “Violent crime in Washington, D.C. is at a thirty-year low. Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on X.
Repeating the same talking point as many other elected Democrats, Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., questioned Trump’s move by comparing it to his delay in calling out the National Guard to step the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
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Despite Democratic complaints, few should question the need for greater public safety in our nation’s inner cities. But under our federal system, crime remains the purview of the states. “The regulation and punishment of intrastate violence… has always been the province of the States,” the Supreme Court observed in United States v. Morrison (2000). As the great Chief Justice John Marshall declared a century ago, Congress “has no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States,” and it is “clear [that] congress cannot punish felonies generally.”
Criminal justice sits at the very core of the states’ police power – their general right to regulate the people and activity within their borders – aside from the specific, narrow areas (such as regulating interstate commerce) delegated by the Constitution to the federal government.
All laws in the District of Columbia are federal laws. If the mayor and city officials are allowing rising crime, especially because of lenient laws and policies toward offenders, the president should intervene.
But that is not the case with Washington, D.C. The Constitution specifically creates the District of Columbia as a city beyond the power of any state. As James Madison explained in Federalist No. 43, the “seat of government” must fall only under the power of the nation. Otherwise, he warned, “the public authority might be insulted, and its proceedings interrupted with impunity,” and the state where the capital resided “might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonourable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other [states].” The Framers wanted the national government located in a city that would not be under any partisan control.
TRUMP ACTIVATES NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS TO ADDRESS ‘TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL’ CRIME IN WASHINGTON
But in 1973, Congress passed a Home Rule Act (with President Richard Nixon’s support) that created a mayor, a city council, and some limited rights to self-government.
This was a constitutional error.
Under the Constitution, there is no true local government in D.C.; the entire city is but a subdivision of the national government. Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police and his deployment of troops and federal law enforcement does not intrude on any rights of local government because, unlike the case with deployment of troops in Los Angeles earlier this year, there is no need to pay respect to a state’s sovereignty.
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The president needs no state’s permission to deploy U.S. troops and federal law enforcement to protect federal property, facilities, and personnel.
Even if D.C. home rule did not run contrary to the Framer’s design for the nation’s only federal city, Trump would still have authority to take Monday’s action. The president has an obligation to ensure public safety in D.C. Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
All laws in the District of Columbia are federal laws. If the mayor and city officials are allowing rising crime, especially because of lenient laws and policies toward offenders, the president should intervene. He has the constitutional responsibility to restore common-sense law enforcement methods that will protect those who work and live in Washington.
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The 1973 Home Rule Act itself, even if it is constitutional, recognizes the president’s authority. It allows him to take over the D.C. police for 30 days in the case of an emergency. The president could declare the high number of murders – the capital city has always had one of the nation’s highest murder rates, and currently sits at the fourth highest – an emergency. While murders in 2024 fell, they were coming down from a pandemic high; murders in D.C. are still far higher than the 2012 low. In any event, the Home Rule Act provision only applies to the D.C. police; the Act does not – and could not – limit the president’s authority to deploy troops or the FBI to protect the federal city.
President Trump’s decision to restore law and order in the District of Columbia is only the first step. He can take the necessary second step by working with Congress to end home rule and restore the control of the elected branches of government over the District.
Just as he has asserted his control over the bureaucracy by firing agency heads, he could test the constitutional waters by removing the mayor and other D.C. officials. They, too, are only assistants to the president who help him fulfill his responsibility to execute federal law; if they fail to perform, he can and should replace them.
A half-century ago, Congress and the president gave in to the misguided idea that residents of D.C. had a democratic right to manage their own affairs. But the Framers did not want D.C. to fall under anyone’s partisan control, especially those who would use their control of the District to influence the federal government itself (recall the harassment of Trump officials that went unpunished during his first term).
Trump and Congress should admit that home rule has failed and start making D.C. the great federal city it should be.
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