If there was any doubt about Donald Trump’s stance on the District of Columbia, the platform adopted at the GOP convention in Milwaukee this week made it clear: “Republicans will reassert greater Federal Control over Washington, DC to restore Law and Order in our Capital City, and ensure Federal Buildings and Monuments are well-maintained.”
What’s perhaps noteworthy is the Republican Party’s explicit assertion. During his presidency, Trump went out of his way to express his dislike for both the city and its elected leaders, especially Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), with whom he famously clashed during the protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Trump wasted no opportunity to disparage Washington, belittling our crime-fighting efforts and denigrating our work to keep the city clean.
Then again, one of Trump’s favorite lines of attack is to portray Democratic- and Black-run cities as cesspools of grime and crime. So, D.C. is no exception. What makes the Republican Party’s formal stance on D.C. such a threat, however, is that another Trump administration, supported by a GOP-controlled House and a Senate potentially flipped red, could make the city’s worst nightmares come true.
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“Reassert greater Federal Control over Washington, DC.” Fiction? Wishful thinking?
I was there in 1973 when Sen. Norris Cotton (R-N.H.) took the floor during debate on the home-rule bill and announced his support for the measure, but then offered an amendment that would authorize the president to appoint the District’s police chief with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The Cotton amendment sent home-rule sponsors Thomas Eagleton (D-Mo.), Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.) and staff (of which I was one) scrambling to round up votes against it. Ultimately, it was defeated. But nearly one-third of the Senate favored giving the president and Congress such control over the D.C. police. It was a surprising and sobering discovery.
Today, however, it should come as no surprise. If Trump regains the White House with a GOP Congress in tow, a federal takeover of the D.C. police would be the least of our worries.
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Remember the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority? Most people probably don’t recognize that entity today. It was commonly known as the control board, a five-member body enacted by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton to oversee the city’s troubled finances.
A future Trump administration might well create similar structures to oversee other broad functions of D.C. governance, ranging from public safety to public education, economic development and public works.
Outright repeal of home rule is not out of the question. Some House Republicans have filed bills to do just that.
What are District residents to do? Clutch their pearls and faint at the prospect of Trump moving vans arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day 2025? Fuss, fume, gnash teeth and point fingers at evildoers, real or imagined?
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The first line of defense, of course, is to vote against Trump’s return to the White House. No doubt, D.C. voters will do their part in November. But the consequential struggles are to be waged well beyond city limits.
D.C. can contribute to a cause that is in keeping with its own interest, to wit: aid the effort to retake a House Democratic majority. That goal, according to some strategists and pollsters, is within reach. Success would unburden the House of Republican control — and create a bulwark against any effort to trample on D.C. self-determination.
I can’t claim to know much about fundraising or where to go to chip in. But there are people in this city who know both how and where, and interested parties should meet and work things out. This is no time for fretting, moaning and sideline sitting. Take back the House, end the threat. Likewise with the other side of the Capitol. Lose the Senate to a GOP majority and — with Trump in the Oval Office — say so long to home rule, at least in its present form.
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What’s more, a threat to self-government might be closer to home.
The District’s next-door neighbor and partner on regional issues, Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, is being pressed hard in her Senate campaign by heavily financed Republican Senate nominee Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor.
Note: Hogan is no Trump fan. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) personally urged Hogan to get in the race, and Hogan has said that if elected, he would caucus with the GOP. So note, too, that Trump, citing the importance of taking the Senate majority, said he would “like to see [Hogan] win.”
Would Hogan side with the Senate GOP caucus against D.C.’s interests on the Hill? District residents have good reasons to weigh in now on Maryland’s Senate race — with both words and deeds.
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An even closer concern is the questionable behavior of D.C.’s own Republican Party.
Besides supporting the Republicans’ anti-D.C. platform in Milwaukee and encouraging intrusive interference in D.C. affairs by House Republicans, the D.C. GOP has been accused of sending a mailing to Ward 6 Republican voters that included instructions to sign a petition to recall council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), as well as requests for money to support recall efforts.
Concerns have been raised by Tommy Wells, chair of Neighbors United for Ward 6 — which supports Allen — about possible violations of the city’s campaign finance laws. Those concerns include possible improper signature gathering, expenditures and coordination between political committees to remove a sitting elected official from office. (My attempts to reach D.C. GOP Chairman Patrick Mara about these allegations were unsuccessful.) It is cause for concern that the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance, after receiving three complaint letters, has opened an investigation into the D.C. GOP’s actions.
Sadly, this election year finds D.C. elected leadership under siege from Milwaukee to the home front.
Pray, but also work, to see the city’s best interests prevail.
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