Donald Trump using an obscure emergency provision in federal law pertaining to Washington, D.C. to attempt to take full control over the capital’s local police force is not responding to any “emergency,” but just a pure power grab.
Coming a day after he’d sent federal agents to patrol the streets and moved to deploy the National Guard, Trump’s ostensible reason is to control some out-of-control crime, but we don’t have to buy that just because he’s selling it. It’s part of his campaign to terrorize cities that don’t back him politically as he tries to amass power.
We don’t know exactly what the Democratic Congress and Richard Nixon had in mind when they created this authority in 1973, but whatever it was, it clearly was not a president straight up lying about the city’s crime rates, which are among their lowest levels ever, to justify a sudden takeover as a naked show of force.
There is no state of emergency that requires the federalization of the police force or, for that matter, the deployment of the military or roving federal agents — who are not supposed to act as a national police force and who generally have specific duties like investigating drug trafficking and other serious federal crimes.
Instead, Trump wants them likely tamping down on public protest and acting as a visible representation that he controls the streets. Even if he’s only statutorily allowed to do it for a short time (30 days says the law), we’re sure he’ll try to find loopholes, and is already talking about doing the same in other cities, even though D.C. is a unique place.
The word “authoritarian” is a scary one, here in the United States, land of the free. It goes against our entire founding mythology and national self-conception, but these fundamental tenets of liberty and individual rights are not naturally occurring and must be actively preserved.
Doing that requires an honest examination of the facts, and the uncomfortable reality is that Trump’s actions keep fitting the definition.
Again and again Trump has used state power to impose political and ideological constraints. He did it against universities. He did it against law firms. He did it against the press.
He created a quasi-government department led by his biggest donor and huge government contractor to collect together all strands of government data while slashing services and enriching himself.
He had non-citizen political organizers arrested by masked ICE agents and he deploying the military on the streets of the nation’s second biggest city; and now has taken under his direct control, the police force of the nation’s capital on obvious pretextual grounds — a move, by the way, that he notably did not take as the federal capital was being attacked by a mob of rabid supporters that he himself whipped up in an effort to stage a coup.
In each of these instances, Trump wants power and the majority Republicans in Congress have been too cowed to resist him. Only the independent courts have pushed back.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser says that she will follow the 1973 law and cooperate with the temporary federal boss of her cops, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, as so designated by Trump. The question is will Trump and Bondi also follow the law?
