The images are stark: Onlookers yelling “Go home, fascists,” as local and federal officers patrol the streets of Washington, D.C. People banging pots and pans at 8 each night as residents protest the added federal police presence. Marchers parading down Pennsylvania Avenue with all-caps banners saying, “Trump Must Go Now.”
But one week after President Donald Trump announced a “public safety emergency” – resulting in a temporary federal takeover of D.C. police and mobilization of the National Guard – the public reaction is not all one-sided. Some residents, in fact, support the added security presence, noting that D.C. crime remains high even amid improvements. With protests ongoing throughout the city and more federal troops arriving, D.C. leaders are working to de-escalate tensions.
For Mayor Muriel Bowser, finding ways to cooperate with President Trump may prove essential. The president’s lawyers have already been looking into how to overthrow home rule altogether for Washington, which would put it back under the federal government’s control. But even without that threat, the mayor is trying to ensure public safety and respect for local governance, analysts say.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump’s mobilization of troops to stamp out crime in the U.S. capital has left Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser walking a political tightrope and drawing on her longtime working relationship with Mr. Trump.
The mayor has “struck a nice balance between negotiating and leaning in when possible, and pushing back in strategic moments,” says Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “There is, of course, no exact rule book for how to respond to this.”
Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
Indeed, as the U.S. capital enters its second week with a federalized police department, Mayor Bowser is walking a tightrope. The city votes overwhelmingly Democratic – Mr. Trump got only 6.5% of the vote last November – and Ms. Bowser faces enormous pressure to stand up to him. But his second term has been all about wielding executive power, including that threat to eliminate local government.
New influx of National Guard troops
In recent days, several Republican governors have announced their agreement to send National Guard troops to Washington at the request of the Trump administration, with deployments ranging from 300 to 400 from West Virginia, 200 from South Carolina, 200 from Mississippi, 160 from Tennessee, 150 from Ohio, and 135 from Louisiana. They will join the 800 D.C. National Guard members already deployed by Mr. Trump. Their role will be to support federal and local law enforcement in addressing crime and homelessness, not to make arrests. Some will carry firearms, according to news reports.
Those moves are a violation of local sovereignty, say local opponents.
The Home Rule Act of 1973 gave the constitutionally established federal District of Columbia the right to elect its own government. Over the years, D.C.-federal relations have been largely harmonious, though there have been tensions, especially during public unrest. Efforts to make the district, an enclave of 700,000 residents, the 51st state have long been stalled in Congress.
In general, Ms. Bowser, in office since 2015, has had a good working relationship with Mr. Trump. They collaborated in securing a deal to build a new football stadium and move the Washington Commanders NFL team from Maryland into the district. But in some cases, when he pushes hard, she doesn’t hesitate to push back.
Ms. Bowser clashed with Mr. Trump in 2020 when massive street protests erupted after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. To memorialize Mr. Floyd and the civil rights movement his death sparked, she declared a block north of the White House Black Lives Matter Plaza, the words painted in large yellow letters on the street.
But after Mr. Trump’s return to office this year, the mayor had those letters removed under pressure from the White House, saying, “We have bigger fish to fry.”
Ms. Bowser appeared to draw on that history of managing relations with Mr. Trump on Friday, when the Trump administration attempted to install the Drug Enforcement Administration director as “emergency D.C. police commissioner.” Ms. Bowser’s team quickly sued, and a federal District Court judge threatened to intervene. A quick negotiation between the Trump administration and city officials resolved the specific issue.
On Monday, Ms. Bowser made clear her dismay over Mr. Trump’s incursion into D.C. law enforcement, both in press briefings and on social media. Two days earlier, she wrote on the social platform X, “American soldiers and airmen policing American citizens on American soil is #UnAmerican.”
At the same time, Ms. Bowser has been trying to get ahead of federal law enforcement whenever possible. Last week, after the Trump administration threatened fines and jail time for homeless people, she ordered the city to bulldoze a homeless encampment near the Lincoln Memorial.
Pushing back this time, however, is not proving easy.
“She’s in pretty much a no-win position, and she does not have a whole lot of power in this dynamic,” Professor Dallek says.
A question of intentions
D.C. leaders have noted that if the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress were serious about improving safety in the nation’s capital, they’d restore the $1 billion in city funding cut earlier this year. The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department is chronically understaffed by almost a quarter, with just 3,100 officers out of a desired force of 4,000.
At the same time, federal law enforcement does not appear to be deployed in the city’s highest-crime sections. A map by The Washington Post shows few additional officers positioned east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, two of those high-crime sections, which are also predominantly African American.
“These extra police are just protecting tourists,” says one angry resident of the Anacostia neighborhood in Ward 8, who asked not to be named. “The problem is Black-on-Black violence.”
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Numerous columnists have pushed back on the idea that D.C. doesn’t have a crime problem, despite the decline in crime since 2023. Last year, violent crime declined, writes Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, but “The city still experienced nearly ten violent crimes a day, nearly six robberies, nearly three assaults with a dangerous weapon, and more than 14 car thefts a day, in a population of just over 700,000.”
“Anywhere else in the industrialized world, the D.C. crime situation would constitute a national emergency,” Ms. Mac Donald writes. “It should in the United States, too.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking Sunday on CNN, endorsed the president’s National Guard deployment in Washington. It was a rare moment of accord between the president and his former No. 2, who fell out over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Observers find no small irony in Mr. Trump’s support today for law and order after his pardon of some 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants earlier this year.
From museums to marches
Last weekend, the first since Mr. Trump’s announcement, mostly clear skies made for robust displays of protest, though numbering in the hundreds of people, nothing close to any of the city’s more famous marches. One couple visiting from Seattle said they had come to see museums and decided to join a protest at the White House afterward.
“What Trump is doing is just complete insanity,” says Marjorie Bunday, a music administrator originally from the D.C. area. “I mean, I know he’s got the right to take over the police force of D.C., because the district is a very unusual place. But his threats to extend that to, you know, Chicago, New York – that’s absolute crazy talk.”
Mr. Trump’s recent deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, without the California governor’s approval, has also alarmed some observers. A federal judge is expected to rule on the deployment’s legality in the coming weeks.
