About 150 people gathered a block north of the White House on Monday as President Trump laid out his plans to federalize the police force in Washington, D.C., protesting what they said was the president’s latest attempt to assert control over the city.
Mr. Trump is “trying to annex D.C. from the White House,” said Lisa Walker, a Maryland resident who said she taught in the Washington public schools for 15 years, and carried a homemade sign reading: “Free D.C. No Police State No Police State.”
“They’re usurping the concept of home rule,” said Ken Greene, a longtime Washington resident, referring to the 1973 law that allowed the federal district to elect its own local government, though Congress maintained final say over its laws and budget. Mr. Trump cited a portion of that law on Monday that allows the federal government to temporarily take control of the city’s police department.
As the protesters rallied, Mr. Trump was framing his plans to beef up and militarize the district’s police force as a test for his vision for getting tough on crime, musing that if it worked in the nation’s capital, he could roll out similar efforts in other cities.
But to the protesters, Mr. Trump’s plans were just the latest blow to a city that has been among the hardest hit by his executive orders and policies.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government, step up immigration raids in urban areas, and reduce funding for food stamps have had a negative effect on city residents, organizers of the protest argued.
“It’s all connected,” said Samuel Epps, the president of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, whose office the protesters gathered outside. “This is just another way to create that chaos in our communities.”
Alex Dodds, one of the co-founders of Free D.C., an advocacy group formed just after the start of Mr. Trump’s second term, said Mr. Trump was following an authoritarian playbook by trying to assert control over the capital city.
“It’s an easy way for them to silence dissent and accelerate their agenda, if they physically control the capital,” said Ms. Dodds, whose group organized the protests. She added: “D.C. is our home. It belongs to the people who live here, and Trump can’t have it.”
Mr. Trump has frequently railed against crime in Washington. He became fixated on the idea of a federal takeover of local law enforcement after Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old software engineer and a prominent early member of the Department of Government Efficiency, was the victim of an attempted carjacking earlier this month.
Though the protest was relatively small, criticism of Mr. Trump in Washington is not rare. The city is staunchly Democratic, and its residents have frequently rallied against the president’s actions. Monday’s protest took place on the same stretch of street that in 2020 became the centerpiece of Black Lives Matter protests — and had those words painted into the pavement until a couple of months ago.
Tierney L. Cross and Shawn McCreesh contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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