Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) condemned President Donald Trump’s decision to place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and activate the National Guard in Washington, D.C., announcing plans to introduce a joint resolution to end the emergency in the coming days.
Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, is preparing a legislative challenge to President Donald Trump’s takeover, which the president declared Monday under Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. The law allows Congress to terminate a presidential emergency declaration affecting the District after a 48-hour waiting period. Raskin stated he intends to introduce such a resolution later this week.
Raskin said in an interview with Axios that violent crime in the District has declined in recent years and questioned the basis for the emergency declaration. “It’s a very extreme exercise of these powers, raising all kinds of legal questions,” he asserted.
He also linked the action to Trump’s refusal to release materials related to Jeffrey Epstein, calling the policing decision “one more chance to exact revenge” on “the people of Washington, D.C., who have voted 10-to-1 against him at every opportunity,” Raskin argued. Last month, he called it “dangerous to public health and safety” for Trump not to release all materials related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Appearing on CNN’s The Arena later on Monday, Raskin accused Trump of having “manufactured” an emergency to justify the executive action, despite the president citing violent crime statistics and specific incidents in Washington, D.C., as the basis for his decision.
Raskin contrasted this with January 6, which he described as “a real emergency,” saying, “When the Capitol and his own vice president and Congress were under attack by the mob violence that he unleashed against us, and he sat on his hands for many hours and then later asserted he somehow didn’t have the authority to deploy the National Guard. That was a real emergency; this is not a real emergency.”
At the press conference discussing the federal takeover, Trump told reporters the issue was not partisan: “I understand a lot of you tend to be on the liberal side, but… you don’t want to get mugged and raped and shot and killed.”
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