Facing a lawsuit and pointed questions from a federal judge, the Trump administration agreed on Friday to pull back its attempt to take direct control over the District of Columbia police department by installing a Trump administration official to run the agency.
The legal fight, which prompted an emergency court hearing on Friday afternoon, was the most contentious episode since the Trump administration announced on Monday that it was placing the city’s police department under “federal control.” The retreat by Justice Department officials represented a significant, if narrow, victory for the city’s government as it contends with the federal intervention.
A host of other issues raised by the city about the federal intervention were not resolved on Friday, including the scope of demands that the administration can place on the local police. A hearing on those issues is scheduled for next week.
In court on Friday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes issued no formal ruling but asked pointed questions of the Justice Department lawyer, Yaakov Roth, and appeared to take a skeptical view of the president’s broad interpretation of his authority under the 1973 Home Rule Act, the federal law granting the citizens of D.C. the right to limited self government.
“The statute would have no meaning at all if the president can just say, ‘We’re taking over your police department,’” said Judge Reyes, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Biden.
The judge made clear that she was considering a ruling that would block the administration’s entire order as unlawful, but said she would prefer if the lawyers on both sides worked out some modifications to the order. After several hours, the Justice Department lawyers reissued the order, leaving the city in control of the police force.
City officials praised the outcome on Friday as an affirmation of the Washington’s autonomy.
Speaking to reporters, Brian Schwalb, the D.C. attorney general, said the law makes clear “that the authority to appoint a chief of police sits squarely with the mayor, and the right to control the local policing of our city sits with the mayor and the chief of police, notwithstanding the government, the president and the attorney general’s efforts to suggest that they had taken control of our police force.”
In a post on social media announcing the redrafted order, Ms. Bondi criticized Mr. Schwalb for, she said, opposing the administration’s “efforts to improve public safety.” But she said the administration remained committed to working closely with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, “who is dedicated to ensuring the safety of residents, workers, and visitors” in the city.
Local officials were taken by surprise on Thursday evening when Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an order naming Terrance C. Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as an “emergency police commissioner.” The directive came after days of assurances by local officials, including the mayor and the police chief, that they would work as partners alongside federal law enforcement.
Within hours of the order by Ms. Bondi, Mr. Schwalb responded with an opinion arguing that the directive was unlawful and that the mayor should not abide by it. On Friday morning, his office filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging the “brazen usurpation” of the city’s authority.
Even with the administration’s modification of their efforts on Friday, many of the concerns about federal intervention raised by Mr. Schwalb and shared by the city’s leaders and residents remain.
Mr. Trump’s executive order asserting federal control was based on a section of the Home Rule Act that explicitly gives presidents temporary authority to “direct the mayor to provide him” such services of deemed “necessary and appropriate” to address “special conditions of an emergency nature.”
That order declared that there was a “crime emergency” in the city, and Mr. Trump said that he was “placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police under direct federal control.”
Mr. Schwalb, a Democrat who was elected in 2022, has been outspoken from the outset in criticizing the federal takeover of the D.C. police and the deployment of the National Guard, calling the moves “unnecessary and unlawful.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser had been, for the most part, diplomatic in her comments this week, though she had repeatedly emphasized that the city’s police chief, Pamela A. Smith, was still in command of the Metropolitan Police Department. The mayor’s tone changed late Thursday after Ms. Bondi’s order.
Ms. Bowser posted the letter on social media, saying that the city had followed the law but that “there is no statute that conveys the district’s personnel authority to a federal official.”
The suit is the latest attempt by local jurisdictions to push back legally at the administration’s broad assertion of federal power.
California sued the Trump administration after the president deployed thousands of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles this summer, amid protests against aggressive immigration enforcement. A federal judge ruled that the deployment was unconstitutional, but an appeals court disagreed, finding that the president had acted within his authority. While most of the soldiers have returned home, that litigation is ongoing.
Washington is in a different position, given the many limitations on its autonomy under federal law, a vulnerability reflected in the mayor’s often diplomatic statements.
“D.C. residents are worried and concerned,” she said to reporters after the hearing on Friday. “Chief Smith’s job during this week has been to make sure that if we have and while we have federal officers, that they are being used strategically. And while we aren’t controlling them, we do have the ability to influence how they’re being deployed.”
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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