The mayor of Washington, D.C. has ordered the city to continue working with federal law enforcement officers, even after President Donald Trump’s takeover of the nation’s capital is set to expire next week.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, issued the order on Tuesday, stating that even after the public safety emergency Trump declared over crime in D.C. last month expires, city officials will “ensure coordination with federal law enforcement to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.” The order went into effect immediately, and it has no end date.
When he declared the public safety emergency last month, Trump invoked a provision of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that allows the President to take control of the city’s police force in “conditions of an emergency nature.” He claimed the operation was intended to crack down on violent crime, even as data showed that violent crime in D.C. was already down significantly.
Law enforcement officers have arrested more than 1,000 people in D.C. in the weeks since, according to Administration officials. The Administration has touted a further drop in crime amid the takeover, with Trump calling the city “a crime free zone” in a Monday post on Truth Social in which he praised Bowser for cooperating with the crackdown. The mayor noted in her order that “violent crime in the District has noticeably decreased” since Trump’s federalization of the city’s police force.
But experts have said that Trump’s strategy is unlikely to provide a real solution for crime in D.C.. Other D.C. Democrats have criticized Bowser, who previously credited the presence of federal officers for the drop in crime, and the mayor herself also said days before she issued her order that the increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and National Guards troops in D.C. is “not working.”
Read more: Grand Jurors Decline to Indict Multiple People Arrested Amid Trump’s D.C. Crackdown
The provision in the Home Rule Act that Trump invoked only allows the President to take over the D.C. police force for up to 30 days. After that, both chambers of Congress would need to enact into law a joint resolution to extend the operation. That means that Trump’s federalization of the city’s police force is expected to expire on Sept. 10. But Bowser’s order invites the ongoing presence of and coordination with federal law enforcement officers even after that date.
In a statement posted on social media, Bowser said that she issued the order “to provide the pathway forward beyond the Presidential emergency.”
Her announcement on Tuesday diverges from the positions taken by other local officials and the courts, which have pushed back on Trump’s efforts to deploy expansive presidential powers. Also on Tuesday, a judge ruled that the Trump Administration violated an 1878 federal law after the President deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles earlier this summer. Over the weekend, the mayor of Chicago ordered city departments not to cooperate if the President deploys the National Guard, after Trump suggested that the city would be “next” in his plans to crack down on crime.
While Bowser’s order likely decreases the possibility of a standoff between the Administration and D.C. as Trump’s authority over the city’s police force nears an end, tensions in Chicago appear poised to escalate: The President on Tuesday said he planned to deploy federal troops to the city despite local officials’ opposition. “We’re going to do it anyway,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
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