When President Trump was asked this month how he would feel if the democratic socialist running for mayor in the nation’s capital won, Mr. Trump was quick with a threat: “Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis. We won’t put up with it.”
Well, Janeese Lewis George, a Washington City Councilwoman, did win the Democratic primary last week, and in heavily Democratic Washington, she almost certainly will be elected mayor in November. In fact, she attributes her decisive victory in part to an electorate eager for a mayor who will push back hard at the president.
“It’s going to be different” once she takes office, she said in an interview Monday.
The current mayor, Muriel Bowser, has preferred diplomacy in dealing with the White House, emphasizing the areas where her goals aligned with the president’s and otherwise trying to stay off Mr. Trump’s radar. Not Ms. Lewis George, the latest urban leader to rise from socialist ranks.
“We’re going to find ways to resist,” she said.
The president has more power over Washington than any other city, because of the district’s unique status as a federal enclave and because the federal government is its largest employer and landowner. Mr. Trump has taken that power further than many had imagined — or feared — possible, mandating the redesign of parks around the city, putting his name and face on buildings, pushing to sell off or even demolish federal property and deploying thousands of soldiers and federal law enforcement agents on Washington’s streets.
Last August, he announced that he was putting local police “under direct federal control,” and he has repeatedly threatened a complete federal takeover.
Ms. Lewis George, 38, said she had plans to counter presidential incursions. For one, she said, she would use the connections that she and her democratic socialist partners have in unions and other organized groups around the country as leverage to pressure members of Congress to protect the city from the president.
She also said that she would fully support litigation the locally elected attorney general has pursued against the administration, a tactic that the current mayor believed in some cases would be more provocative than effective.
“We have the ability to use our legal tools more than we have utilized them,” Ms. Lewis George said in the interview.
The actual mechanics of a full federal takeover of Washington are more complicated than the president often makes it sound. The 1973 Home Rule Act, which gave district residents the right to elect their own local government, was passed by Congress and would require an act of Congress to be repealed.
Republicans in Congress have eagerly availed themselves of their statutory leverage over Washington in recent years, depriving the city of revenue in federal budgets and negating laws that had been passed by the District of Columbia Council. But even though some lawmakers have openly backed the idea of a complete federal takeover, the lack of a filibuster-proof Republican majority in the Senate and the strong chance that Republicans will lose their majority in the House in November make a repeal of home rule unlikely.
Even the federal “takeover” of Washington last summer ended up being less than meets the eye. After a round of litigation, it ultimately meant that the Metropolitan Police Department was required to provide certain services — for the most part, aiding immigration agents — at the request of the federal government for 30 days.
There are still a number of things that Mr. Trump can do that are not dependent on Congress. Some of those things Ms. Lewis George would welcome.
“I have an ambitious agenda of building 72,000 homes over five years, and I can’t do that without being able to leverage all the land he has in the District of Columbia,” she said, pointing to federal land around the main train station and underused property along the Potomac River. “I absolutely plan on appealing to the president on some of the great work we could do around Union Station and Southwest.”
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