The District of Columbia government filed a federal lawsuit on Friday morning challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to take over the city’s Police Department.
The suit argues that both the president’s executive order on Monday federalizing the Police Department and a follow-up order by the U.S. attorney general were a “brazen usurpation of the district’s authority” and that they “far exceed” the president’s authority under the Home Rule Act of 1973, which granted D.C. its limited degree of self-government.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court, comes after the Trump administration moved on Thursday to expand its control of the city’s Police Department by installing an “emergency commissioner” and revoking policies that limited officers’ cooperation with immigration enforcement.
The D.C. attorney general, Brian 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.”
In a statement on Friday morning, Mr. Schwalb said that the administration was “abusing its limited, temporary authority under the Home Rule Act, infringing on the district’s right to self-governance and putting the safety of D.C. residents and visitors at risk.”
“This is the gravest threat to Home Rule that the district has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” he said.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
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