Trump’s DC Takeover EXPLAINED

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

At a press conference this morning, Trump announced that under his authority pursuant to section 740 of the DC Home Rule act, he has placed Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge of the Washington DC police force. He has also authorized Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to deploy around 800 national guard troops, and Hegseth confirmed at the presser that those soldiers were in the process of deploying across the streets of DC in the coming weeks. This on the same day that the trial against the Trump regime for deploying troops in California gets underway across the country in a San Francisco Courtroom. What authority does Trump have to take these actions? What does this mean for DC residents as well as the list of other cities he threatened with federal takeover at today’s press conference? Let’s get into it.

Trump had signalled interest in a federal takeover of DC for the last few days, well for years really but it’s ramped up in the last week posting numerous times about it on Truth Social, saying “It has become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World. It will soon be one of the safest!!!” He also warned the homeless in DC to get out or they would forcibly move them far far away, and declared this morning that DC would be liberated today.

Often, the way news outlets report on a story differs depending on the bias of the publication. And it’s hard to know how YOUR own perception of bias influences your interpretation of the news. This headline from CNN caught my eye “Trump to deploy National Guard and place DC police under federal control.” Using the Ground News browser extension, I can see that in the US CNN is considered “left leaning.” To get a fuller picture of the story on all sides of the political spectrum I can click on Full Coverage, which will show me coverage of the same story from publications across the political spectrum.

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In order to justify the federal takeover of the DC police and the use of National Guard troops to patrol the city, Trump cited to increased crime, saying that DC had become one of the most dangerous cities in the world. But has crime really increased in DC? Trump cited to crime statistics from 2023, a year when DC saw an unusual spike in violent crime, a number that far exceeded typical crime statistics for any other given year, due to a number of particularly heinous incidents that happened in 2023. Apart from that spike, according to official police data, data from the FBI, and data reviewed by The Washington Post, crime in DC is decreasing. So much that crime is actually at a 30 year LOW in DC, down 26 percent this year alone. However, in my research I found conflicting reports of the validity of that violent crime data, reports that major news outlets like The Washington Post failed to mention in their reporting. Back in July, a DC police commander was put on leave for allegedly doctoring crime statistics. Numerous reports, including from the police union, indicate that it has become common practice within the DC police to manipulate crime statistics by misreporting the seriousness of incidents as they occur, labeling them as felony threat or felony assault instead of assault with a deadly weapon. The crimes carry similar punishment, but only the “assault with a deadly weapon” charge makes it into the violent crime data that is reported by the DC police and the FBI. This way, they’re able to make it seem like violent crime is a lot lower than it is. There doesn’t seem to be any real effort to get at the root of the problem or get the real data. SO I think there is a fuller picture here that is being glossed over by the media. ACAB, etc. BUT even IF the data is questionable and needs further investigation, that doesn’t warrant making dramatically false claims in the opposite direction. The data mirrors the fall in violent crime rates that is being seen in large cities across the country after a spike during COVID. The official data that’s available says crime in DC is at an all time low. Trump doesn’t have valid data to point to to counter that fact. Instead he just makes wild claims that DC is dangerous and it’s an emergency, using a few key incidents as pretext for the current takeover.

And that should be a pretty obvious ploy at this point for anyone who’s been paying attention or knows anything about history. Facts, data, none of that matters to an authoritarian when you have emotion. And emotion is highest in the aftermath of viral or particularly heinous stories. And the heinousness of the stories can be played up by the regime to a fever pitch, making subsequent actions seem justified. For Trump, the inciting incident seems to be the alleged attack of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine yes that’s his actual nickname because he is all of 19 years old. He’s a former DOGE staffer who was attacked in DC last week and a picture of him shirtless covered in blood went viral after Trump posted it. It happened around 3am when a a group of 15 year olds attempted to carjack him in DC's Logan Circle neighborhood. Two 15 year olds from Maryland were arrested for attempted unarmed carjacking. In response, Trump posted last Tuesday “If D.C. doesn't get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they're not going to get away with it anymore.”

AT the press conference today, Trump played up the danger, painting a truly bleak picture of the streets of DC, saying “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people,” That, again, stands starkly in contrast to the official statistics we do have, and to reports from local officials, who object to Trump’s takeover. According to the New York Times “Charles Allen, a member of the District of Columbia Council who represents Capitol Hill, said that the president’s declaration of a public safety emergency was not grounded in reality. “He’s doing this because he can,” Mr. Allen said.”

“In a statement, Brian Schwalb, the elected attorney general of the District of Columbia, called the administration’s actions to take control of policing the city “unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful.” He added, “We are considering all of our options and will do what’s necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents.””

According to reporting from CNBC, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser appeared on MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday saying quote ““People are coming to our capital. They’re starting business in our capital, and they’re raising families in our capital. Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false.”

Crime of course is an issue in DC, as it is in most major cities in America, but the mad max hellscape that Trump is painting is propaganda in action, he might as well have released a world war 2 era style poster depicting the enemy from within to try to fearmonger and justify his actions. But who needs propaganda posters when you own your own social media platform, amiright?

Anyway all this has me wondering what authority Trump has to be doing this, what makes DC a special testing ground and how the tactics used in DC and even LA could be exported to other cities across the country. During the presser he mentioned a number of cities including Chicago and New York, leaving out the cities in red states with the actual highest crime rates like St. Louis and New Orleans. The regime recently released its list of targets aka the list of sanctuary jurisdictions it had identified. This included California and DC as well as numerous other states, counties, and cities, like Minnesota, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon, and Washington and cities like Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, and San Francisco. But DC is special, and Trump has special powers there that he doesn’t have anywhere else, for now.

The constitution created DC as a 10 square mile seat of the federal government. It’s not a state, and the residents of DC do not have full congressional representation. They get one delegate in the House of Representatives, who cannot vote on the floor, and zero senators. Starting in the late 1800s, DC was run by 3 presidentially-appointed commissioners. Then in 1973 Nixon signed the Home Rule Act which gave DC residents the right to elect a mayor and a city council, allowing for autonomy for local DC governance. This was partially due to the fact that federal lawmakers were also being saddled with the day to day workings of the District, things like potholes and trash cleanup, in addition to their roles as federal lawmakers.

According to the ACLU, quote “The D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 ultimately passed as a compromise between D.C. residents who wanted full democratic rights and members of Congress who wanted to maintain power over D.C. and its majority Black population. The law allowed D.C. residents to elect a local government that would oversee the day-to-day functioning of the District, while Congress maintained power over local laws, the local budget, and other matters.” And while there’s a lot of moving parts and motivations here, I would be remiss not to mention the racial element here. 41% of Washington DC residents are black, compared to 13% in the general US population. ANd 51% of Washington DC children are black. White children make up only 24% of the Washington DC population of children. That’s important because the focus here is largely on the roving violent youth in DC, the young thugs who are making the streets unsafe. 51% of children in DC are black, so I think we can all see where they’re going with this and who they’re talking about and targeting when it comes to complaining about teenage thugs, as well as the homeless population of which black people make up a staggering 87% in DC. This is especially pertinent given that the new head federal prosecutor in DC, Jeanine Pirro, has vowed to push for younger limits on who can be tried as an adult, despite the fact that studies show a teen placed in adult prison is over 30% more likely to return to prison in the future than a teen who goes through the juvenile justice system. But who they’re really talking about is black teens so, of course, it’s different. And, again, mentioning race in this scenario is not DEI based playing the race card, it is very imbedded in the history of DC and the Home Rule act.

DC Home Rule was passed in part due to the civil rights era. Immediately after attending the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, MLK attended a march in favor of DC home rule. Democracy in DC was a central issue for black voters. DC was the very first majority-black major city, a title it achieved back in 1957, and having home rule represented autonomy and self governance for the city. DC statehood is still being fought for today. And it is still very much at the forefront of the conversation in and around DC. Which is why it’s a handy target for Trump, because despite gaining home rule, it still doesn’t have all the rights of statehood and is still very much overseen by Congress and, by extension, because Congress has abdicated its checks and balances role against the Executive and instead just falls in line, by extension that gives Trump a heck of a lot of control over the city. A majority minority city where he can play dictator? Sounds about right.

Under the Home Rule Act, specifically section 740, the president retains the power to take over the DC police department for federal purposes under quote “special conditions of an emergency.” That takeover can only last 30 days, unless Congress authorizes it to last longer, which we can probably bet they will do in this instance. And the President has control over the DC National Guard because DC isn’t a state. Trump deployed the national guard there in 2020 during non-violent protests in the wake of the George Floyd Murder. This is also why it was particularly abhorrent how long it took the President, through the department of defense, to deploy the national guard at the capitol on January 6th. It wasn’t until 3 hours after rioters had breached the capitol walls that national guard troops were deployed. Many of those rioters, who created dangerous and violent conditions on the streets of Washington DC have been pardoned by Trump. Trump, who’s so concerned with keeping the streets of DC safe. Interesting.

Anyway, so, like he’s doing in so many other arenas, Trump is abusing his emergency powers to take over DC by saying there is currently an emergency situation with the crime in DC. What’s the emergency? Well big balls over here took a beating from some 15 year olds. Also data from 2023 that may or may not be accurate. It’s unclear how data from 2023 is enough to create an emergency situation here and now but it’s almost not even worth discussing at this point, beyond pointing it out. It is important and vitally so that we recognize this: he is creating an “emergency situation” out of nothing to create the pretext he needs to take over DC. Just like he created an emergency out of nothing when protests broke out in Los Angeles. Just like he’s created an emergency at the US-Mexico border by claiming that an “invasion” is happening. Hard data doesn’t matter. All that matters is that enough people FEEL the danger he’s describing in graphic terms enough to overlook the lack of evidence and say yes send in the troops, THAT will make everything better, for sure.

And certain members of Congress seem to have every intention of empowering Trump to take control of DC indefinitely. All the way back in February, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Andrew Ogles of Tennessee introduced legislation that would repeal DC home rule. MAGA lawyer Mike Davis told Politico ““The Constitution is clear: Congress, not local Democrats, must control our nation’s capital. The D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 is unconstitutional — and it has turned D.C. into a third-world Marxist hellhole. Congress and the courts must end this half-century disaster. The President must follow his constitutional duty and work around unconstitutional legal obstacles in his way.”

This is, for the record, not what the Constitution says. The constitution grants to Congress the right to complete control over the legislation related to the seat of government. Congress was perfectly within its rights to delegate certain day to day runnings of DC to the residents of DC through the Home Rule Act. But it is always the policy of Trump goons to point to a section of the Constitution, dramatically misconstrue it, and say “the constitution is crystal clear on this.” The US Constitution, for the record, is almost never crystal clear on anything. That’s literally why the Supreme Court exists. If the law was crystal clear we wouldn’t need courts to interpret it. SO if you ever hear anyone say “the constitution is clear on this” just know they are generally lying. Supreme Court precedent may have made it clear over the years. But the constitution itself is almost always up for interpretation, and who is doing the interpreting, and what their biases and motivations are, definitely impacts that interpretation.

Okay but why now? Why DC? Why is Trump going to the trouble to do anything about this alleged hellhole? One word: optics. On the one hand, you have the very likely reality that Trump’s name is listed numerous times in the Epstein files ALLEGEDLY and that ALLEGED reality is closing in on him, and you have job and unemployment numbers so abysmal he’s trying to fire the people who collected the data. This is a really handy distraction. On the other hand, he touts himself as the president of law and order, as someone who’s going to drain the swamp in DC, which he hasn’t delivered on, but maybe he can forcibly clean it up. He also has to live in DC and drive around DC and so it’s top of mind because he’s a toddler and whatever’s right in front of him gets priority. So it creates a perfect opportunity to distract from the economy and the Epstein files while also pushing his tough on crime reputation. It helps further his executive order from a couple weeks ago that ordered homeless individuals to be forcibly institutionalized and to shutter programs that help homeless people find housing, instead promising to just remove them from DC. Reports indicate that homeless encampments are being shut down across the city today. And having control over the national guard and the cops allows him to fulfill his strongman fantasies with very little threat of pushback or consequences. Congress will grant him what he wants, in this case the continued ability to federally occupy DC, and there’s no danger of some uppity Governor getting in his way and being the type of headache someone like Gavin Newsom has proven to be.

And like I said, across the country in San Francisco, the trial for the lawsuit brought against the Trump regime for its actions in LA and across California has just gotten underway. In that lawsuit, California is claiming that Trump violated the Posse Comitatus Act in deploying troops on the streets of LA and across the state. Posse Comitatus bars the president from using the military as a domestic police force within the United States. The Trump regime is operating under the federal protection interpretation of Posse Comitatus, that is that the troops can be sent in anywhere to protect federal assets with a WIDE interpretation of what counts as a “federal asset”. This case could help further define the bounds within which presidential action must stay when deploying troops even in times of emergency even when attempting to protect federal assets.

According to LAist, quote “The lawyers [for California] argued that if military forces can accompany U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their raids and arrests, as had been unfolding in Los Angeles, “there would be no logical basis to preclude members of the Armed Forces from accompanying other law enforcement agents when performing their duties,” the California lawyers wrote. Military personnel could accompany federal food safety inspectors, medical fraud investigators or accompany federal voting rights officials to “monitor” election polling places, they wrote.”

It’s unclear how this case will play out. The trial is set to last 3 days. The 9th Circuit has already proven willing to overrule the lower court in Trump’s favor, and we know how the Supreme Court feels about letting Trump get away with anything, so if it does get appealed up there, it’s likely we’ll get a pretty broad interpretation of presidential powers that would allow for further meddling into state affairs by the president through deployment of the National Guard.

But like I said, none of that matters in DC, which isn’t a state and therefore Trump has free reign over the national guard and likely over the DC police with the help of Congress. There he can play strongman and use it as a testing ground for some of his most heinous policies, with a population of mostly brown people as his guinea pigs.

During his press conference today he made it very clear that he wants to bring that style of strongman law and order to liberal and sanctuary cities across the country. Whether or not the courts grant him the power to do so likely doesn’t matter given how little control the courts have seemed to exert over his actions to this point. DC will likely be a convenient test ground for actions to come.

If you are looking for what to do, I highly recommend subscribing to Heather Cox Richardson either on Substack or here on YouTube, I find her daily briefings to honestly provide some hope and tangible action items for small or large resistance. One thing she just mentioned a day or two ago is Card Campaign for Democracy, it’s at cc4democracy dot com, cc the number 4, democracy dot com. There you can download printable flyers that you can print out and put all over the place. Flyering allows for information to get to places where people might see info they otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to. The website also has a guide for what to do with them if you are an extrovert or if you are an introvert like me. You print them off, double sided, and place them in bathroom stalls, on bus seats, on bulletin boards, in libraries, in grocery stores, wherever someone might happen upon it. I love that idea as a small act of resistance, of spreading a message, even in a digital media saturated landscape I do think it’s impactful. I’ll link Heather Cox Richardson’s recent video talking about other acts of resistance she’s been noting. It left me feeling a little hope, which is rare these days.

Also before I go I wanted to note that yesterday, August 10th, was the 5 year anniversary of the very first video I ever posted on this channel. I started out hoping to use current events and my legal knowledge to empower people and teach them about the law. I had absolutely no idea what direction that would take me, and could never have predicted where I’d be today. I’m SO incredibly grateful to all of you. This is by far my most favorite job I’ve ever had, and I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you showing up week after week to watch and share my words, so I really appreciate it. I have no idea where the next five years will take us, this country, me, or this channel, but I’m not going anywhere. Again, thank you.

And thank you especially to my supporters over on Patreon, whose financial support goes a long way to allowing me to continue to bring these episodes to you every week. Join over at patreon dot com slash leejamiller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Friday about how our current reality mirrors the tensions leading up to the US civil war! Love that for us.

Leeja Miller
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How Today’s Tensions Mirror Pre-Civil War America