On Aug. 11, President Trump invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and dispatch 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C.
Trump justified the move with melodramatic claims that “our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.”
The problem is, crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low.
Well, that’s one problem.
The real danger is the fact that Trump’s move wasn’t so much a rescue mission as it was him cosplaying the role of his favorite authoritarian man-crushes. And with every week and day that goes by, Trump and the Project 2025 brigade bury the democratic rule of law further into the ground.
But more specifically, here’s why Trump’s move to pimp D.C. is beyond problematic.
Democracy on a slide
Elected officials—not executive order ringleaders—should run cities. Yet, here we are: A president sidestepping votes and voters like they’re an inconvenient street lamp. This is not presidential leadership; it’s democratic liposuction. Worse, enabling the use of emergency powers as a political shortcut—even if vetted by legal sleight of hand—erodes the idea that our institutions moderate power, rather than rubber-stamp it.
D.C. sovereignty undermined
D.C. residents may pay taxes, fight wars and fill streets with protest signs—and yet, by law, they still lack the simple dignity of full local control. Under the 1973 Home Rule Act, D.C. has limited autonomy—but not even Trump gets carte blanche over MPD unless there’s a real emergency, and then only for 30 days unless Congress says yes.
Yet, Trump brazenly overrode that structure, installing DEA head Terry Cole as “emergency police commissioner” and forcing the city to litigate its sovereignty. City Attorney General Brian Schwalb called it “the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced.”
D.C.’s voting rights? Hell, they’re fighting now just to stay off the plantation.
Rule of entitlement, no law
A president doesn’t get to seize cities like they’re spoils of war. Courts already question Trump’s stretch here. In a lawsuit D.C. has filed against Trump’s action, Judge Ana Reyes questioned the administration’s authority: “I still do not understand… on what basis… You can say: ‘You, police department, can’t do anything unless I say you can.’”
This normalization of convenient “emergency” declarations turns the rule of law into a suggestion and threatens the rights of all people in D.C. and elsewhere.
Black citizenship in crosshairs
Beyond law and keep-us-safe rhetoric lies a clear pattern: Predominantly Black and Latino cities targeted under the guise of fighting crime. Whether D.C., Baltimore, LA or Chicago, Trump’s rhetoric triggers racial undertones that recall decades of demonizing Black and Brown people and spaces
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In D.C., Black leaders—Mayor Muriel Bowser among them—wrote of being “unsettled and unprecedented,” noting that “we are American citizens… we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship.”
Executive Director of Free DC Keya Chatterjee was even more direct: “Nothing Trump is doing right now is about our safety… if Trump cared about safety, he would fund Medicaid … schools … SNAP.”
This feels like Rosewood, Black Wall Street and Lake Lanier, except without the overt bombing, lynching and purposeful flooding of Black spaces… at least not yet.
A dangerous president’s dangerous precedent
Former President Barack Obama once warned that rights, once surrendered, are hard to reclaim. Trump’s D.C. takeover may expire in 30 days—or it may not. Congress may resist; courts may push back—but giving this presidency this power is like letting smoke leak into the chambers of democracy… like during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The result? Moderation erodes. Emergency normalizes. And with it, the implicit message that the federal government can swoop in whenever “our cities” (read: ones with the “wrong” politics or demographics) need a paternalistic hand to the throat.
Take action
What’s crazy is, democracy didn’t break; it was quietly elbowed aside. D.C. isn’t dystopia; it’s just a warning sign. Which begs the question posited by the Last Poets roughly 60 years ago: “Black people, what’chall gon’ do?”
Voting would be nice. We should also get busy forming mutual aid societies among the civic and social organizations in our orbit. Additionally, as my favorite thought leader, Lurie Daniel Favors, says, we may need to put serious thought into visualizing and organizing a 21st-century “Underground Railroad.”
And sure, today you say, “It ain’t that serious.” But historically, those have always been the last words of folk whose rights they thought they’d enjoy for a lifetime, were taken.
