The D.C. Takeover

To President Trump, the city where he lives is a hellscape. It is so beset by crime, he said yesterday, that the government must take over policing. He’s also sending the F.B.I. to patrol the streets at night.

There is no crime surge in Washington; last year, violent crime hit a 30-year low. But Trump has fretted for decades about urban blight, and he carried that fixation back to the White House. “If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty,” he said.

Today’s newsletter is about crime in the nation’s capital, Trump’s legal authority to intervene and why the president of a country is so focused on the governance of a city.

Horror on the Potomac?

Trump began talking about a takeover last week, after a prominent member of the Department of Government Efficiency was beaten in an attempted carjacking. The president spent the weekend posting online about Washington’s dangers. “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” he said yesterday.

Context. Violent crime, especially murder, surged after the pandemic, cresting in 2023. I worked at The Washington Post at the time and sat near reporters on the local crime beat; they had a frantic year. I could also feel a sense of unease among my neighbors. In recent years, people tried to break into my family’s home and car.

How bad is it? Trump says the murder rate is out of control, my colleague Katie Rogers reports. That’s not true, at least not anymore, as the chart below shows. Homicide and carjackings fell in 2024, and D.C. police say the city is on track to record even fewer violent crimes this year. The mayor said yesterday that she had explained this to the president several times.

Juvenile justice. One persistent problem is youth crime. The number of people under 18 arrested in Washington rose each year from 2020 to 2024, according to the White House, although it has dipped so far this year. Trump warned yesterday about “caravans of mass youth” rampaging through the city.

In an unusual arrangement, federal lawyers prosecute adults in D.C. courts, but the local attorney general deals with cases against minors. D.C. judges often sentence offenders under the age of 24 to something other than prison, which has frustrated the Trump administration. “We’re seeing far too much crime being committed by young people — 14, 15, 16, 17 years old — that I can’t get my hands on,” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said yesterday.

Bail. Washington is among a number of cities and states led by Democrats that let most people await trial out of jail without having to post bail. Here’s a helpful explainer about how it works. Conservatives say this policy worsens crime by letting lawbreakers roam free. Trump, for example, said that a murderer could be “out on no-cash bail.” That’s false — homicide suspects are not eligible for the program. And researchers have found that it doesn’t lead to more crime.

Homelessness. Trump says he hopes to clear out the city’s homeless population. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” he wrote online.

Trump’s power

As we wrote in this newsletter last week, the Home Rule Act of 1973 lets city residents elect their mayor and City Council. But the federal government still has some control. Congress can block local laws, as it did in 2023 to reverse a city crime bill. And it can attach riders to federal spending bills that restrict how the Washington operates — such as a 2023 rule barring legal marijuana sales.

Police power. The same law lets the president take control of the D.C. police for up to 30 days under “special conditions of an emergency nature.” Trump invoked it yesterday. He said that the head of the U.S. Marshals Service will help run the department. “If you’re soft, weak and pathetic,” Trump warned him at that lectern during the press conference, “I will fire you so fast.”

Other federal forces. Trump says F.B.I. agents will monitor the streets at night; many will be reassigned from their duties in the Washington field office, my colleague Devlin Barrett reports. The president has also mobilized 800 National Guard troops to help. The soldiers will be focused on logistics and transportation, the Pentagon reporters Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper write, so Washington residents may not see them. (A trial began in California yesterday about Trump’s use of the National Guard to quell immigration protests in Los Angeles this summer. Here’s the status of that case.)

The urbanite

Trump often says that big cities are poorly governed. He spent decades lamenting the fate of his hometown, New York; argued frequently for tougher law enforcement; and eventually left for Florida. He has called Washington a “filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment” and “a rat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole,” reports Campbell Robertson, who covers the region for The Times. Then came the string of fresh insults yesterday.

Is D.C. a standout? Not really. This chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows how it stacks up against other cities:

Perhaps, my colleague Jess Bidgood surmises, Trump secretly wants another job: mayor. “We’re going to replace the medians that are falling down all over the road; we’re going to replace the potholes,” the president (of the country) said from a White House podium, just after urging tourists to “keep coming.”

He seemed to recognize the disjunction. “It’s embarrassing for me to be up here,” Trump said. But when reporters tried to ask about his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin, Jess writes, he grew annoyed, demanding that everyone stay focused on Washington.

For more: Trump sees the world through the lens of real estate. To him, cities like Washington are properties in need of fixing up, Zolan Kanno-Youngs writes.

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