President Donald Trump’s D.C. police takeover could signal the end of home rule as administration asserts federal control over the nation’s capital city and its law enforcement.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that his administration would take over the District of Columbia police and also deploy 800 national guard soldiers and new federal law enforcement units in the nation’s capital.
« This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back », Trump said at a White House news conference flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration officials. « It’s going to be a model. And then we’ll look at other cities also. But other cities are studying what we’re doing », Trump said. « We’re going to have a safe, beautiful capital, and it’s going to happen very quickly. »
Democratic leaders responded with their usual eloquence. « Violent crime in Washington, D.C. is at a thirty-year low. Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost », House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on X.
Repeating the same talking point as many other elected Democrats, Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., questioned Trump’s move by comparing it to his delay in calling out the National Guard to step the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Despite Democratic complaints, few should question the need for greater public safety in our nation’s inner cities. But under our federal system, crime remains the purview of the states. « The regulation and punishment of intrastate violence… has always been the province of the States », the Supreme Court observed in United States v. Morrison (2000). As the great Chief Justice John Marshall declared a century ago, Congress « has no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States », and it is « clear [that] congress cannot punish felonies generally. »
Criminal justice sits at the very core of the states’ police power – their general right to regulate the people and activity within their borders – aside from the specific, narrow areas (such as regulating interstate commerce) delegated by the Constitution to the federal government.
