In an interview aboard Air Force One on February 19, President Donald Trump expressed his support for a bill that would repeal “home rule” in the District of Columbia, the governance of the district by local officials, thereby placing control of the district entirely in the hands of the federal government.

“I think that we should govern the District of Columbia,” he said. The president declared the federal government “should run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely flawless. … We could save people from being killed.” The president praised the “great police department there,” before adding ominously “[s]omehow they’re not utilized properly.”

Trump went on to decry the existence of “too much crime, too much graffiti, too many tents on the lawns. … It’s a sad thing, homeless people all over the place; we’ve gotta take care of the homeless. But we can’t have that in Washington.”

Trump has endorsed Senate Bill 4695, known as the Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident Act (or BOWSER Act, named after Washington D.C.’s current Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser), which would repeal the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973. He has also publicly declared his intention to issue his own executive order doing the same thing, although the legality of such a decree would be dubious.

In early February, it was reported that Trump intended to sign an executive order which would heighten criminal penalties for violent and petty crimes, including spraying graffiti and public urination, and order the clearing out of homeless encampments within the city.

Numerous reports have demonstrated that Trump’s claims of lawlessness in the District of Columbia are overblown. Violent crime in the city is down 35 percent since 2023 to a 30-year low.

The Home Rule Act allows for district residents to elect a mayor and a council, grants the council the ability to adopt laws and to approve the mayor’s budget. Congress, however, retains the authority to review all laws passed by the council prior to enactment, and can veto laws at any time. Furthermore, residents of the district have no member of the House of Representatives.

A recent example of Congress’s intervention in D.C. affairs came in March 2023, when a bipartisan resolution which blocked the implementation of newly revised criminal statutes was passed and signed by then-President Joe Biden.

Although the Bowser administration has rebuffed Trump’s statement calling for the repeal of home rule, renewing advocacy for D.C. to become the 51st state of the Union, the local D.C. government has aligned with certain policies of the Republicans, while seeking to collaborate with the Trump administration.

Bowser has advocated for “tough-on-crime” policies. She met with Trump on December 30 and described it as a “great meeting.” According to the mayor, the two “discussed areas for collaboration between local and federal government, especially around our federal workforce, underutilized federal buildings, parks and green spaces, and infrastructure.”

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Bowser prepared a proposal to Trump for further funding for surveillance cameras in D.C. plus an increase in police officers in the district to 4,000.

In an interview at the National Press Club Friday, Bowser said she was also open to working with Trump on the federal jobs massacre, calling on Trump to “not use a chainsaw, but figure out which jobs we need and which jobs we don’t.”

The attempt to take over the District of Columbia is of a piece with the attacks on federal workers. The real purpose of such efforts is to further Trump’s efforts to create a personalist dictatorship, eliminating whole departments of the government that get in his way and increasing his control over the local jurisdiction where the federal government is based.

Those federal workers who do remain in Washington risk being pushed out, as with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Trump’s first term. The agency was moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, while the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Economic Research Service (ERS) were relocated to Kansas City. All three departments returned to Washington under the Biden administration.

While many federal employees who work at home are being ordered back into offices, Trump has made plans to shed government buildings in D.C. and offer them to land developers, who will use the land for residences and offices for affluent Washingtonians.

In line with other local Democratic Party officials across the country in the aftermath of Trump’s election, Bowser no longer refers to D.C. as a sanctuary city, saying, “I think it’s misleading to suggest to anyone that if you are violating immigration laws, that this is a place where you can violate immigration laws.”

Language in Trump’s planned executive order will address Washington’s monuments. Trump signed an executive order on January 29 establishing “Task Force 250,” a group of officials tasked with overseeing “an extraordinary celebration of the 250th Anniversary of American Independence,” to be funded by the Department of Defense.

Section 4 of the order reinstates a first Trump term executive order issued in June 2020 during the mass protests against police brutality. The order directs the state to prosecute anyone who “destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States, or otherwise vandalizes government property.”

On June 1, 2020, Trump deployed military police to clear a peaceful protest in Lafayette Square and sought to invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military against nationwide protests in response to the police murder of George Floyd.

The language of the new executive order clearly targets protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, citing “pro-Hamas-related vandalism of historically significant public monuments and related assaults on Federal officers and employees following October 7, 2023.”

Trump’s claim to be defending monuments and other historic government properties stand in stark contrast to his pardons of fascist thugs involved in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, in which columns of MAGA foot soldiers invaded the United States Capitol, vandalizing government property and assaulting officials, resulting in several deaths.