Republicans are looking to expand the federal government’s power over the nation’s capital city — and use the District of Columbia as a testing ground for tough-on-crime policies the GOP could seek to implement around the country.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced about a dozen bills Wednesday designed to chip away at Washington’s autonomy, including its ability to control its own law enforcement activities.
The more than 10-hour markup of the measures, which Democrats nearly uniformly opposed, came the same day President Donald Trump’s 30-day emergency order assuming control of the city’s police department was due to expire.
“This is an assault on the self-determination of the residents of Washington, D.C., and they deserve better than this,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). “It is one thing to have the burden of living here without active representation. It is quite another to have Congress intervene on the basic functions of daily life that the people of D.C. endure.”
The bills on the committee agenda Wednesday would, among other things, expand the universe of city laws Congress can formally veto; allow Washington’s locally elected attorney general to be replaced with an official selected by the president; and invalidate legislation passed by the Council of the District of Columbia.
In an apparent response to the Trump administration’s desire to combat Washington’s leniency for younger offenders, one bill would limit individuals who qualify as “youth” to those 18 years old or younger. Another measure would allow those 14 years of age and older to be tried as adults for certain offenses.
“You are living in a city filled with crime,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to her colleagues. “And we have witnessed it as members of Congress.”
House GOP leadership plans to bring at least some of the bills for a vote on the floor in the coming weeks, but it’s unlikely that any of them will become law: Even if passed by the House, each measure would face an uphill battle in the Senate to gain the necessary Democratic support to overcome a filibuster.
Still, any further action on the bills would likely further inflame the ongoing partisan clash around Washington’s right to self-governance. This tension is also likely to be on display next week when a trio of top Washington elected officials — Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb — is scheduled to testify before the Oversight committee.
Committee ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) maligned Republicans on Wednesday for “pushing a blatant power grab by hijacking authority from local Washington, D.C., leaders and residents.”
“Quite frankly,” Garcia added, “if the president is so obsessed with governing D.C., he should step down as president and run for mayor.”
At the center of this debate is a belief among Republicans that Washington officials are all too soft on crime. Although the city reported a 30-year low in violent offenses last year, Trump claimed Washington was rife with crime to justify his monthlong takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department. He also deployed the National Guard, which will remain in Washington indefinitely.
Congressional Republicans, in turn, have pointed to a number of high-profile violent episodes in Washington, including the recent killing of a congressional intern and the assault of a prominent Trump administration staffer.
“You should be able to walk down any street in America with your little girl or little boy and be safe,” said Rep. John McGuire (R-Va.) during the markup. “Bottom line is, people are dying. So this is not extreme. This is required. We must keep the American people safe.”
In their approach to Washington, Republicans are also modeling what tough-on-crime policies they could seek to enforce on other urban cities run by Democrats. The seemingly random murder last month of a Ukrainian refugee on transit in Charlotte, North Carolina, is being leveraged by Republicans as the latest evidence of Democrats’ inability to conduct proper law enforcement.
The Trump administration has also begun discussions with congressional Republicans about crafting a legislative package to target crime nationwide. Subsequently, the bills approved by the Oversight Committee on Wednesday offer a blueprint for those broader, GOP-championed policies.
Republicans, for instance, have targeted so-called cashless bail policies in Democratic-led jurisdictions that allow individuals to be released from custody without a monetary payment. One measure considered by the Oversight panel would require mandatory cash bail for individuals charged with certain offenses and mandate pretrial or post-conviction detention for some offenders.
“What you all are attempting to do in D.C. right now is just a forecast for what they actually want for the entire country,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Summer Lee.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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