Donald Trump Seizes Power Over D.C. Police—What That Means
Donald Trump is taking over the Metropolitan Police Department, and sending in the National Guard.
President Trump on Monday announced plans to send the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and invoke Section 740 of the
D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, giving him temporary control over the nation’s capital.
“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, Bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump told a packed room of reporters. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re gonna take our capital back. We’re taking it back. Under the authorities vested in me as the President of the United States, I’m officially invoking Section 740, of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, you know what that is, and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and you’ll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that.”
This is an unprecedented decision that may very well lead to even more extreme overreaches of police and executive power on behalf of the Trump administration. As a federal district and not a state, the Home Rule Act gives D.C. the right to elect a mayor, legislate and enforce local police, and approve the city’s budget. Trump’s decision Monday puts the local Metropolitan Police Department under federal control. Rule 740, initially designed to be used in case of an all out violent uprising, allows Trump himself to control the MPD for two days at a time.
Meanwhile, Trump announced, 800 National Guard troops will also be sent to patrol the district.
This press conference was the culmination of
days of statements from the president in which he expressed the kind of far-right takes on crime in D.C. that people tend to develop after watching hours of Fox News every night. From clearing out homeless encampments to trying 14-year-olds as adults, Trump has begun to initiate his authoritarian vision on the grounds that crime is at an emergency level.
Donald Trump is taking over the Metropolitan Police Department, and sending in the National Guard.
newrepublic.com