President Donald Trump made an extraordinary move Monday morning to emphasize his commitment to law and order, during a raucous White House press conference about the control of Washington, DC.
The president announced that he would take direct federal control of the Washington, DC, police department.
The president said his actions would help ‘rescue our nation’s capitol from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.’
‘We’re going to take our capitol back,’ he added.
The president took the podium with a show of force, flanked by cabinet members Attorney General Pam Bondi, US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth, and Interior Director Doug Burgum.
The president announced that he would also deploy National Guard troops into the city and more U.S. military service members if necessary.
‘They’re going to be allowed to do their job properly,’ he said.
Trump said he would order federal law enforcement officials to be aggressive against criminals.
President Donald Trump speaks at a White House press briefing flanked by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared an image of Edward Coristine, known by the nickname ‘Big Balls,’ after he was bloodied up in an attempted early morning carjacking on August 3 right off the popular 14th Street N.W. nightlife corridor in Washington, D.C.
‘You spit and we hit and we can hit real hard,’ he said.
Federal law officials were also deployed in the city over the weekend, ramping up a public display of law and order ahead of the president’s Monday announcement.
The president also vowed to clear out camps of homeless people from Washington, DC parks and public lands.
‘Our Capital City has been overtaken by violent gangs, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to take it.’
It was vengeance for ‘Big Balls.’
Around 3 a.m. on Sunday, August 3, Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former Department of Government Efficiency employee, was the victim of an attempted carjacking on the 1400 block of Swann Street N.W., right off the popular 14th Street nightlife corridor.
‘He was left dripping in blood. He thought he was dead with a broken nose and concussion. Can’t believe that he’s alive,’ Trump said.
The neighborhood is known for political hotspots like Le Diplomate – a favorite of former President Joe Biden – beer gardens, bars and the nightclub Black Cat.
Police said a group of teenagers approached Coristine and a female companion and demanded his vehicle.
Coristine, who now works for the Social Security Administration, pushed the woman into his car before he was assaulted.
Since the attack, two 15-year-olds not from D.C. – but from nearby Hyattsville, Maryland – were arrested and charged with unarmed carjacking.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a press conference on measures his administration will take to address crime in Washington, DC
A White House staff member hands out papers reading “Making DC Safe and Beautiful Again” before US President Donald Trump arrives to speak
A photo of Coristine from the attack’s aftermath showed him shirtless and bloodied.
On Tuesday, Trump shared the gruesome image on social media.
The president also highlighted recent horrific crimes in the city including a 21-year-old congressional intern who was hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting and killed, a former Trump administration official murdered in a carjacking, and a Democratic congressman who was carjacked at gunpoint.
Trump also recalled a ‘demented lunatic’ that stabbed an aide to Sen. Rand Paul in 2023 and a three-year-old girl who was shot and killed near the US Capitol while she was sitting in a car.
In the same Truth Social post, the president demanded that teenagers involved in these types of crime be prosecuted as adults.
‘They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!’ Trump warned.
A White House official said Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed to the city to deal with crime, which the president has claimed has spiked – something contested by the D.C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has pointed to stats that show violent crime has decreased in the District since 2023.
‘The Mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, is a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances, and the Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,’ Trump said in a Sunday night Truth Social post.
In April, Bowser announced the creation of a special police force specifically to tackle underage crime.
In an interview on MSNBC Sunday, she pushed back on White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller saying that D.C. was ‘more violent than Baghdad.’
Mayor of the District of Columbia Muriel Bowser speaks as U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, left, listens during a news conference
The FBI, federal agencies, and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) patrol the areas of U Street Northwest
‘Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false,’ Bowser said.
Trump has also threatened to ‘FEDERALIZE this City.’
Trump doesn’t have the unilateral power to do such a thing – it would take congressional action.
Congress would have to repeal the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which gave the residents of Washington, D.C. the ability to elect a mayor and city council.
Despite D.C. having a population larger than Vermont and Wyoming, due to the District’s lack of statehood, residents are barred from electing members of Congress.
With a Republican-led House and Senate, a repeal of the Home Rule Act could be possible, but it likely wouldn’t survive a Democratic filibuster threat in the U.S. Senate.
Additionally the move would be highly unpopular with the approximately 700,000 residents of Washington, D.C. who are opposed to losing self-governance.
But that hasn’t kept Republicans from trying.
In February, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee and Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles introduced the ‘Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident’ or BOWSER Act – the acronym spelling out the name of D.C’s three-term mayor.
The bill would repeal the Home Rule Act a year after passage.
