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U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a press briefing with U.S. President Donald Trump in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House in Washington, DC on Friday, June 27, 2025 (Photo by Annabelle Gordon/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images).
The D.C. attorney general tipped his hand with a legal opinion advising local police that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi”s order purporting to install a new “emergency” police commissioner — the DEA administrator — was “unlawful” and not to be followed. The clash of memoranda between top attorneys, local and federal, all but guaranteed a court fight would follow over the Trump administration’s show of force in Washington, and now it has.
At the start of the week, President Donald Trump, flanked by members of his cabinet, Bondi included, declared that the feds would crack down on “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people” through the deployment of D.C.’s National Guard, FBI agents, and ICE on the streets of the nation’s capital — at the same time placing the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) “under direct federal control.”
In an executive order, Trump cited, as one authority, Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which pertains to the Emergency Control of Police.
Trump declared that “special conditions of an emergency nature exist” that justified the “use” of MPD for “federal purposes” of “maintaining law and order,” protecting federal buildings and property, and “ensuring conditions necessary for the orderly functioning of the Federal Government.”
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D.C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, the order continued, “shall provide the services of the Metropolitan Police force for Federal purposes for the maximum period permitted under section 740 of the Home Rule Act” and “shall provide such services” as Bondi “may deem necessary and appropriate.”
Bondi followed up on Thursday by ordering Bowser to “immediately implement” several “directives,” including the rescinding of sanctuary city protections and the installation of DEA head Terry Cole as MPD’s “Emergency Police Commissioner” — higher in rank than MPD Chief Pamela Smith — as long as Trump’s emergency declaration is in effect.
D.C. AG Brian Schwalb, also a Democrat, in an apparent precursor to a lawsuit, responded by advising Smith by letter that she was “not legally obligated to follow” Bondi’s “unlawful” order.
“Regardless of the Bondi Order, no official other than you may exercise all the powers and duties of the Chief of Police or issue any executive orders, general orders, or other written directives that apply to members of the MPD,” Schwalb wrote, noting that the Home Rule Act “does not authorize the President, or his delegate, to remove or replace” the police chief, as that is the mayor’s lane.
If it seemed that Schwalb was getting ready to sue, that came true on Friday morning.
“We are suing to block the federal government takeover of DC police. By illegally declaring a takeover of MPD, the Administration is abusing its temporary, limited authority under the law,” Schwalb posted on X. “This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it.”
“The Administration’s actions are brazenly unlawful. They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD. They infringe on the District’s right to self-governance and put the safety of DC residents and visitors at risk,” he continued. “This is an affront to the dignity and autonomy of the 700,000 Americans who call DC home.”
“Our office will go to court to defend Home Rule, block the unlawful orders, and maintain MPD under District control. We have no choice but to stand up for DC residents’ rights and safety,” Schwalb concluded.
In the lawsuit itself, Schwalb stated that Trump and Bondi’s potentially open-ended assumption of control over the MPD “[i]n every respect” exceeded the “narrow delegation that Congress granted the President in Section 740” of the Home Rule Act.
“Section 740 does not authorize this brazen usurpation of the District’s authority over its own government. That narrow statute permits the President and his delegee to request that the Mayor provide the ‘services’ of MPD—nothing more,” the suit said. “None of the directives in the Bondi Order fall within the compass of that limited grant of authority.”
In addition, said the lawsuit, Section 740 “only permits the President to request ‘services’ for a ‘federal purpose,'” not the installation of Cole as an “emergency” commissioner supplanting the MPD police chief.
“[T]he Bondi Order purports to effect a complete takeover of MPD by the federal government. It installs a handpicked federal official as chief of police, grants him sweeping power to issue commands directly to MPD, and bars MPD senior leadership from acting without his approval. It also purports to suspend MPD policies that Defendant Bondi dislikes, impose enforcement policies she favors, and rescind any existing orders that stand in the way,” the suit continued. “In short, it attempts to divest the District and its residents of any control of their local police force and place it, for all purposes, under the control of the federal government.”
Schwalb is asking a federal judge to declare Bondi’s order “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act and to set it aside as an “unlawful final agency action.”
“The Bondi Order does not even attempt to explain why it furthers legitimate federal purposes to oust veteran MPD leaders in favor of an installed federal official,” the suit said. “It does not grapple with the obvious operational disruptions and threats to public safety, and it does not evaluate potential alternatives to the wholesale supplantation of MPD’s leadership structure.”
The D.C. AG, calling both Trump’s executive order and Bondi’s order “plainly unlawful,” further asked the U.S. district court to block the federal defendants’ “vague,” open-ended emergency declaration and Cole’s installation as commissioner:
The District is entitled to a declaration that the EO and Bondi Order are plainly unlawful and that Section 740 does not permit Defendants to implement the EO, issue the Bondi Order, assert operational control over MPD, assume positions within the chain of command supervising MPD, bypass the Mayor to direct policies and services of MPD to perform local law enforcement functions, or declare an emergency on bases so vague that it is impossible to know when it is over.
