WASHINGTON—A series of 13 new bills have been introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives with the goal of increasing the federal government’s power over the capital city. This is an escalation of the Trump administration’s attack on D.C.’s autonomy and its citizens, as these bills are designed to loosen restrictions on police while adding new ammunition to Trump’s war on minority communities and poor people in the city.
Some of these bills are focused on attacking Black and brown youth in the city, like the Juvenile Sentencing Act, which opens up the doors for children to be tried as adults at age 14 for “violent offenses.” This comes as Mayor Muriel Bowser issued curfew zones throughout the city for kids in groups of nine or more.
This effort is the brainchild of the Trump administration. The president has been painting an image of D.C. youths as violent “gang members” who are randomly attacking and mugging people in the city via posts on his Truth Social platform. This Juvenile Sentencing Act has already passed the House, with eight Democrats joining the majority of the Republican Party in supporting it.
The Trump government also greatly benefits from the passing of these bills. The District of Columbia Attorney General Appointment Reform Act would give the president the ability to circumnavigate D.C. voters and directly pick the city’s Attorney General.
There is also the District of Columbia Judicial Nominations Reform Act, which would erase the D.C. Judicial Nomination Commission in favor of direct Trump appointees for judge positions in the city.
Collectively, these bills will give Trump an extreme amount of legal influence and power over the city, which could be used to facilitate ICE activities in the city without the threat of pushback from an attorney general elected by the people they would represent.
While the District has dealt with the federal government taking away elected political seats before, these bills would mark a start to the full federalization of the city that Trump has been toying with since the start of his second term.
Another bill focuses on reinstating cash bail for those in pretrial detention. This is dangerous for minority communities, who are usually unfairly arrested at higher rates, and can force people to be stuck in a cell for weeks or months while unable to pay prohibitively high bail amounts in cash. This creates a feedback loop where individuals who end up unfairly arrested and waiting for trial lose their jobs and home, which can put them and their families in poverty or have them be forced to consider crime in order to survive.
D.C. got rid of cash bail in 1992, but Trump has wanted a nationwide enforcement of cash bail. As police and federal agent presence continues in the city, more unfair arrests are likely to happen, and with cash bail revived, it would mean poor people in the city could be forced into deeper poverty if they or a family member are arrested.
Many of the bills would also loosen police restrictions that have been put in place to protect citizens from police abuses. The Protecting Our Nation’s Capital Emergency Act would put a 90-day statute of limitations on claims of police misconduct. This means that if an officer were to break protocol or commit an act of abuse, members of the public have only 90 days to make a complaint against the offending officer.
Police have historically used tactics like intimidation and evidence tampering to slow down the legal processes, which means that creating this 90-day limit could give bad cops an out if they have been accused of abuse of power of any kind. The bill also goes as far as to give the police unions the ability to utilize collective bargaining to determine corrective actions for offending officers. The goal was explicitly to eliminate policies that “discourage them from serving.”
Washington has been under military occupation over the course of the past few months per Trump’s goal to make the city “safe and beautiful.” This has been carried out by having the National Guard harass Black and brown youths across the city, ICE agents kidnapping people illegally, and a substantial increase of policing across minority communities in D.C.
These bills are being pushed by the current administration in order to put the capital under the full control of Trump and his political allies. The new legislation will only strengthen the ability of police and federal agents to continue terrorizing marginalized communities and will do nothing materially to improve the city’s real issues of poverty, housing, and education.
Despite these bills, movements like Free D.C. have been focused on combating the recent pushes by the federal government and mobilizing among the city’s communities and via the legal system with the eventual goal of home rule so that an administration like Trump’s will not be able to take power away from the citizens of the capital.
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