Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser dismissed fears that President Donald Trump might attempt a federal takeover of her city.
During a press conference Friday, the mayor was pressed on her reaction to Trump’s comments this week that the federal government should rule the District of Columbia to make it “run it strong, run it with law and order, [and] make it absolutely flawless.”
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“Certainly the President has executive powers, and we’ve seen that he has issued a lot of executive orders. Some of them have been disputed. Some of them are being argued right now,” Bowser said, after reassuring citizens that D.C. would someday become the 51st state. “But I think what the approach that we have taken with the White House is to identify those things that we share. What are our shared priorities? The President is very focused on making our nation’s capital the most beautiful capital in the world. And it turns out, that’s our focus too.”
Exerting more authority over the city could overhaul the district’s home rule, and sparked outrage from some D.C. lawmakers, who characterized Trump’s comments as “anti-democratic.” But in addition to the mayor’s congenial approach to the White House, she also dismissed panic from Democrats who believe Trump will follow through on his comments as “speculation.”
In addition to working with the president to beautify federal property, such as national parks, Bowser reiterated support for Trump’s mission to bring federal employees who had been working remotely back to the office, although she was less enthusiastic about Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency’s slew of cuts to the federal workforce, an initiative Elon Musk has led to trim down the bureaucracy.
“The President and I are, I think, simpatico on the return to the office,” Bowser said. “Now we didn’t argue for in-person work with mass firings, which is going to have an impact, certainly on Americans in all 50 states and Washington, DC….our really focus is on making sure we’re being supportive of our residents and calling on the government to not use a chainsaw, but figure out which jobs we need and which jobs we don’t. And that can be done in an orderly way and in a humane way.”
The mayor further suggested bringing employees back into the city to work in “underutilized federal buildings” could help “bring more activity and vitality into the downtown.”
“I’ve always believed that President Trump viewed Washington from the eyes of a developer, and that was kind of how we approached him in his first term,” Bowser told reporters. “It turns out that he didn’t get that involved in real estate. But I think they’re, they’re more interested in that this term.”
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Bowser named public safety initiatives as another common thread tying her office to the White House, a topic Trump often raised on the campaign trail last year.
Crime ballooned in the District of Columbia after the D.C. city council passed a series of criminal justice reform measures responding to the 2020 death of George Floyd, a black man, while he was in the custody of a white police officer.
As waves of turbulent Black Lives Matter protests rocked D.C., City Council member Charles Allen and other colleagues called for social justice measures and successfully helped secure a $15 million police budget cut in the district in 2020. That year, Allen also spearheaded and passed the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Emergency Act, which reduced the statutory maximum sentences for nearly all violent crimes, required additional training for officers on racism and white supremacy, and placed sweeping restrictions on law enforcement, including the ability to pursue criminal suspects on D.C. streets. He also led a successful charge to pass the Second Look Act, which promoted sentence reduction mandates for violent offenders under the age of 25.
The city has since rolled back a number of the relaxed crime laws in favor of tougher actions against suspects. And crime has slowly seeped down after experiencing record highs during the past five years.
The situation in D.C. attracted frequent attention from Trump as he crisscrossed the country during his 2024 campaign.
“We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city so there is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime,” Trump said during a campaign speech last summer.
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Bowser said Friday that public safety was one of the issues she had spoken about with Trump. She signaled a spirit of cooperation in coordinating with the White House to address criminal justice in the district.
“The federal government does have a role in public safety in the district, unlike most places, because they’re a big part of our criminal justice system, including judges and including prosecutors. So there are things that we can work on together,” she said.