President Donald Trump said Monday that Washington, D.C., is under federal control “where it belongs” after he federalized the city’s police force.

Trump has leveraged his power over the capital city to clean up crime and homeless encampments in recent days.

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“D.C. has been under siege from thugs and killers, but now, D.C. is back under federal control where it belongs,” he wrote on social media Wednesday night as federal officials from multiple agencies and the National Guard surveyed the city for violations of law.

“The White House is in charge. The Military and our Great Police will liberate this City, scrape away the filth, and make it safe, clean, habitable and beautiful once more,” he added.

In the same post, the president shed doubt on the city’s crime statistics and said it has one of the “highest rates of crime in the world.” Washington has a lower homicide rate than dozens of other cities globally.

The president also claimed that the city is under federal control, but it is not. The city’s police force has been federalized, but Mayor Muriel Bowser and the District of Columbia Council remain in control of the district’s policies. Congress controls its funding.

Trump also referenced a Washington police commander under investigation and suspended for manipulating crime statistics. He said the “Democrat government of D.C. has largely stopped investigating, arresting, and prosecuting most crime, the published statistics don’t even capture a fraction of the actual violence.”

The president said citizens do not walk the streets at night, stores lock up their merchandise, and that youth violence goes largely unreported.

Since announcing the federalization of the Metropolitan Police Department, Trump has sought to paint a picture of a lawless city that he’s set to clean up. But under district law, he’ll only have 30 days to do it.

But Trump said earlier Wednesday that he’s seeking “long-term extensions” to his control over the city’s police force and is asking Congress for approval.

“I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously,” Trump said.

“We’re going to need a crime bill that we’re going to be putting in, and it’s going to pertain initially to D.C.,” Trump also said. “We’re going to be asking for extensions on that, long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days.”


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Trump is the first president to federalize the MPD, according to the district’s sole representative in Congress, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).

It’s unclear if he plans to take further action to federalize the city itself. Trump cannot federalize the city’s government without an act of Congress, an amendment to the Home Rule Act.