Two Republican congressmen have proposed stripping the District’s mayor and its city council of their governing authority and placing Congress back in charge of the federal city.
Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah on Thursday introduced legislation to repeal the D.C. Home Rule Act, a more than 50-year-old law allowing residents to elect local officials to address local matters.
The congressional bill’s name — the Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident, or BOWSER, Act — takes a direct shot at Mayor Muriel Bowser and her leadership since she entered office a decade ago.
“The radically progressive regime of D.C. Mayor Bowser has left our nation’s capital in crime-ridden shambles. Washington is now known for its homicides, rapes, drug overdoses, violence, theft, and homelessness,” Mr. Ogles told the Daily Caller. “Bowser and her corrupt Washington City Council are incapable of managing the city. As such, it seems appropriate for Congress to reclaim its constitutional authority and restore the nation’s capital.”
The legislation calls for repealing home rule a year after the bill is signed into law.
Neither Ms. Bowser nor Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative in the House, has publicly commented on the bill.
Under the U.S. Constitution and the Home Rule Act, Congress has authority to review, approve and reject laws passed by the D.C. government. That authority was exercised early in 2023, when Republicans led a bipartisan coalition to overturn a major rewrite to the District’s criminal code deemed too criminal-friendly.
The city’s crime wave in 2023 — which saw federal lawmakers carjacked at gunpoint and congressional aides attacked on the street in robberies and assaults — prompted Republicans to link the District’s worsening safety with the local government’s near-total Democratic control.
President Trump said the District’s leadership allowed the nation’s capital to become a “nightmare of murder and crime” on the campaign trail last year. Mr. Trump also floated a possible federal takeover of the semi-autonomous city.
D.C. lawmakers pushed with crime-fighting legislation after the yearlong spike in deadly shootings and stickups, but House Republicans proposed legislation to remove protections for juvenile offenders — who were major actors in the 2023 crime wave — and for Congress to take control of the city’s sentencing guidelines.
“The corruption, crime, and incompetence of the DC government has been an embarrassment to our nation’s capital for decades,” Mr. Lee said in a statement. “It is long past time that Congress restored the honor and integrity of George Washington to the beautiful city which bears his name.”
Mr. Lee proposed a bill under the same in July, but it never got a hearing on the then-Democrat-run Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Republicans won control of both houses of Congress last fall.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.