Donald Trump’s second term is demonstrating how foolhardy Congress has been over the past 60 years to endow the US presidency with effectively unchecked powers to meet any declared “emergency”. But surely no president would routinely and groundlessly declare emergencies willy-nilly whenever he wants to act unilaterally and without oversight. And if one ever did, the Senate would certainly restrain that White House forthwith. Right? That's not exactly how it appears to be playing out. And his recent predecessors, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, were not immune to the allure of unilateralism either.
Mr Trump’s latest dive into the warm waters of faux emergency has now allowed him to unilaterally seize control of the Washington, DC, Police Department and deploy 800 District National Guard troops to additional policing duties. It’s preposterous because the magnificent city in which I have lived since 1998 bears no resemblance whatsoever to the President’s depictions of it.
He describes our gorgeous metropolis (I wouldn’t live anywhere else on the East Coast) as “a national disgrace” beset with “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” and overrun by “roving mobs of violent youth”. He also mischaracterised it as, “horribly run, graffiti stained” and “too dangerous” to visit.
There are violent crimes here, but rates are at a 30-year low. There was a deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021, but all the malefactors have been summarily pardoned. DC is strikingly beautiful, filled with gorgeous parks, magnificent monuments, endless (mostly free) world-class museums and similar institutions of art and learning.
As for being horribly run, the city was graded first in financial health out of 73 cities examined in a 2023 report by the non-partisan think tank Truth in Accounting. It has a surplus of $2.5 billion, and $9,000 for every citizen, and meets virtually 100 per cent of its pension and healthcare obligations.
There is, however, inequality between the financial condition of African Americans compared to white and other communities. That’s virtually ubiquitous in the US, given the history of slavery, segregation (the city only fully desegregated by the early 1960s and gained a measure of independence from Congress – like electing our own mayor – in 1973). Not all discrimination has been eliminated by any means. Plus, there is the ongoing impact of past abuses on present perceptions, where people live and services in those areas, as well as generational wealth, or lack thereof, within families.
Mr Trump appears to want to scrub that bloodstained history pearly white.
He is seizing control of the Smithsonian Institution, a national treasure, and focusing on eight of its superlative, and free, museums. He vows to rid them of “divisive or ideologically driven” material and anything that could be construed as “narratives that portray American and western values as inherently harmful or oppressive”, especially given that the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence is next year.
Any consideration of the irony of a group that included many committed slaveholders declaring that “all men are created equal” will presumably be impossible or forbidden. The President insists on a sanitised history, particularly regarding race. This is dangerous.
In my nearly 30 years in DC, I have seen little violent crime – though it certainly happens – or much that the President describes. According to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, violent crime is down by 26 per cent this year compared to the same point last year, and robbery is down by 28 per cent. And while the number of homicides in 2023 – 274 – was the highest in two decades, it was not for “ever”, as Mr Trump suggested. That figure has also dropped in subsequent years. Yet, the US President has declared a “public safety emergency” that allows him to take over the DC police and station the National Guard. Washington certainly could use more police officers, but there is no emergency or anything similar.
Moreover, the “big beautiful budget bill” he recently squeaked through Congress punishes this city of 700,000 people with a $1.1 billion funding cut. It’s a huge blow to housing, sanitation, public schools and transportation, and – you guessed it – police and emergency services.
Mr Trump’s executive order is not about crime but power. He is doing this to demonstrate that he can – not to free the city from the “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, squalor, and worse”.
Mayor Muriel Bowser sought the President’s good graces by removing the unmistakable yellow painted words “Black Lives Matter” on H Street immediately facing the White House. But she appears taken aback and is protesting the executive order, thus far in vain. Mr Trump will have control for at least 30 days, and longer if Congress agrees.
Most alarmingly, The Washington Post reports that Mr Trump’s team is planning to form a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force”. That would provide him a potent domestic fighting force, a crucial and essential step in building strongman rule.
The ultra-right-wing German political theorist Carl Schmitt viewed states of emergency – which many strongmen employed to seize permanent extra-constitutional powers – as crucial tests of true sovereignty and genuine authority. The power to unilaterally declare, and act upon, “states of exception” demonstrates that a real sovereign can sweep aside traditional legal, moral or other constraints in a previously functional democratic order like the Weimar Republic, which Schmitt detested.
Mr Trump’s misuse of emergency powers illustrates this precisely. Since the end of the Second World War, time and again Congress has pondered the legitimate need for a robust executive that can act decisively in genuine states of sudden emergency, like nuclear war. They never imagined that the power would be used in conjunction with executive orders, often providing the president virtually unchallengeable authority.
Like his administration’s attempt to seize control of universities, intimidate media and law firms, and remove other crucial constraints on executive power, the de facto seizure of Washington DC’s police is likely to be replicated in other Democratic-run cities with a large African-American population. This was already previewed in Los Angeles.
As a proud, almost-30-year resident of DC (I have lived longer here than in Beirut, Amherst, Miami and London, in that order), I can do no better than quote the love letter to the city by the funk band Parliament in 1975:
A chocolate city is no dream, it’s my piece of the rock
And I dig you, CC
God bless CC and its Vanilla suburbs
