Washington, D.C. has been dressed in the crosshairs of Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans in recent weeks, with efforts to provide more control over the overwhelmingly democratic capital.
On Thursday, the president signed an executive order he said would “secure, beautiful and prosper” Washington, D.C. by increasing the handling of criminal fights, undocumented arrests of immigrants and permits to carry concealed weapons. Trump ordered J.D. Vance to “remove inappropriate ideologies” from the Smithsonian facility, which has many museums in and around the city.
A few weeks ago, Republicans in Congress approved a $1 billion cut to the city’s budget. This has warned Mayor Muriel Bowser that it will lead to devastating cuts to police, schools and health services. The Senate immediately scrambled to cancel the cuts. This was an effort Trump has supported since then, but it was unclear when the House would act.
“The home needs to take up the DC funding ‘modification’ passed by the Senate and get it done right away. We need to clean up and make the once beautiful capital city beautiful again,” the president wrote Friday.
The urban advance into politics comes in the urban advance into politics despite efforts to improve previous tense relationships with Trump, such as Jack Hammering at Black Life Matter Plaza, set up near the White House. A publicly safe executive order has long been anticipated, but the budget cuts were a surprise that it was enacted as part of a federal spending bill that had passed several hours before the closure occurred.
Tazra Mitchell, Chief Policy and Strategy Director for ThinkTank at the DC Institute of Fiscal Policy, said the city’s budget cuts will ripple beyond its boundaries and affect the transport and healthcare systems shared with neighboring Maryland and Virginia.
“We are taught as children. If we make a mistake, we own it. And we try to make the mistakes we have caused better and do the right thing.
Written by House Republicans and exploiting Congress’ ability to consider Washington, D.C. law omits the language that approves the 2025 budget. This will prevent the city from spending its own locally collected tax revenues, forcing it to return to 2024 spending levels, and have a devastating impact on city services.
“These are local dollars. They don’t save the federal government money. We’re mid-year in the fiscal year and the current cuts are reckless,” he said at a press conference after the spending bill was approved.
She didn’t say when the cut would be effective, but the mayor said, “If we had to cut $1 billion right now… we’d have to go where the money is on budget for that fast cut.
It was unclear how the language that approved the Washington, D.C. budget was removed from the federal spending bill, but shortly after it passed the Senate, Republican Susan Collins described the omission as “mistakes,” and the room unanimously passed her law to fix it.
In the House, Republican leaders have not said when they put it up for the vote, and a spokesman for speaker Mike Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. After Trump weighed it, Punchbowl News reported that the House is likely to vote for the measure in early April.
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Rosa Delauro, a top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, tried to approve a language that would approve the city’s budget when her room passed the spending bill, but Republicans refused. “Johnson Speaker has been limping to put DC’s funding amendments on the House floor, which should have never happened,” Delauro said. “President Trump is right to call the House of Representatives to take up bills that the Senate has already passed unanimously.”
Some of the President’s allies have encouraged the passage of amendments, including the national brotherhood police order, and warned of the “very serious” public safety impacts if funds do not recover. The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute was called a “fundraising cut,” and Ed Martin, an interim US lawyer appointed by Trump, told a nearby group this week that he asked Johnson to bring the corrections to the floor.
Those who match Trump see the amendment as leverage that should be used in cities. Before Trump gets heavy, Andy Harris, chairman of the far-right house Freedom Caucus, told Hill that his group should delay the passage of action because it needs to be thought a bit to come up with a list of what requirements should be placed in DC.
Zach Smith, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Heritage Foundation, outlined in his Daily Signal a set of policies that Congress will impose on Washington, D.C. during the revision.
If House leaders agree, it is similarly latest example of Congress, democracy and Republicans, interfering with the operations of cities that many residents believe should be states.
“It’s not even a budget cut. It’s really like a power grab over DC’s budget,” said Alex Dodds, co-founder of Free DC, a group advocating for city autonomy. “There’s no way Congress or this president knows what we need more than we do.”
