‘We don’t need a presidential emergency’: Bowser pushes back against DC takeover after Trump praise

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said Wednesday that her city is ready to move past President Donald Trump’s turbulent federal incursion, with the administration’s 30-day emergency set to expire next week.

Trump launched a federal takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital in August, including deploying federal agents, sending in the National Guard and directing the D.C. police department to assist. A vast majority of the city’s residents oppose the takeover, even as the president claims the nation’s capital is “NOW A CRIME FREE ZONE.”

“I want the message to be clear to the Congress, we have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city,” Bowser told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. “We don't need a presidential emergency.”

The federal government has unique and broad powers in the nation’s capital that it doesn’t in other cities. But the Home Rule Act, the 1970s law that gave the city limited self-governance, only allows the president to commandeer city police for 30 days without congressional approval. The mayor’s Tuesday executive order empowers Washington’s new Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center to "ensure coordination with federal law enforcement to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.”

But as she faces criticism from many city residents — and relative praise from the White House for working with the federal government throughout its surge — Bowser says her executive order is the city’s only way out of an unprecedented period of federal control.

“Let me tell you, without equivocation, that the mayor's order does not extend the Trump emergency,” Bowser told reporters at a Wednesday press conference. “In fact, it does the exact opposite. What it does is lays out a framework for how we will exit the emergency. The emergency ends on September 10.”

Trump sang Bowser’s praises in a Monday Truth Social post, celebrating her “hard work, courage, and being SMART.”

“Wow! Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. has become very popular because she worked with me and my great people in bringing CRIME down to virtually NOTHING in D.C.,” Trump wrote, before panning Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland for resisting his plans to deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities in an effort to combat street crime.

But Bowser told reporters Wednesday that, like many of the district’s residents, she too was “outraged over the intrusion on our federal autonomy” and indicated elements of the city’s coordination with federal authorities — including on immigration enforcement — are in place due to mandates from the Home Rule charter that governs the partnership.

Keeping Washington’s autonomy, she said at the press conference, remains her “north star.”

“We have a big footprint. We get a lot of important things done,” Bowser said. “And so people don't realize our vulnerability because we have excelled despite it. It is a reminder to everyone that to make our democracy more perfect, the citizens of D.C. have to be fully represented.”