DC, under assault by Trump, needs someone to fight back

[marmar]

DC, under assault by Trump, needs someone to fight back
With anger building, Mayor Muriel Bowser is caught between a rock and a hard place — and needs reinforcements

By Jason Kyle Howard
Senior Ideas Editor
Published September 6, 2025 10:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) The past four weeks have been unprecedented in Washington, D.C.’s history. The nation’s capital is under siege by a president with a taste for authoritarian behavior. After President Donald Trump’s Aug. 11 announcement declaring a state of emergency and effectively militarizing the city, some 2,300 armed National Guard troops are roaming the streets and some Metro stations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, many of them masked, are running traffic checkpoints and bashing in car windows with batons in their search for migrants. Now, if House Republicans get their way, the coming days could prove to be even more monumental.

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But the mayor has since been measured and muted in her pushback against the administration. She has welcomed federal help with local law enforcement, receiving rare praise from Trump, and on Tuesday, she issued an executive order with no expiration date directing the city to coordinate with federal law enforcement “to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.” Her goal, Bowser said, was to provide an off-ramp to more quickly end the state of emergency.

The mayor is fighting a war on several fronts. Her hands are tied by D.C.’s unique status under the Home Rule Act, which granted limited self-government to the District. The city’s budget is subject to congressional oversight. Meanwhile, Bowser has been engaged in a months-long battle to persuade Trump and congressional Republicans to change legislation that froze $1 billion from D.C.’s budget and stands to affect its social services. While the Senate passed a bill in March restoring the money, the House has yet to take action, despite House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., promising in May to move “as quickly as possible.”

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Under the circumstances, this analogy is a poor one, maybe even inappropriate, but that doesn’t make it less true: What Mayor Bowser and the District need is a “bad cop.” Not a police officer or National Guard soldier or an ICE agent who has gone rogue, but a fellow local leader who could satisfy the demands of irate Washingtonians by taking verbal aim at the president — and making the mayor look, in the eyes of Trump and company, even more reasonable by comparison. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/06/dc-under-assault-by-trump-needs-someone-to-fight-back/

[C_U_L8R]

1. Someone is up to us.