Members of the D.C. Council are pushing back against Mayor Muriel Bowser’s remarks that President Donald Trump’s surge of federal law enforcement personnel into the city has helped lower crime.
“As I feared, our Mayor’s words are now being used to justify harmful federal overreach in cities nationwide. This is bigger than DC — or partisan politics. It’s about resisting creeping authoritarianism,” Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker wrote on X, adding, “we must not legitimize an illegitimate agenda.”
In remarks Wednesday, Bowser said “this surge has been important to us” because it helped lower the rates of crimes like carjacking, but she also made clear that the presence of immigration agents and National Guard troops is “not working” and expressed hope that the initiative, which began on Aug. 7, would end soon.
The comments praising the surge were met with immediate pushback from Bowser’s fellow Democrats on the D.C. Council.
“She said she appreciates the federal surge and that it’s having positive results in D.C. That’s not the case,” at-large Councilmember Robert White Jr., a Democrat, said in a video on X.
“We should not, as the District of Columbia, be giving people the impression that this is a good thing, that we are OK with it, that it is helping the city. It is not doing any of those things, and it is not intended to help us,” White said.
“This is trampling on democracy in real time,” he said. “I am not OK with this. The average resident is not OK with this. D.C. residents, D.C. voters, are not OK with this.”
Another Democratic councilmember, Brianne Nadeau, of Ward 1, posted on X that “DC is under siege” from the federal government, with “armed military patrolling our streets & masked agents scooping up neighbors & taking them away.”
“Our residents are afraid, hesitant to go out & to work, angry that our limited autonomy is being eroded. There is nothing welcome about this,” she said.
Asked Thursday about the Council’s criticism, Bowser said she’d spoken for a long time on Wednesday “and I’m starting to think some of what I said was lost in my remarks.”
“Our North Star is protecting home rule and the district’s autonomy in all things, especially during this last eight months, where it has been clear that our autonomy has kind of been in the crosshairs. That’s our North Star since the beginning of this federal surge of officers,” she said.
“We didn’t ask for any federal officers. We’re driving crime down, but while they’re here, how can we most strategically use them to accelerate the work that MPD has done. So that’s our point,” she added, referring to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
In her remarks Wednesday, Bowser noted that since the federal takeover, there has been an 87% drop in carjackings compared to the same period last year. The data cited also showed a 45% fall in violent crime and a 12% reduction in property-related offenses, for an average decrease of 15% in crime overall in the district from the same period last year.
“We know that when carjackings go down, when use of guns goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer, so this surge has been important to us,” she said.
Bowser also expressed some of the same concerns as the councilmembers. “We know having masked ICE agents in the community has not worked, and National Guards from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources,” she said.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement Wednesday that “crime is not a partisan issue.”
“Americans expect elected officials to prioritize their safety over politics. President Trump’s bold action and partnership with local law enforcement has quickly minimized violent crime and removed over a thousand criminals from the streets of our nation’s capital,” she said. “Other Democrat leaders who are criticizing President Trump for cleaning up D.C. should take notes on the tremendous success that Washington, D.C., has already experienced under President Trump’s leadership.”
