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.
According to a staff memorandum dated Sept. 5 and obtained by Salon, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will meet on Wednesday — the day Trump’s federal intervention under the Home Rule Act of 1973 will expire, absent congressional action — to discuss 14 proposals that aim to further restrict the District’s autonomy and even unseat the city’s duly elected attorney general in favor of a presidential appointee. (Earlier this week, the Washington Post revealed a draft of the proposals.)
But Washington’s elected officials, while admittedly walking a precarious political tightrope, aren’t giving constituents what they are demanding in the face of Donald Trump: A fight. The result is a city — and a mayor — under attack, and in dire need of reinforcements.
The day after Trump’s announcement, Mayor Muriel Bowser characterized his actions as an “authoritarian push.” She pointed out that, despite the president’s false rhetoric depicting the District as a cesspool of crime and violence, crime rates were at an historic 30-year low.
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.”
In an Aug. 28 media availability at an elementary school in northwest Washington, Bowser was asked about what many Washingtonians have criticized as her dispassionate, overly careful response to Trump’s assault on D.C. Her answer was telling. “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,” she said. “That’s our north star…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 [the police department] has done? So that’s our point.”
Then she tiptoed up to criticizing the president, albeit indirectly: “What has not worked during this period of time is ICE terrorizing communities, especially with masks, and especially with not having enough information about where people are. I’ve said that repeatedly; I’ll say it again. What hasn’t worked, in my opinion, and hasn’t been efficient and isn’t on mission, is National Guard troops, especially from other states.”
But nuanced remarks like these haven’t cut it for many District residents, who have taken to expressing their feelings on the mayor’s various social media accounts.
One long-time Washingtonian, who was granted anonymity because of connections to city government, put it this way: “I understand that she may be [in a difficult position] and there’s a lot of politics fogging it all up. But at the end [of the day], since January, all the concessions she’s done for the administration, like removing Black Lives Matter Plaza, has given the city zilch. So why continue to make nice-nice with the White House when they are not respecting [the city’s] government?”
The consensus seems to be that Washingtonians, like millions of others across the country, are looking for someone willing to wage all-out war against Trump.
The consensus seems to be that Washingtonians, like millions of others across the country, are looking for someone willing to wage all-out war against Trump.
Bowser, though, is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. While not famous for delivering scorching speeches or remarks, one only has to look at her rhetoric and actions during the president’s first term to divine her true feelings — and what she doubtless wishes she could say to Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro and other administration officials.
But things have changed in five years. Trump 2.0 is a harsher, more vindictive update of the original program. He’s no longer constrained by what little caution and niceties he may have once had, or by officials and staffers who managed to, at least on occasion, thwart his cruelest instincts.
Because of federal oversight, Bowser doesn’t have the latitude of other Democrats, such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. (Those three governors, incidentally, are expected to run for president in 2028, so they have an extra incentive to more forcefully oppose Trump.) So Bowser is left to play the hand she has been dealt, and while it may, in the end, turn out to be a losing one for her and the District, she has nevertheless decided to make a go of it.
While unpopular, this is on some level a courageous move. Bowser is a canny politician, and she knows what would be the easy response: Taking the mic and verbally unloading on Trump for running roughshod over a city she loves and has sworn to defend and protect. But she can’t, because doing so would further endanger the city’s budget — and its citizens. Were Bowser to march down to Lafayette Square and fillet the president before a bank of cameras and microphones, as so many of her constituents are calling for her to do, they would be the ones paying the price in the end. So she is left to bite her tongue, which must be nearly chewed in two by now, knowing she is putting her own political career on the line by playing the “good cop” — and being perceived to be accommodating Trump.
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.
To some degree, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is filling this role. On Thursday, he filed a lawsuit to end Trump’s deployment of some 2,300 National Guard troops to the District, which Schwalb argued violates the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1878 law that prohibits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement. “It’s D.C. today but could be any other city tomorrow,” he warned in a statement. “We’ve filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach.”
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Schwalb is himself in the administration’s crosshairs. Despite the apparent efforts of House Republicans to replace him, a locally elected official, with a presidential appointee, on Wednesday the attorney general announced he would seek reelection in 2026.
But as powerful as Schwalb’s actions have been, they don’t really serve up made-for-social-media moments that will whet the appetite many Washingtonians have for a verbal brawl with Trump and take the message of a “Free DC” nationwide.
The logical person to fill this gap would be the city’s 18-term congressional delegate. Eleanor Holmes Norton is a civil rights legend who has been the District’s “Warrior on the Hill” since she was first elected in 1990. At her best, Norton possessed the verbal firepower — and, most importantly, the stomach — for a fight with the president, despite the fact that she has no final vote on legislation. (Delegates can sit on, vote and offer amendments in House committees, but they are prohibited from voting when legislation comes before the full House.) There has been no greater advocate for D.C. statehood than the congresswoman, who first introduced legislation demanding recognition in 1991.
But at 88, and after unsteady (and limited) appearances over the summer, her public response to Trump’s militarization of Washington has been somewhat muted.
“Norton should be screaming bloody murder,” said the D.C. resident, who pointed out that it has fallen to Democrats from neighboring Maryland, like Moore and Rep. Jamie Raskin, to loudly defend the District’s sovereignty.
The congresswoman was absent from Bowser’s press conference responding to Trump’s announcement. (In an email, the mayor’s office declined to comment on Norton’s level of engagement since the crisis.) In her place, Norton’s office issued a statement containing unequivocal language. She called Trump’s actions “an historic assault on D.C. home rule, [a] counterproductive, escalatory seizure of D.C.’s resources to use for purposes not supported by D.C. residents, and [providing] more evidence of the urgent need to pass my D.C. statehood bill.”
Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chair who managed Norton’s successful 1990 campaign and remains a supporter and close confidante, said the congresswoman remains engaged and “maintains a robust schedule.” On Aug. 15, Brazile accompanied Norton to a three-hour federal court hearing on the Justice Department’s attempts to appoint someone to take over the Metropolitan Police Department from the D.C. police chief. (After the judge threatened to intervene, the Justice Department withdrew that portion of its order.)
“Free DC held a rally a block down the road,” she said, “but there was no way Eleanor could join them with the streets blocked off and [federal] agents all around.”
Norton refused to leave town during the House’s summer recess, Brazile said, and “worked the phones” to protect the District. In recent weeks, the congresswoman has also introduced legislation to grant D.C. full authority over its National Guard and police, terminate Trump’s federalization of the MPD and require federal officers to use body and dashboard cameras,
“President Trump has used D.C. residents as props in a political play to showcase his own power,” [Norton] said. “While the president claims that federal control of D.C. is necessary to combat crime, his own actions severely jeopardize public safety in the District…No emergency exists in D.C. that the president did not create himself.”
Still, the feeling on the street is that Norton hasn’t been seen or heard enough. On Sept. 3, she appeared at a Capitol Hill press conference and read from a prepared statement. As written, it contained powerful language: “President Trump has used D.C. residents as props in a political play to showcase his own power,” she said. “While the president claims that federal control of D.C. is necessary to combat crime, his own actions severely jeopardize public safety in the District…No emergency exists in D.C. that the president did not create himself.”
Norton, though, spoke haltingly, stumbling at times over her words. Video from the event shows her walking with the help of an aide. Despite this, she told Axios on Thursday that she would seek reelection in 2026: “I say my seniority is what is very important, and I am not going to step aside.”
When Norton made similar comments over the summer, her office tried to walk them back by adding qualifiers. This time, according to Axios, her spokesperson Sharon Nichols said, “We don’t have anything to add.” Nichols did not reply to a request for comment for this column.
But as we have recently seen with numerous long-serving congressional members, Norton has so far refused to acknowledge her age-related limitations.
Dr. Jacque Patterson, who serves as president and member-at-large of the District of Columbia State Board of Education, recently declared his candidacy for Norton’s seat in 2026. “It’s very clear from the statement that she read [Wednesday] that her health and her energy will not allow her to actually fight the type of fight that we need at this particular time,” he said, noting his respect for Norton’s civil rights legacy and leadership on statehood. “She has fought a heroic fight under the circumstances, that she doesn’t have a vote [in the House or] in the committees that she’s been on…But at this particular time, it is time to pass the baton.”
The District needs a fighter, he argued, someone with the stamina to speak off-the-cuff and rally the opposition to Trump’s actions: “The rhetoric [has] to be energized. We can’t let this moment go by. So we need that rhetoric, we need the hard charge. We need to call Donald Trump out and call him what he is, that he wants to be a dictator, that he wants to impose his will — even as he preaches democracy, even as this Congress talks about [wanting] a small government and not interfering. That’s exactly what they want to do in the District of Columbia. So you take this moment and you make it a movement, and you call people out. This is not what our Founding Fathers were talking about…and for [the administration] to try to take that narrative, it is absolutely wrong, and we need to call them [the] liars that they are. Period.”
Another primary candidate, former senior Justice Department official Kinney Zalesne, said that if she were the delegate, “I would be on TV 24/7, calling out the truth about the city and not the lies that the president has [told].”
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Zalesne described Trump’s actions as “Authoritarianism 101…it is the dictator’s playbook to take the kind of actions that Trump has taken. And I’m not saying there isn’t a crime problem in D.C., or that we [wouldn’t] welcome federal help. But Trump operates with pretext, and right now, the pretext is a so-called violent crime national emergency in the District of Columbia, and that just isn’t accurate, and it’s a distraction.”
Norton, she said, “was a real fighter and very effective.” But now, “the problems that D.C. is facing…need constant attention, constant energy and stamina, and some creative new ideas and partnerships and alliances that are going to rally people to our side and fight for us, fight with us.”
Brazile, too, admitted she recognized the need for change: “I’ve stated on the record that it’s my personal and professional belief that Eleanor should pass the torch.” But she pointed to the hard work Norton has done in recent weeks and bristled at how “the media is biased [against] those who have fought to open doors versus those crying to run for office.”
“For members of Eleanor’s generation, they spent their early years removing barriers and opening doors,” Brazile said. “And as they moved inside the corridors of statehouses and the U.S. Congress, they focused on delivering for their constituents and building seniority.”
It’s clear that Brazile believes Norton’s decades of experience in Congress can help the District in this fraught moment. “When I spoke to [her] this morning, she asked me to help rally folks to stop these insane riders on our D.C. appropriation. That’s my old boss and mentor: she’s focused on the work ahead.”
For now, though, in the face of a crisis that continues to escalate, and absent the rhetorical firepower they are craving, many Washingtonians are feeling frustrated — and demoralized. “For the first time [since] I’ve lived here, I feel dread [when I return]. Almost depressed,” the longtime resident said. “I used to be so excited and very proud. I feel it’s more palpable here in D.C., these feelings, compared to anywhere else in the country. You always had a feeling of patriotism here, [and] now it’s gone.”
