Today, in the District of Columbia, parents are asking if their children will have to walk past armed troops when the school year begins. Commuters wonder how a federalized police force will disrupt their daily routines. Our unhoused neighbors and immigrant communities fear what stepping on the street might mean for them. The district has become something no American community should endure — occupied by the federal military, with its local police force seized by the president. Worse still, the district has become a testing ground for tactics that could soon be deployed across the country.
The only reason such a takeover can happen this quickly is because the residents of the district do not have full self-governance.
There is no emergency to justify this. The president can only take over the district’s police for “federal purposes” during “special conditions of an emergency,” and only for 30 days at a time, under section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, without joint congressional approval. Nothing happening in the district today meets that standard. Violent crime is down 26% this year after a 35% drop in 2024, and overall crime is down 7%, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. This is a manufactured crisis designed to normalize tactics the president has already threatened to unleash on other majority-Black and brown jurisdictions such as Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore.
The only reason such a takeover can happen this quickly is because the residents of the district do not have full self-governance. For more than 50 years, home rule has been a compromise that denies us the rights every state takes for granted. Every law we pass and every budget we set must be reviewed by Congress, where lawmakers we did not elect can block or rewrite them. We have no voting representation in Congress. Unlike U.S. territories like Puerto Rico, we do not even control our own National Guard, and the Trump administration has deployed the National Guard through the end of September.
The president can override the will of our residents by seizing control of our police. This is not a flaw in the system — it is the system working as designed. From the start, the lack of full self-governance for the district has been a tool for Congress and the president to exert political power over a population that has been majority Black for most of the last century.
We have seen the consequences of this unchecked authority before. In 2020, Trump ordered the National Guard into the district to confront unprovoked racial justice protesters, even deploying military helicopters to intimidate crowds. Federal officers — shielded from the accountability that local police face — used chemical irritants and rubber bullets, injuring and traumatizing residents.
The ACLU-D.C. sued on behalf of some of those protesters and won a favorable settlement, but the broader problem remains: Federal law enforcement can act with impunity here. Now that same unchecked power is being exercised again, with the president openly encouraging law enforcement to “do whatever the hell they want.” History shows exactly who pays the price when that happens — Black, brown and unhoused communities.
The rest of the country should pay close attention as the district is the canary in the coal mine. If the federal government can invent an “emergency” here and in Los Angeles to override local authority, it can do the same anywhere.
The aim is clear: Make fear the norm. If we don’t call it out, this playbook will be used again and again.
The rest of the country should pay close attention as the district is the canary in the coal mine. If the federal government truly cared about safety in the district, it would restore the $1 billion in local tax dollars that Congress recently blocked us from using, resulting in harmful cuts that freeze our own funds without saving the federal government a dime. Instead, federal taxpayer money is being spent on troops and a federal police takeover that no one here asked for and that will make our communities less safe. We cannot afford to be complacent. People across the country must see this moment for what it is: an authoritarian maneuver to expand executive power at the expense of local democracy. The long-term solution is clear — the district must obtain statehood. Only then will our residents have the same guardrails against federal overreach that every other states enjoy. In the meantime, Congress must end this abuse of emergency powers and remove the troops from our streets. Until that day comes, our democracy — and the rights of people everywhere — will remain vulnerable to whoever occupies the Oval Office. The District of Columbia is our home, and we need the nation to join us in the fight to protect it from abuse of power.
Melissa Wasser
Melissa Wasser is Senior Policy Counsel for the ACLU of the District of Columbia. 
