In 2020, amid massive demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd, President Trump hinted at a plan he had been privately discussing with top aides: invoke a little-known federal law to take over the D.C. police force, then take a more aggressive approach to quelling the protests. “If you don’t dominate your city and your state, they’re gonna walk away with you,” the president told governors. " In Washington ... we’re going to have total domination.” The plan never came to fruition. D.C. leaders — including Mayor Muriel Bowser and then-Police Chief Peter Newsham — made desperate pleas to top Trump advisers to reconsider, warning that such a heavy-handed and unprecedented approach would only exacerbate tensions in the city, the Washington Post reports..
With Trump now in a competitive race for the White House, city leaders fear the District received only a reprieve. On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly derided the nation’s capital as a dirty, violent and out-of-control place that he plans to “take over.” City leaders say they’re bracing for such a possibility. The episode in 2020, they say, indicates just how real the possibility of a takeover is, particularly given that Trump was dissuaded then by advisers who are unlikely to be a part of the administration should Trump win again. Because D.C. has a unique status as a federal district, the D.C. National Guard is appointed by the president and can be deployed without the consent of city officials, giving the president more power to send troops into the District than into states, where governors control the citizen soldiers. Taking over the D.C. police force, the local cops serving a city of nearly 700,000, would represent an unprecedented concentration of federal power over a major city, an exertion of executive power never before attempted by any U.S. president.
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