D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser doesn’t like it, but she admits there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
On Monday, President Donald Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, declaring a public emergency and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under federal control. The order also deploys the National Guard to help restore law and order in the capital.
Bowser called the move “unsettling and unprecedented,” claiming Trump’s view of D.C. crime is frozen in the “COVID-era” of his first term. She acknowledged that the city saw a post-pandemic crime spike, but insisted her administration had already reversed it with “laws and tactics” to get violent offenders off the streets. According to Bowser, Metropolitan Police Department statistics now show violent crime at a 30-year low.
BREAKING: The DC Mayor is visibly SHOOK after Trump federalized DC earlier.
She is once again pushing for DC to gain statehood. If that happened, it would have the HIGHEST murder rate in America.
It’s time for the mayor to RESIGN. This is absolutely SHAMEFUL. pic.twitter.com/js3tCn7CBv
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) August 11, 2025
The problem? Those numbers come from a police department whose leadership is under investigation for allegedly falsifying crime data.
NBC 4 Washington reported earlier this year that a commander was accused of altering stats to make the city look safer — just days after he filed an EEO complaint against an assistant chief. The police union has accused MPD brass of cooking the books.
The White House isn’t buying the rosy narrative either. In a statement Monday, officials noted that in 2024, D.C. had the fourth-highest homicide rate in the nation — nearly six times that of New York City and higher than Atlanta, Chicago, and Compton. “If Washington, D.C., was a state,” the statement read, “it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the nation.”
Still, Bowser used the moment to push for D.C. statehood, framing Trump’s takeover as proof of the district’s “tenuous” access to democracy. “We are American citizens. Our families go to war. We pay taxes… While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say… we’re totally surprised,” she said.
Behind the speeches, one fact remains: Trump has the authority, Bowser admits it, and the National Guard is coming. The capital city will now be policed by federal command — and the political fight over whether that’s “fascism” or long-overdue accountability will play out against a backdrop of a murder rate that, statistics games aside, rivals some of the most dangerous places in America.
