Attorney General Pam Bondi has returned control of the D.C. police to its chief after the city sued President Donald Trump over his “hostile takeover.”
Bondi on Thursday ordered Chief Pamela A. Smith to be replaced with Terry Cole, who is the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as the city’s “emergency police commissioner.” She also suspended D.C. policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The attorney general for Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit Friday, challenging the president’s executive actions asserting his control over the capital city’s police and the administration's attempts to install a new police chief and nullify laws enacted by city officials.
After an emergency court hearing on Friday, the Trump administration agreed to roll back the order to allow D.C.’s government and Smith to retain control over its police department.
In the revised order, Bondi named Cole her “designee” during the federal takeover to direct Mayor Muriel Bowser “to provide such services of the Metropolitan Police Department ... as the Attorney General deems necessary and appropriate.”
When announcing her new directive, Bondi aired out her frustrations with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
“Unfortunately, the D.C. Attorney General continues to oppose our efforts to improve public safety in Washington, D.C.,” she wrote on X. “We remain committed to working closely with Mayor Bowser, who is dedicated to ensuring the safety of residents, workers, and visitors in Washington, D.C.”
The legal challenge against the administration’s efforts to “federalize” D.C.’s police remains ongoing.
The lawsuit — which names Trump, Bondi, the Department of Justice and other administration officials and agencies — asks a federal judge to find the administration’s actions unconstitutional and violations of the city’s Home Rule Act.
“By declaring a hostile takeover of MPD, the administration is abusing its limited, temporary authority under the Home Rule Act, infringing on the district’s right to self-governance and putting the safety of D.C. residents and visitors at risk,” Schwalb said in a statement.
“This is the gravest threat to Home Rule that the District has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” Schwalb said.
Bondi had also ordered the immediate suspension of city policies limiting inquiries into immigration status and preventing arrests based solely on federal immigration warrants. That challenge is ongoing.
Schwalb called the directives “unlawful” and said police must “continue to follow your orders and not the orders of any official not appointed by the mayor, setting up what is likely to be a high-wire legal battle over one of the most far-reaching extensions of federal power in the city’s half-century of local control.
After Friday’s hearing, Schwalb said chief Smith “remains in control of the police department under the supervision of our mayor,” marking a “very important win” in the city’s brewing legal battle.
On Monday, Trump invoked a never-before-used authority to seize control of the city’s police department for at least 30 days as he deployed the National Guard and surged federal law enforcement officers to the streets.
He declared what he called a “crime emergency” to justify the move, saying his administration must “rescue” the city from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
He claimed the city is overrun with “bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” though reports of violent crime in the city have plummeted, along with national downward trends of violent crime rates.
Since it was enacted federally in 1973, the Home Rule Act has delegated the city’s day-to-day operations to the municipal government run by the mayor’s office and city council.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to put D.C. under total control, and critics have warned that his latest maneuvers imperil what autonomy it has left.
Bondi’s order “purports to effect a complete takeover” of the Metropolitan Police Department and “installs a handpicked federal official as chief of police” with “sweeping power to issue commands,” according to Schwalb’s lawsuit.
Her directive also purports to suspend policies she “dislikes, impose enforcement policies she favors, and rescind any existing orders that stand in the way,” the suit added.
“In short, it attempts to divest the District and its residents of any control of their local police force and place it, for all purposes, under the control of the federal government,” according to the lawsuit.
D.C.’s so-called sanctuary policies intended to protect immigrant communities were passed into law by the city council. The president cannot unilaterally overturn local laws.
The city’s Home Rule charter “does not authorize this brazen usurpation” of its authority, the suit says.
“These unlawful assertions of authority will create immediate, devastating, and irreparable harms,” including threatening to upend the command structure of the city’s police and “wreak operational havoc within the department,” according to the suit.
There is “no greater risk” to public safety than not knowing who is in command, it adds.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Independent that the Trump administration “has the lawful authority to assert control over the D.C. Police, which is necessary due to the emergency that has arisen in our Nation’s Capital as a result of failed leadership.”
“The Democrats’ efforts to stifle this tremendous progress are par for the course for the Defund the Police, Criminals-First Democrat Party,” she said.
Civil rights advocacy groups are backing the move from Schwalb’s office.
“Declaring a fake emergency and placing our capital city under what looks like a military occupation has furthered the dystopian reality of this moment,” said Lisa Gilbert with democracy advocacy group Public Citizen, which has launched a wave of litigation against the Trump administration. “Donald Trump is an authoritarian president who is intent on dismantling the core safeguards of power-sharing in our democracy, and his actions must be resisted by every American of conscience.”
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