'Never felt safer': Republicans grill DC officials on crime

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia looks very different today than it did two years ago, when Mayor Muriel Bowser last sat before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

There were no National Guardsmen deployed around the city, patrolling its landmarks and picking up trash in its parks, when she testified in May 2023. And the District was in the midst of a crime spike, with homicides and carjackings at alarmingly high rates, as some in Congress saw first-hand.

“When I was last here, I explained how we would drive down those trends, and it is working,” Bowser told the committee on Thursday.

Joined by D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb, the mayor made her case, striking a careful balance as she tries to ward off further Republican intervention in local affairs.

Despite a $1.1 billion Congress-imposed cut to the local budget and a workforce hit by federal job cuts, she said “the state of the District is strong.” She touted the declining crime rates the city reported even before President Donald Trump invoked a section of the Home Rule Act to declare a public emergency in August and federalize the Metropolitan Police Department. And she asked for more federal support to hire police officers, beautify the city, and help shelter the unhoused.

Violent crime in the District is down 53 percent compared to 2023, Bowser said, and Trump’s recent surge of federal law enforcement has “accelerated those gains.”

But Republicans appeared unconvinced that the city, left to its own devices, could adequately address crime. Some questioned whether crime was in fact on the decline, or whether the numbers were fudged. And others suggested any progress was due to Trump’s intervention.

“Are you guys cooking the books?” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked Mendelson, referring to the city’s crime statistics, which are under investigation both by the committee and the Department of Justice. The head of the D.C. Police Union has also cast doubt on the statistics.

“I must tell you, I’ve never felt safer in D.C.,” Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said of his experience over the last month. “There’s a record low crime rate, an increase in gang-related arrests and friendly National Guardsmen patrolling the streets.”

Congress has broad constitutional power over the nation’s capital, and close oversight of D.C. is not new — around the time Bowser testified in 2023, lawmakers, with the signature of President Joe Biden, blocked an overhaul of the local criminal code. But it’s a particularly fraught period as the city finds itself under the watchful eyes of congressional Republicans and a president who has called it a “hellhole.”

The House this week passed four bills that would overrule local D.C. laws and allow police to engage in more car chases, make it easier to charge minors as adults, lower the maximum age for youth offenders, and eliminate a local commission tasked with advising on judicial nominations.

They were part of a larger slate of legislation marked up by the House Oversight Committee earlier this month that aims to drastically alter local D.C. laws to Republicans’ liking.

“We are a city under siege,” Mendelson said. “It is frustrating to watch this committee debate and vote on 14 bills regarding the District without a single public hearing, with no input from District officials or the public, without regard for community impact nor a shred of analysis, including legal sufficiency or fiscal impact.”

Norton’s new challenger

In the midst of what local advocates describe as an assault on home rule, concern has grown over the health and mental acuity of D.C.’s lone voice in Congress, the 88-year-old civil rights icon Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Donna Brazile, Norton’s former chief of staff and former acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, penned an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this week calling on Norton to retire.

Before the hearing on Thursday, Norton told reporters she did not intend to retire and that she would seek reelection, despite the Brazile op-ed. A growing field of candidates is lining up to challenge her.

As the hearing wrapped, at-large DC Councilmember Robert White announced he would launch a campaign for delegate.

White was once a legislative counsel to Norton and came in second place to Bowser in the 2022 Democratic mayoral primary. He said on Thursday the attacks on D.C.’s autonomy are what convinced him to run for delegate.

“She has been a lion for D.C., and I would never take anything away from it. But right now D.C. is more vulnerable than we have ever been,” White said. “The attacks on D.C. have been relentless, and residents feel like we keep getting pushed further and further back. So we need someone who can fight right now.”

While the delegate lacks full voting power in Congress, the primary race next year could be hotly contested, especially if Norton decides to bow out. A handful of others have already expressed interest, including Kinney Zalesne, a former DOJ official in the Clinton administration and former deputy finance chair at the DNC; Jacque Patterson, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education; and Deirdre Brown, chair of the Ward 3 Democrats.

“We only have one seat in this entire body. The person in that seat has to be our best fighter. They have to be very capable,” White said.

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