By Don Newman

August 14, 2025

The decision by President Donald Trump to federalize law enforcement in Washington D.C. has serious implications far beyond his already worrying expansions and abuses of presidential power.

Trump announced on August 11th that he was placing the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Force under the control of the United States Attorney-General and augmenting the existing force with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Border Security Agency, other  federal police forces and the Districts’s National Guard. He says the measures are necessary to save the American capital.

“Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!” he posted on Truth Social before a news conference on Monday in which Trump said DC had been “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” as well as “drugged-out maniacs and homeless people”.

In reality, the crime rate in Washington is at a 30-year low after spiking in 2023. So far this year, violent crime overall is down 26% compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28%, according to the MPDC.

Members of various federal police forces and National Guard troops are now patrolling Washington streets along with DC police officers. The initial presidential order puts the federal presence on the streets for 30 days but Trump says he will seek Congressional approval to extend the arrangement long term. And that could be dangerous going forward, since current conditions in the American capital don’t require a federal law enforcement buildup.

Why is Donald Trump seizing control of law enforcement now?

One answer is because he can. The District of Columbia is a 70- square mile area that includes the four quadrants of Northeast (NE), Southeast(SE), Northwest(NW) and Southwest(SW) Washington, radiating outward from the US Capitol. The city was created as a federal district so that the states of Maryland and Virginia that abut it would not feel shortchanged, disrespected, or otherwise offended if the other were chosen as the capital. It also freed the federal government from being interfered with, hamstrung or compromised by any state restrictions or regulations.

The District has a mayor, city council and a member of the House of Representatives in Congress, but that member cannot vote. It’s why the phrase “Taxation without representation” became a protest slogan for DC, including on its license plates.

Fifty years ago, it had none of that. Members of the House of Representatives did everything from setting taxi fares to the price of liquor in city outlets. Naturally, both were low since the people who set the prices were also the consumers of the goods.

Trump’s political federalization of the police in the District of Columbia doesn’t bode well as an indication of his autocratic ambitions.

Things have improved since then. But not much. Trump can dispatch the DC National Guard onto the city streets because with Washington a federal district, there is no state governor he would have to push aside to give the command. Likewise, the other policing agencies, including the FBI come under Federal control.

However, Trump’s explanations do not answer the timing question. Why is the federalizing of law enforcement in the capital taking place now? Enlarging and controlling the police in Washington will certainly help control any anti-Trump protests in the near term. But the answer could also be connected to the 2028 presidential election.

Trump was first elected president in 2016, he was defeated in the election of 2020, and returned to the presidency in the election of 2024. That means by 2028, he will have served two presidential terms. The 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution came into effect in 1951. It was approved to prevent a repeat of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in the Depression and the Second World War. Beginning in 1932, he ran and won four presidential elections, breaking the custom observed since the first President George Washington stepped away from the Presidency after serving two terms,

Roosevelt died a few months after beginning his fourth term a short time before the Second World War ended in 1945. In 1947, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment and it was ratified by the required number of states in 1951. There was a move to try and change the amendment when Ronald Reagan was in office but it went nowhere and petered out as Reagan became less popular and more elderly.

Despite the 22nd Amendment, Trump has ruminated about staying there after his term ends at the beginning of 2029. In April, the online Trump Store began selling a “Trump 2028” hat. A Republican Congressman from Florida launched a move to amend the Constitution but for myriad reasons that is not going to happen.

So, Trump could only stay in office after his term ends at noon on January 20, 2029 if he manages to sufficiently degrade the infrastructure of American democracy before then and discredit the results of the election if it still doesn’t go in his favour. Variations on that approach have been unfolding in “illiberal” democracies for more than a decade.

Trump staged a preview in January 2021. His false claims that the election had been stolen from him by Democratic Party operatives and a voting machine company that converted votes for him into votes for his rival Joe Biden led to an unprecedented attack on the United States Capitol building by rioting Trump supporters on the day the Presidential Electoral College votes were being officially counted.

On that occasion, Trump sat back, withholding National Guard troops and other resources until the vote count had to be suspended. Order was finally restored, the count continued and Biden was declared elected.

Trump’s political federalization of the police in the District of Columbia doesn’t bode well as an indication of his autocratic ambitions. The federalization of the police force and the pre-emptive deployment of law enforcement as crowd control and suppression of dissent is a move out of the classic authoritarian playbook described by, among others, Anne Applebaum in her book Autocracy, Inc.

And it is in keeping with Trump’s second-term pattern of doubling down on punishing his adversaries, attacking his opponents and America’s stretching laws, norms and values to force his agenda.

Policy Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a lifetime member and a past president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.