D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser tried two different ways of dealing with Trump. Both had the same result.
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When Trump returned to the Oval Office in January, the writing was on the wall that Bowser would have a less combative approach.
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She preached cooperation, traveling to his Florida estate in December to meet with him. And the day before
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But despite the change in strategy, Bowser has ended up in the same place as five years ago: with National Guard troops on the streets of Washington, D.C.
This time, though, the federal intervention is even
more pervasive.
On Monday, Trump
Bowser responded cautiously to Trump's latest move, calling it 'unsettling and unprecedented' but avoiding pointed rhetoric. It's the same type of measured response that has drawn criticism of some national Democrats from party activists who are demanding a more aggressive pushback against Trump.
In this image provided by the Executive Office of the Mayor, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser stood on the rooftop of the Hay Adams Hotel near the White House and looked out at the words Black Lives Matter that were painted in bright yellow letters in 2020.
Khalid Naji-Allah/Associated Press
But Bowser's position is unique: mayor of a city with strict limitations on its political independence.
Washington has no senators and its lone House member can't vote on bills on the House floor, the reason why the city's license plates are emblazoned with 'End Taxation Without Representation.' Congress must approve the city's annual budget and has the ability to enact and overturn D.C. laws.
Unlike in the last two years of Trump's first term, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. So Bowser has no Democratic backstop on Capitol Hill.
'The mayor of Chicago, the mayor of New York, the mayor of Boston can stand up and say whatever they want and their laws will not be touched by Congress,' D.C. City Council member Brianne K. Nadeau told the Globe. 'D.C. is incredibly vulnerable in a way that no other city in this country is.'
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But Nadeau, a Democrat who acknowledges she and Bowser 'don't see eye to eye on much,' said she didn't have a problem with how Bowser is handling this latest test with Trump.
'It's tough,' she said. 'I'm certainly not interested in the job.'
Alex Dobbs, cofounder of
'I'm not satisfied with how anyone is handling this erratic person who is disregarding the rule of law,' said Dobbs, whose group protested outside the White House on Monday. 'I know that everyone locally here in D.C., including the mayor, does not want this federal escalation.'
Bowser said she doesn't have any second thoughts about her strategy for Trump in his second term or any plans to push back harder against his latest assertion of federal authority.
'My tenor will be appropriate for what I think is important for the district. And what's important for the district is that we can take care of our citizens,' she told reporters Monday in a news conference in which she refuted Trump's claims of out-of-control crime.
The ultimate way to resolve the situation, she said, is to change Washington's second-class status. On Tuesday, Bowser continued to carefully navigate a potentially volatile situation. She had a meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi,
'So how we got here, or what we think about the circumstances right now, we have more police and we want to make sure we're using them,' Bowser said after the meeting with Bondi.
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Trump has long berated Washington, a city that has little love for him. He has called it a
Trump didn't hold back on his rhetoric in announcing the federal actions in D.C. on Monday, saying he was taking 'historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse.'
Veteran Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who has lived in Washingtonfor 44 years, said Trump and his Make America Great Again supporters have long had a target on the city.
'The district is in a unique situation. . . . Congress can interfere in our lives and livelihood. She's playing the hand she's been dealt‚" Brazile said of Bowser, whom she has been close to for years. 'Given [Trump's] long history of showing animosity toward those who disagree with him, as well as his impulse for retribution, the mayor is playing it absolutely right.'
The one visible benefit of Bowser's approach is that Trump hasn't engaged in personal insults the way he did in his first term, when he called her
'Crime is way down, and there's a good relationship we have going with Muriel, so I want to thank you very much,'
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But Trump radically changed his message after
divert attention from the controversy over Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Still, Trump
'One of the things that really is striking about the way the president talks about the mayor is that he does not denigrate her personally,' said George Derek Musgrove, coauthor the 2017 book 'Chocolate City, A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital."
Bowser's cooperation with Trump has paid off in that 'very personal way,' added Musgrove, an associate history professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 'But that doesn't mean that the president is not going to pursue his agenda. And part of his agenda . . . is to sort of caricature Democratic governance as pro-crime."
Nadeau, the D.C. city council member, warned that Trump's actions in the nation's capital are only the first step to federal intervention elsewhere.
'We are the easiest target because we don't have autonomy and because the president lives here,' she said, noting Trump mentioned Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland in his Monday news conference. 'I think he's targeting progressive cities. We may be the first, but we won't be the last.'
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at
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