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The Hill
25-03-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Boebert suggests GOP could rename DC ‘District of America'
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) urged lawmakers to stop making fun of President Trump's decision to rename the Gulf of America, suggesting the nation's capital could undergo the same change. 'I would caution my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to refrain from making jokes about the Gulf of America because next up may be the District of America that we are working on,' Boebert said during a Tuesday hearing for the House Natural Resources Committee. Boebert made these remarks at a legislative hearing for the Gulf of America Act to support Trump's executive order through technical amendments. The Hill has reached out to Boebert's office. In the first days of his second term, Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, along with reversing the name of Alaska's Denali back to Mount McKinley. Trump has questioned D.C. Mayor Bowser's (D) ability to lead the city, citing an uptick in crime and homelessness as a reason for federal leadership over the municipality. The president and Bowser met in December, but soon after their closed-door talk, the three-term mayor faced public scrutiny from Republican leaders. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) introduced the Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident (BOWSER) Act, an acronym for Bowser, in early February in an effort to repeal the Home Rule Act which permits, D.C.'s autonomous style of government. Trump addressed the District on March 14 in remarks at the Justice Department (DOJ). 'We're cleaning up our city. We're cleaning up this great capital, and we're not going to have crime and we're not going to stand for crime, and we're going to take the graffiti down and we're already taken to tents down there,' Trump said in his speech on 'law and order.' 'We're working with the administration, and if the administration can't do the job … we're gonna have to take it back and run it through the federal government,' the president said of the District's leadership. 'But we hope the administration is going to be able — so far, they've been doing very well. The mayor has been doing a good job.' A week prior to those comments, Trump ordered Bowser to remove the Black Lives Matter plaza across from the White House which the BOWSER Act has suggested be renamed to Liberty Plaza. While lettering has been removed, a formal decision to rename the street awaits a vote from Congress. Bowser has remained vocal about attacks from Congress seeking to infringe on the city's autonomy. She recently pointed out an issue in the continuing resolution which sought to revert D.C. to its 2024 budget with a $1.1 billion deficit as authored by House GOP members. 'We are not a federal agency,' Bowser said. 'We are a city, county, state all at once, and we provide direct services to the people of the District of Columbia, visitors to the District of Columbia, businesses in the District of Columbia, diplomats and visiting heads of state and everyone who works here in the Congress.' Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) introduced a bill to fix the issue, which passed successfully on March 14.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bowser continues to push back on Trump's call for federal government to take over DC
The Brief President Donald Trump on Thursday said he believes the federal government should take over D.C. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser responded saying that statehood is a solution to the problem. Bowser says that as long as DC has limited home rule, city will be vulnerable to the whims Congress or a president WASHINGTON - D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is continuing to push back against calls for a federal takeover of the District — now backed by President Donald Trump — by making the case for the District of Columbia to become the 51st state. "The question for us is how do we maintain the pathway to the 51st state," Bowser said. "We're Americans. We pay taxes. We go to war. We have all the responsibilities of citizenship but we don't have all of the rights." This isn't a new push for the mayor but it is a direct rebuff of President Trump's statement from earlier this week, saying that he supports a bill brought forth by two Republican senators that would strip D.C. of its autonomy. The backstory Two Republican lawmakers introduced the "Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident (BOWSER) Act back on Feb. 6. also seeking to overturn home rule. Similar legislation failed to pass back in 2023. The Home Rule Act of 1973 — hard-fought legislation — is what lets residents of D.C. elect the mayor and council but with limited power because the president, along with congress, can overturn district laws. But the president says D.C. isn't doing enough when it comes to crime and homelessness, though data from the district and the metropolitan police department shows violent crime at the lowest rate in three decades. "I like the mayor. I get along great with the mayor but they're not doing the job," Trump said, speaking to the press on Air Force One Wednesday night. "Too much crime, too much graffiti, too many tents on the lawns. Magnificent lawns and tents." What She's Saying At the National Press Club Friday, Mayor Bowser also called for reduction in the federal workforce to be done in an orderly and humane way, saying there are roughly 600,000 federal workers in the region, with about 70,000 of them being D.C. residents. "Our focus is on being supportive of our residents and calling on our government to not use a chainsaw but figure out which jobs we need and which jobs we don't," she said. The mayor went on to say there are shared priorities between the feds and local D.C. government, including lowering crime and beautification. She said she had reached out to the White House following these latest comments. It's not clear if she's heard back yet.
