I’m D.C.’s Shadow Senator. What Trump Is Doing Should Terrify All of Us.

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When President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was taking over Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and sending in National Guard troops, those of us who live in D.C. immediately understood how frightening things were about to get.

By law—because D.C. lacks statehood—the president can take over MPD for 30 days; we don’t know how long this National Guard deployment will run. This means D.C.’s 700,000 residents will live the next month under a police force that has been openly encouraged by the president to commit acts of brutality against civilians and that is simply much more poorly run. We will also have to deal with an “enhanced presence” of federal security agencies throughout the city. We don’t yet know exactly what shape Trump’s MPD takeover will take, but it’s entirely possible that people will die as a result of these actions.

Many are likely wondering how President Trump can take control of D.C.’s police force. A short way to describe a long history of oppression is this: Washington, D.C., has no voting representation in Congress, despite the fact that our population is greater than that of Vermont or Wyoming, and that D.C. residents pay more federal taxes per capita than any state. Congress can overturn or change our local laws before they take effect and can abolish our local government any time it wants to. Until D.C. becomes a state, the federal government will continue to have the final say over D.C.’s local affairs.

The District does have an elected local government with limited power to govern the city, and locally elected officials who fight for our sovereignty. For example, voters in D.C. elect a nonvoting U.S. representative and two nonvoting U.S. senators. These “shadow” senators and the representative work to achieve D.C. statehood, prevent congressional interference in D.C. affairs, and advocate before Congress for laws that protect D.C.’s interests. I am Washington, D.C.’s newest senator, elected in November of last year.

Why does D.C. need—and deserve—voting representation in Congress?

Because it is Congress—not the president—that wields the most power over D.C. The president and his appointees acknowledged as much in his press conference calling on Congress to take multiple actions to impose Republicans’ will on Washingtonians—such as repealing D.C.’s no-cash-bail policy (there is already a presumption in D.C. that people accused of violent crimes remain jailed pending trial) and ensuring the U.S. attorney can try 14-year-olds as adults. Anyone who cares about the fate of our country should be concerned about how Congress is and has been seeking to answer that charge.

Over the past few years, congressional Republicans have become obsessed with D.C.—proposing dozens of federal bills that would dictate our local laws. The irony is that they barely know a single thing about Washington. I’m not sure that they or the president see us as fellow Americans—as hardworking parents, veterans, schoolchildren, etc.—with lives just as textured as those of Americans anywhere else. Instead, Trump and Republicans see us as a stand-in for the cities they distrust: the urbanites who tend to vote against Trump. It’s harder for them to interfere with the way that the leaders in New York City or Detroit or Phoenix run their cities. But because they can control Washington, D.C., they have turned us into test subjects in an unprecedented attempt to show how to run cities in line with the MAGA agenda.

In mid-July, I sat in the audience for a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting where congressional Republicans were attempting to tack on more than a dozen odious federal budget “riders” that would control the District—for example, proposing extremely lenient concealed carry policies and encouraging D.C. employers to discriminate against women who get abortions—and because I don’t have a vote, I could do nothing but watch and sit on my hands. I was the only D.C. elected representative in the room, and I couldn’t speak up about these matters pertaining directly to my constituents.

Congressional Republicans have also advanced three bills that would repeal local D.C. laws. The bills would repeal noncitizen voting in strictly local elections, repeal important police reforms the D.C. Council adopted in 2022, and dictate how the D.C. government must work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some Republicans want to go even further: A few Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would abolish D.C.’s local government altogether and allow Congress to rule by fiat over the city.

But even if you don’t care that 700,000 Americans are systemically excluded from their own democracy, what Trump and Congressional Republicans are doing should scare you. Because what they’re doing to us is just the beginning.

Trump said at his press conference, “We have other cities that are very bad. … We’re not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C..”

They are starting with D.C., but not ending with us. The president has made it clear that his administration is coming for every blue city.

Do you live in a city with a sanctuary city policy? The Trump administration is already claiming it will strip your federal grants and contracts if your city doesn’t repeal that law; a willingness by congressional Democrats to go along with this attempt for D.C. will embolden the federal government to actually execute on those threats. Does your city have strong pro-choice laws? Republicans will be stripping your Medicaid funding if your city doesn’t repeal them. Do you have crime in your city? The president may soon be deploying the National Guard on your streets, too. If the president and congressional Republicans are successful in remaking D.C. in their own image, they will take this playbook nationwide.

We have a way forward. Any congressional attack on our rights must overcome the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes. This means Senate Democrats have the ability to stop these attacks on D.C. sovereignty from succeeding. In the face of this assault on democracy for the residents of Washington D.C., too often Democrats have timidly fallen in line. When those three bills repealing local D.C. laws came to a vote in the House, 56 Democrats voted for at least one of them. Now that the full shape of the federal government’s plans has become clear, we need Democrats to fight back against every one of Trump and congressional Republicans’ attempts to take over D.C.. Every single Senate Democrat should vote against the bills repealing local D.C. laws, and none of them should be supporting a federal budget bill that contains even one new rider on D.C.

If you value your city’s democratic policies, it is in your best interest to get Democrats to stop the assault on D.C. so that every community can be free to live with the policies their constituents support.

That is how democracy works. We may not have it in Washington, but if you live in any of the other 50 states, you do. Until we become the 51^st state in the union, Washington is relying upon the senators of everyone who lives outside our nation’s capital to fight for our rights. I hope Democratic senators stand up to the attacks on D.C.—not as a charity to us, but as an essential part of the struggle for sovereignty and self-determination for all cities across our nation.

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