Donald Trump backs down from his ‘hostile takeover’ of D.C. but still keeps his thumb on doing what is ‘necessary’

Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington DC hit a speed bump when DC AG Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit on Aug. 15 against the administration, and that move has now forced them to retreat in what is being seen as a win for the District of Columbia. But only partially, because even in victory — DC still had to make significant concessions.

Schwalb went to court seeking a restraining order and tried his best to slow down the Trump takeover of DC. Mayor Muriel Bowser took to Twitter to question the rule, and DC police chief Pamela Smith also publicly questioned the Trump administration’s latest move of unilaterally taking over the police department and ordering that they couldn’t act without the White House’s permission.

The Guardian reports that when the Justice Department squared off against DC’s attorney general Schwalb, the writing was on the wall that Judge Ana C. Reyes was going to issue a temporary restraining order if the White House did not readjust its takeover of DC’s police department. Reyes told Justice Department lawyers, “I still do not understand on what basis the president, through the attorney general, through Mr. Cole, can say: ‘You, police department, can’t do anything unless I say you can.’”

Almost immediately, US Attorney General Pam Bondi responded by issuing a revised update on how she plans to incorporate Drug Enforcement Administration head Terry Cole. Initially, Bondi had placed Cole as the head of the Metropolitan Police Department of DC. But now, Cole will only serve to direct Mayor Bowser “to provide such services of the Metropolitan Police Department as the attorney general deems necessary and appropriate.”

The initial plan of the Trump administration was to take over the city and reduce the crime rate, which was already at record lows. Trump had previously stated on his social media site Truth Social that DC had become crime-ridden and that he would ensure he reversed that issue. That quickly turned into a clampdown on immigration, and soon afterwards the streets were full of CBP and ICE officers, sometimes to disastrous results.

It wasn’t long before the Trump administration managed to reverse DC’s status as a “sanctuary city.” Not too long ago, DC was similar to Newark, New Jersey, where unless an immigrant was found to be committing a crime, they wouldn’t be surveilled or prevented from accessing public amenities. Now in DC, a traffic stop could theoretically end in a deportation because the new orders from the White House are using them to check people’s legal status in the nation.

What’s clear now, however, is that people are willing to fight back against Trump’s increasingly questionable directives, which some critics are already calling authoritarian in nature. This was a partial victory for DC because, by all intents and purposes, they can no longer be considered a “sanctuary city,” but at the very least they did manage to draw boundaries on how far Trump could really go.

The DC police chief has, however, assured the White House that they plan on sharing information with federal agencies.