The top three elected officials in the District of Columbia were on Capitol Hill Thursday to defend their management of local law enforcement activities.

They were also on hand to push back against Republican aspersions about crime in the capital city that President Donald Trump used to justify his takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department and deployment of the National Guard.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, council chair Phil Mendelson and attorney general Brian Schwalb — all Democrats — were invited to appear before the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which last week approved a sweeping set of bills that would pare back the local government’s power to enact its law enforcement policies.

“We are a city under siege,” said Mendelson. “It is frustrating to watch this committee debate and vote on 14 bills regarding the district without a single public hearing, with no input from District officials or the public, without regard for community impact nor a shred of analysis, including legal sufficiency or fiscal impact.”

The officials emphasized that violent crime was down in the District and that there were things Congress could do to help achieve Trump’s goals of making the city safer and cleaner. Bowser said lawmakers could approve more funding to hire additional law enforcement officers, help with homeless services and accelerate economic development opportunities like the new stadium for the Commanders football team.

Mendelson noted the Council had recently passed legislation to strengthen the District’s own law enforcement capabilities, such as implementing harsher penalties for some violent crimes and making it easier to prosecute car-jackings.

Republicans have done none of those things, even as they are engaging in a larger conversation about how to crack down on crime in major, Democratic-controlled cities across the country. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Thursday that Trump was “using DC as a test kitchen for all of the horrible policies that they’re cooking up.”

Democrats also pointed out that violent crime in D.C. reached a 30-year low last year.

GOP members of the panel, however, were unmoved, and defended their campaign to rewrite local laws by arguing D.C. was a unique jurisdiction. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) also said the District’s elected officials were out of touch with the majority of Americans: “We are constantly at odds with the leadership of D.C., as a body,” he said.

At times, the exchanges between committee Republicans and the D.C. officials grew tense.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-Va.) brought up the $1 billion in locally-raised funding Congress did not allow to D.C. access for fiscal year 2025 – and, if Congress gave it back to the District, would Bowser commit to spending all of it on hiring more police officers.

Bowser replied that the money would be used, primarily, to boost spending that the District was forced to cut. Foxx demanded a yes or no answer to her question.

“We want the money because it was approved by this Congress, and it’s our money,” Bowser said, to which Foxx said she interpreted that as a “no.”

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who has worked with Bowser in the past and been an advocate for restoring D.C. its budget shortfall, acknowledged that the mayor was “in a very difficult position.”

“You’re doing a good job in a tough position,” he said.

Longtime Washington congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton garnered her most serious political challenge in 35 years Thursday when Robert White, a third-term D.C. Council member and former aide to Norton, announced he would challenge her in next year’s Democratic primary.

Norton, 88, has faced mounting questions about her ability to serve in Congress that have been heightened in recent weeks by her absence from the public eye as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans targeted the District of Columbia for a federal law enforcement takeover.

She has made some public appearances in recent weeks, including at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Thursday where D.C.’s top elected officials testified about the city’s crime record. But she has largely stuck to reading written statements in an often halting voice. Amid doubts about whether she’s up for another term — including a public plea for retirement this week from her closest political adviser — Norton has repeatedly said she will seek re-election in 2026.

White, who was attending the House hearing, praised Norton’s political legacy in a brief interview. But, he added, “like most people in D.C., we recognize that she can’t do the things that she once did.”

“Right now, the District is vulnerable, and we’re losing ground,” White continued, “and with only one elected member in this entire Congress, we need somebody with the fight, the energy, and the know-how.”

Norton is already facing a primary challenge from former DNC official Kinney Zalesne, and additional candidates are expected to enter the race if Norton steps aside. But White is the first credible opponent with a citywide political profile to challenge Norton since she was first elected in 1990.

White has occupied the progressive lane in city politics, staking out political ground to the left of Mayor Muriel Bowser, whom he challenged in the 2022 Democratic primary. White fell just over 10,000 votes short in a four-person field and had been widely seen as likely to launch another mayoral campaign in 2026.

White sat in the back row of the Capitol Hill hearing room during the four-plus-hour House Oversight hearing with D.C.’s top elected officials: Bowser — who called Norton as “mighty warrior” in her prepared testimony — as well as D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb.

Norton, during her questioning time, defended the District’s right to self-government and asked the three officials to weigh in on why the city deserved statehood.

Most Republicans, however, pressed the city officials on their handling of crime in the District. GOP lawmakers have joined Trump in painting an image of the nation’s capital as rife with crime to justify an August presidential order commandeering the city police and flooding federal agents and National Guard troops into the city.

As local officials came under siege from Republicans on the Oversight panel, Norton sat silent at her dais. She entered and left the hearing room several times flanked by an aide, sometimes appearing to lean on the person for support.

Speaking outside the hearing room, White said that he had informed Norton of his intention to run for her seat, although he declined to detail Norton’s response in what he called a private conversation.

“We in the District who love the congresswoman and respect the work that she’s done — we know that she can’t fight the fight that we need right now,” White said, adding that he had met with 30 congressional offices since the presidential enforcement surge to discuss the need for a nationwide fight on behalf of the city.

That message largely echoes what Norton’s longtime adviser Donna Brazile wrote in a Washington Post op-ed this week urging her not to run. Norton, Brazile wrote, “is no longer the dynamo she once was, at a time when D.C. needs the kind of energetic representation in Congress she provided for decades.”

House Republican leaders are discussing a plan to pass a seven-week stopgap funding measure Friday then not bring the House back into session until after the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the talks.

No final decision has been made on House scheduling, the people said, but the move would allow the House to “jam” the Senate, giving it no alternative to avoid a shutdown than to pass the GOP-written measure. Democrats there are pushing for a vote on an alternative measure that adds on the minority’s policy priorities.

The Senate, meanwhile, is on track to vote on the House-passed continuing resolution no earlier than next Thursday, with Majority Leader John Thune saying there is “not much sentiment” for allowing votes Friday on the dueling Republican and Democrat stopgaps.