Congress

GOP-led House committee approves bills targeting DC autonomy

Published

1 year ago

September 11, 2025

Republicans are looking to expand the federal government’s power over the nation’s capital city — and use the District of Columbia as a testing ground for tough-on-crime policies the GOP could seek to implement around the country.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced about a dozen bills Wednesday designed to chip away at Washington’s autonomy, including its ability to control its own law enforcement activities.

The more than 10-hour markup of the measures, which Democrats nearly uniformly opposed, came the same day President Donald Trump’s 30-day emergency order assuming control of the city’s police department was due to expire.

“This is an assault on the self-determination of the residents of Washington, D.C., and they deserve better than this,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). “It is one thing to have the burden of living here without active representation. It is quite another to have Congress intervene on the basic functions of daily life that the people of D.C. endure.”

The bills on the committee agenda Wednesday would, among other things, expand the universe of city laws Congress can formally veto; allow Washington’s locally elected attorney general to be replaced with an official selected by the president; and invalidate legislation passed by the Council of the District of Columbia.

In an apparent response to the Trump administration’s desire to combat Washington’s leniency for younger offenders, one bill would limit individuals who qualify as “youth” to those 18 years old or younger. Another measure would allow those 14 years of age and older to be tried as adults for certain offenses.

“You are living in a city filled with crime,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to her colleagues. “And we have witnessed it as members of Congress.”

House GOP leadership plans to bring at least some of the bills for a vote on the floor in the coming weeks, but it’s unlikely that any of them will become law: Even if passed by the House, each measure would face an uphill battle in the Senate to gain the necessary Democratic support to overcome a filibuster.

Still, any further action on the bills would likely further inflame the ongoing partisan clash around Washington’s right to self-governance. This tension is also likely to be on display next week when a trio of top Washington elected officials — Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb — is scheduled to testify before the Oversight committee.

Committee ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) maligned Republicans on Wednesday for “pushing a blatant power grab by hijacking authority from local Washington, D.C., leaders and residents.”

“Quite frankly,” Garcia added, “if the president is so obsessed with governing D.C., he should step down as president and run for mayor.”

At the center of this debate is a belief among Republicans that Washington officials are all too soft on crime. Although the city reported a 30-year low in violent offenses last year, Trump claimed Washington was rife with crime to justify his monthlong takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department. He also deployed the National Guard, which will remain in Washington indefinitely.

Congressional Republicans, in turn, have pointed to a number of high-profile violent episodes in Washington, including the recent killing of a congressional intern and the assault of a prominent Trump administration staffer.

“You should be able to walk down any street in America with your little girl or little boy and be safe,” said Rep. John McGuire (R-Va.) during the markup. “Bottom line is, people are dying. So this is not extreme. This is required. We must keep the American people safe.”

In their approach to Washington, Republicans are also modeling what tough-on-crime policies they could seek to enforce on other urban cities run by Democrats. The seemingly random murder last month of a Ukrainian refugee on transit in Charlotte, North Carolina, is being leveraged by Republicans as the latest evidence of Democrats’ inability to conduct proper law enforcement.

The Trump administration has also begun discussions with congressional Republicans about crafting a legislative package to target crime nationwide. Subsequently, the bills approved by the Oversight Committee on Wednesday offer a blueprint for those broader, GOP-championed policies.

Republicans, for instance, have targeted so-called cashless bail policies in Democratic-led jurisdictions that allow individuals to be released from custody without a monetary payment. One measure considered by the Oversight panel would require mandatory cash bail for individuals charged with certain offenses and mandate pretrial or post-conviction detention for some offenders.

“What you all are attempting to do in D.C. right now is just a forecast for what they actually want for the entire country,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Summer Lee.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Sanders to rally for Troy Jackson in Maine

Published

2 hours ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.

The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.

The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.

“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”

Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.

He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,

Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.

Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.

Congress

Hill: Trump’s ‘lack of favorability’ creating challenging politics

Published

2 hours ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.

“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.

Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.

Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”

Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.

Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.

“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”

Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.

Congress

Sanders, AOC, Merkley propose bill to ban Flock cameras

Published

8 hours ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday released text of legislation intended to ban the use of Flock surveillance cameras and other license plate readers.

Flock has faced severe public backlash against the surveillance technology following reports that police officers misused the technology to track women, and it has the largest network of license plate readers across the U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) hosted a hearing last month probing its potential misuses, although the company’s CEO Garrett Langley did not appear.

The latest bill, unveiled Friday and named the Ban Flock Act, would bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers or accessing data from the technology and prevent federal grants from funding states and local governments that use automated license plate readers.

“At a time of growing concern about the unchecked power of artificial intelligence, Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” Sanders, who has positioned himself as a leading progressive voice on AI technology, said in a statement. “We cannot allow America to become a surveillance state where a handful of AI oligarchs profit by giving the government the power to track our every movement.”

Ocasio-Cortez similarly condemned the surveillance capabilities of the technology and said the bill would “enforce our constitutional right to privacy and protect Americans from both corporate and government surveillance.”

“No one should have this unchecked surveillance power at their fingertips,” Merkley added.

Republicans have introduced similar efforts to regulate license plate readers, such as Hawley’s Stop Flock Abuse Act, which would require audits and limits on unauthorized searches.

Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.