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House Republicans back up Trump on DC crime push

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House Republicans moved quickly Monday to follow President Donald Trump’s lead as he took unprecedented action to target Washington’s locally elected government — further heightening the GOP’s scrutiny of the capital city and its Democratic elected leaders.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said he would haul Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb to Capitol Hill next month for a hearing. The public grilling is likely to come as Trump’s takeover of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department approaches a 30-day expiration date, requiring congressional action to continue.

“For years, the D.C. Council’s radical, soft-on-crime agenda has emboldened criminals and put public safety at risk in our nation’s capital,” Comer said in a statement.

His voice was one of many in the GOP who hailed Trump’s moves Monday to seize control of the D.C. police force and deploy the National Guard in the capital. Speaker Mike Johnson, for instance, said in a post on X that “House Republicans support this effort to CLEAN UP Washington, END the crime wave, and RESTORE the beauty of the greatest capital in the world.”

While violent crime reached a 30-year low in the city last year, Republicans argue Washington is unsafe and poorly governed. A spate of carjackings and several other recent high-profile incidents have captured GOP attention on Capitol Hill, including the murder of an intern for Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) and the assault last week of a Trump administration staffer.

Comer in his statement said his panel would also be “advancing legislative solutions to protect Americans in their capital city.” During a news conference Monday, Trump called for the reimposition of cash bail, which has been largely abolished in D.C. for more than 30 years, while U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro called for congressional action to overturn “absurd” juvenile justice laws that she said provided too much leniency for young offenders.

An Oversight Committee spokesperson said the panel would work to advance legislation introduced by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) that would limit “youth offender status” to those 18 years old or younger. Currently, those 24 or younger can qualify as youth offenders in the District.

The legislation from Donalds would also require the D.C. attorney general to publicly track juvenile crime in the city and bar the locally elected D.C. Council from passing provisions to change its sentencing rules.

The bill passed the House last year in a bipartisan 225-181 vote but did not advance in the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. The spokesperson said the committee was considering additional legislation but did not provide details. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a member of GOP leadership, is also working on legislation to reverse no-cash-bail policies nationwide.

It’s unclear how soon any D.C.-related legislation might hit the House floor. Lawmakers are now on their extended summer recess, and House GOP leaders expect the Oversight Committee to start advancing a slate of bills in September. That means floor action could be delayed until later in the fall, depending on how quickly the panel works through its process, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal planning.

House Republicans may be forced to deal with city-related matters sooner, however. Trump’s executive action Monday commandeering the Metropolitan Police started a 30-day clock for presidential control, as provided for in the 52-year-old law establishing the city’s locally elected government.

Extending Trump’s control of the department would require congressional action — forcing the White House and GOP congressional leaders to make a decision as they also deal with messy internal fights over whether to force the release of more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and a politically explosive congressional stock trading ban.

In a letter sent to Blue Light News Monday informing of the police takeover, Trump said he would retain control “until I have determined, in consultation with the Attorney General, that the emergency has ended or for the maximum period permitted” under federal law.

Trump made no mention of seeking extended control of the department at his news conference Monday morning, where he was flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other administration officials. He instead called on lawmakers to address the District’s longstanding bail policy, which allows criminal suspects to be released pending trial without putting up any money.

“We’re gonna change no cash bail, we’re gonna change the statute and get rid of some of the other things,” Trump said. “And we’ll count on the Republicans in Congress and Senate to vote, we have the majority, so we’ll vote. We don’t have a big majority, but we’ve gotten everything, including the great Big Beautiful Bill.”

Democrats, meanwhile, sharply objected to Trump’s moves in social media posts Monday, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying Trump has “no basis to take over the local police department” and “zero credibility on the issue of law and order.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (R-Md.) said he would introduce legislation that would immediately end Trump’s police takeover. He, too, called it a “phony, manufactured crisis” and recalled Trump’s actions dealing with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — where a mob of his supporters assaulted police and were later pardoned.

While Republicans can likely push D.C.-related bills through the House on party lines, Democrats in the Senate could use the filibuster to keep them from reaching Trump’s desk. Vaulting that obstacle would require a 60-vote majority, and it’s unlikely that Democrats — who have long championed political autonomy for the District’s largely Democratic populace — would join their Republican colleagues en masse. But it could force some vulnerable Senate Democrats into tough votes over crime and safety ahead of midterm elections.

A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declined to comment on Democrats’ plans for any such legislation, pointing instead to a social media post from Schumer Monday calling the executive actions a “political ploy and attempted distraction from Trump’s other scandals.”

Nicholas Wu and Calen Razor contributed to this report.

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Congress

Mike Johnson tries again to extend contested spy law

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House GOP leaders on Thursday unveiled the text of a new three-year extension of a key spy law, as Speaker Mike Johnson tried to overcome ultra-conservative resistance and pass it next week.

The proposed reauthorization of the so-called Section 702 law includes some new oversight and penalties for abuses of the spy authority but stops short of warrant requirements sought by GOP hard-liners.

Conservatives have pushed back on extending Section 702, which allows warrantless surveillance of foreigners, because of concerns about U.S. citizens being caught up in the program.

The faction that’s been opposing an extension has not yet signed off on the latest plan. GOP leaders plan to continue talks into the weekend.

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House GOP leaders scramble to sell Senate’s slimmed-down budget with promises of ‘Reconciliation 3.0’

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House Republican leaders want a floor vote next week on the Senate’s budget resolution, the first step in writing an immigration enforcement bill and passing it by President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline.

“It has to be clean because it has to be quick,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday, indicating that conservatives could not make major changes to the other chamber’s blueprint at this time.

But Johnson and others still have to lock in support from conservatives who are threatening to vote against it if it doesn’t encompass more top GOP policy priorities, and it is proving to be a delicate balancing act.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (La.) met Thursday morning with Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (Texas) and leaders of key House GOP factions, according to four people granted anonymity to share details of private meetings — an effort to quell concerns among some conservatives about the narrow scope of the current plan. Arrington and other senior Republicans have been pushing to expand the party-line bill currently under discussion.

Johnson, Scalise and others in GOP leadership are promising that as soon as Republicans pass a bill funding immigration enforcement and some border patrol activities, they will get to work on another measure through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process.

“We’re going to move right to reconciliation, what will now be 3.0,” Johnson said, referring both to the current plan and the tax and spending megabill Republicans passed last summer. “We’re going to do it as quickly as possible.”

Some of the ideas that circulated during the closed-door leadership meeting Thursday included opening up the possibility for more tax policy changes, addressing the Trump administration’s request for $350 billion for the Pentagon, additional funding for the Iran war and spending cuts across social programs in another package.

Arrington, who is among those wishing to expand the upcoming reconciliation effort, is seeking steep spending reductions to social programs and hopes to revisit Obamacare spending — including cost-sharing reductions, which would reduce out-of-pocket health costs.

Leadership of the Republican Study Committee, meanwhile, is demanding that any third reconciliation bill be fully paid for. There has been limited angst over “pay-fors” for the current party-line pursuit because the measure is an attempt to fund the immigration enforcement agencies and circumvent regular appropriations negotiations, which have been stuck for months.

But many Republicans are doubtful their party will be able to pass another party-line bill ahead of the midterms and see the immigration funding bill as their last bite at the apple. Some of them, including Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, are threatening to vote against the Senate budget resolution that would unlock the reconciliation process for the immigration funding measure unless it can incorporate more items from the hard-liners’ wishlist.

GOP leaders are now scrambling to stave off defections. Adoption of identical budget resolutions in both chambers will unlock the ability for lawmakers to write and pass a bill through reconciliation that would send tens of billions of dollars to immigration enforcement operations run through the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shuttered since February.

Republicans are on a very tight schedule to send this bill to Trump’s desk and pave the way for ending the record-setting DHS shutdown, given White House demands.

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‘Junior reporters’ pepper Hakeem Jeffries with tough questions

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Hakeem Jeffries celebrated Take Your Child to Work Day by taking questions from the children of the Capitol Hill press corps, but it got heavy fast.

The first question: “Why do voters view Democrats so poorly?”

Jeffries responded with a lengthy explanation of broad voter distrust in institutions.

“There’s a great frustration that applies to every organized institution in this country, and Democrats are not immune from that,” he said.

But, Jeffries added, “Consistently in state after state and race after race and contest after contest, irrefutably, the American people are choosing the Democratic Party.”

He fielded other tough questions from the “junior reporters” in the room, including if he would have voted to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick if she hadn’t resigned earlier this week.

“She did the right thing in stepping down,” Jeffries said.

Other questions from kids in the room did tackle lighter subjects.

Jeffries’ favorite candy? Sugar-free Hershey’s chocolate.

What did he want to be when he grew up? A point guard for the Knicks or a hip-hop star.

Does he think the Yankees will win the World Series? “Hope springs eternal.”

And, simply, “What’s next?”

To that Jeffries said: “As Democrats, we’re fighting one battle after another, pushing back against the extremism that we believe is being released on the American people by Donald Trump and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.”

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