D.C. authorities officers and native LGBTQ rights advocates have expressed differing views on the potential impression of an govt order issued by President Donald Trump on March 27 that creates a federally managed D.C. Secure and Stunning Job Drive.
A press release launched by the White Home says the duty pressure, amongst different issues, can be directed to, “Surge legislation enforcement officers in public areas and strictly implement quality-of-life legal guidelines in public areas like drug use, unpermitted demonstrations, vandalism, and public intoxication.”
The White Home assertion provides that the duty pressure will even, “Maximize immigration enforcement to apprehend and deport harmful unlawful aliens, together with monitoring D.C.’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”
In accordance with the five-page govt order, the newly created D.C. process pressure will tackle a variety of different features, together with overseeing and coordinating “extra sturdy native legislation enforcement presence” all through the town, together with in federal parks such because the Nationwide Mall, museums and nationwide monuments, Union Station, and broadly used public roads and highways akin to Rock Creek Parkway.
One in every of its provisions calls for presidency entities to supply “help to extend the velocity and decrease the price of processing hid carry license requests within the District of Columbia.” The supply refers to D.C.’s course of for licensing the fitting to hold a hid handgun.
D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) is among the many metropolis’s elected officers who’ve denounced the D.C. Secure and Stunning Job Drive as a severe infringement on the town’s domestically elected house rule authorities.
“President Trump’s completely anti-home rule EO is insulting to the 700,000 D.C. residents who reside in shut proximity to a federal authorities, which continues to disclaim them the identical rights afforded different Individuals,” Norton mentioned in a press release.
“The duty pressure created by the EO wouldn’t embrace a single D.C. official to characterize the pursuits of the individuals who reside throughout the District,” Norton mentioned.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been cautious in her response to the Trump administration’s controversial insurance policies to downsize the federal authorities, has not but taken a place on the Trump D.C. govt order, in accordance with mayoral spokesperson Daniel Gleick.
D.C. Metropolis Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Massive) is among the many native officers and group advocates who’ve mentioned it’s too quickly to make a definitive judgment on the Trump created process pressure’s impression on D.C. house rule. Mendelson identified at a March 31 information convention that a big a part of the said actions for the duty pressure are geared toward overseeing federal parklands and different federally managed areas akin to nationwide monuments.
“I don’t wish to say that every part in there’s innocuous,” Mendelson advised reporters on the information convention. “However general, a number of it, if not most of it, is directives to the federal authorities to do issues which are throughout the federal authorities’s purview, not as a let’s step on house rule,” Mendelson mentioned.
However others, together with Norton, mentioned they consider the general govt order and the duty pressure it creates will end in a severe infringement on D.C. house rule and presumably the rights of D.C. residents.
Homosexual D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) issued a press release declaring that over twenty years D.C. has had a balanced native funds, achieved “historic decline in crime,” and had one of many nation’s “quickest enhancing city faculty districts,” suggesting the Trump process pressure was not wanted.
“Based mostly on my studying of the chief order, I feel it’s unattainable to find out if it’ll have any direct impression on the LGBTQ group within the District,” mentioned longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights advocate Peter Rosenstein.
However Rosenstein added, “The EO is an offense to all of the individuals of the District, because it disregards house rule. Will probably be essential to see who’s lastly appointed to the panel and see what their plans are to implement it.”
He was referring to the truth that the order itself and the White Home to this point haven’t introduced which federal officers can be appointed to serve on the duty pressure. Nevertheless, the White Home assertion names 9 federal companies whose leaders or designees can be among the many process pressure’s members. Among the many companies named are the Departments of Inside, Transportation, and Homeland Safety, together with the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.
The leaders of D.C.’s native LGBTQ Democratic Celebration and native LGBTQ Republican Celebration organizations – Capital Stonewall Democrats and Log Cabin Republicans of D.C. – had sharply differing views on the impression of the chief order and process pressure on the LGBTQ group.
The Washington Blade reached out to the 2 leaders for remark.
“This govt order is just not about D.C. ‘Secure and Stunning’ – it’s about management,” mentioned Capital Stonewall Democrats president Howard Garrett in a press release to the Blade. “It’s about stripping away the facility of the individuals who reside, work, and love within the metropolis,” Garret mentioned.
“Historical past has proven that when authoritarian leaders impose their will on a individuals with out their consent, it’s the most weak – LGBTQ+ people, individuals of shade, the unhoused – who bear the brunt of that oppression,” Garret’s assertion continues. “We is not going to be silent as our group is put in danger beneath the guise of ‘security and beautification.’”
He added, “Capital Stonewall Democrats reject this blatant federal overreach, and we stand agency within the perception that D.C.’s future have to be determined by D.C. residents – not by those that neither perceive nor respect our group.”
Andrew Minik, president of Log Cabin Republicans of D.C., expressed robust assist for the Trump govt order and its D.C. process pressure, saying it’ll have a optimistic impression on the town as a complete and on the LGBTQ group.
“The one factor negatively impacting D.C. residents is the incompetent management of native Democratic politicians,” Minik mentioned in his personal assertion. “’Residence rule’ means nothing when the individuals in cost give up the town to criminals, enable our parks to change into open-air drug markets, and deal with public areas like dumpsters,” he mentioned.
Minik referred to as the fee “a breath of contemporary air,” including, “Lastly somebody is stepping in to do what the town authorities refuses to: clear up the filth, restore security, and make our Nation’s Capital lovely once more.”
Requested by the Blade if he feels the fee may have a damaging impression on the LGBTQ group, Minik mentioned, “Completely not.” He added, “What does hurt LGBT Washingtonians is having to stroll via trash-strewn streets, sleep disadvantaged from sirens and gunshots and reside in concern of crime.”
“This fee is a win for LGBT residents who’re sick of being ignored by a neighborhood authorities extra involved with advantage signaling than precise management,” he mentioned. “The LGBT group in D.C. and throughout the nation deserves greater than damaged guarantees and chaos. We deserve management that works, and President Trump is giving us that.”
Norton and different metropolis officers have disputed claims by Trump and his fellow Republicans that crime in D.C. has been uncontrolled.
“The ‘Truth Sheet’ in regards to the EO at present on the White Home web site states that crime in D.C. is ‘close to historic highs,’” Norton says in her assertion on the chief order. “This merely isn’t true. It’s contradicted by the Division of Justice, which famous on January 3 that violent crime was down by 35% in 2024 and general violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low,” in accordance with Norton.
“Like cities, states, and counties throughout the nation, D.C. has handed legal guidelines to assist and shield the protection of all its residents, no matter immigration standing,” Norton mentioned. “In passing these legal guidelines, D.C. adopted its values and was satisfied of the advantages for the whole metropolis,” she mentioned.
Particulars of the Trump D.C. govt order and the duty pressure it creates will be accessed on the White Home web site.
