Trump Threatens D.C. Takeover to Avenge ‘Big Balls’ Attack

In news that can best be described as both serious and farcical, the long tradition of home rule for the District of Columbia is suddenly under attack from President Donald Trump because one of his more infamous supporters got beaten up there.

Earlier this year, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine became a global symbol of the arrogance and ignorance suffusing Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. The teenage programmer with a really stupid nickname gained extraordinary access to federal-agency data and worksites during his brief career at the commanding heights of the public sector. Unfortunately, Coristine became a crime victim earlier this week during what seems to have been an attempted carjacking in an upscale area of D.C.

This inspired a signature temper tantrum from Trump on Truth Social, complete with a photo of a bloodied Coristine at the crime scene awaiting treatment. After ranting for a while about the allegedly lenient treatment of minors who commit violent crimes, Trump issued a threat:

If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore. Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Washington, D.C., has enjoyed limited home rule since 1973, when Congress finally let the city known as “the last colony” elect its own mayor and municipal council and more or less govern itself (subject to the constant possibility of congressional disapproval). When Republicans have controlled Congress, they have often meddled in the affairs of this overwhelmingly Democratic and majority-non-white city, treating it as a laboratory for conservative policies ranging from private-school vouchers to restrictions on reproductive rights. As recently as earlier this year, Republican senator Mike Lee and Congressman Andy Ogles introduced legislation to repeal D.C. home rule. You have to figure a political party that enjoys posturing as “anti-Washington” will perpetually flirt with this idea.

Trump himself cannot imperially “federalize” the city, and as long as the Senate filibuster exists, neither can the congressional GOP. As the Washington Post notes, however, Trump has certain emergency powers that he might abuse in this case as he has in so many others:

Trump has the power to call up the D.C. National Guard and deploy it without local consent, for example. That sets the District apart from the states, where that power falls to the governor.

The Home Rule Act also gives the president the authority to temporarily take over the District’s police department. Trump can order the mayor to provide the federal government with D.C. police services in “special conditions of an emergency … as the President may deem necessary and appropriate.”

Indeed, in June 2020, during nationwide protests after the murder of George Floyd, Trump reportedly came very close to a takeover of the D.C. police force as a sort of performative demonstration of the kind of crackdown he wanted mayors and governors to carry out across the country. So it may be entirely in character for him to seize on a new pretext to become the D.C. police chief and de facto mayor.

But here’s the thing: It’s a really bad pretext. The crime rate is dropping steadily in D.C. (as it has been across the country despite all of Trump’s “crime wave” talk during the 2024 campaign). Violent crime in D.C. dropped 35 percent in 2024 and has dropped another 26 percent to date in 2025. So there’s no real justification for the president taking the fateful step of destroying democracy in the nation’s capital.

The darker possibility is that Trump is getting the same itch he got in 2020 to personally command police forces to demonstrate his strength and resolve. His administration is already mustering a huge national immigration crackdown featuring masked ICE agents backed by local police, federalized National Guard units, and the U.S. military. A federalized D.C. police force could supply an object lesson in what the 47th president wants to happen everywhere. And then, sure enough, democracy itself could come under siege.