President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order as early as this week that would demand D.C. authorities clean up homeless camps and reduce crime.
Crimes mentioned in the executive order to receive harsher penalties include violent crimes involving guns and petty crimes like public urination, The Washington Post reported. The White House is in talks with the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, regarding what is contained in the order.
The directive would also reinstate an executive order Trump signed in 2020 that protected national monuments in particular, focusing on federal parks run by the National Park Service, the Post reported.
“It’s hard to argue with the Park Service doing more to help the city,” D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, a Democrat, told the Post. “Although the federal government needs to follow that up with resources that the Park Service would need.”
Crime decreased in D.C. in 2024 compared to 2023, a particularly violent year, but there are questions about the District’s crime reporting methods. The Metropolitan Police of Washington, D.C. (MPDC)’s reported crime data does not include “crime totals as reported to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System”, which itself has reporting issues.
Still, the MPDC’s website shows that homicides are on the rise in 2025 compared to this point in 2024 – seeing a 57% increase.
Trump has derided D.C. as a crime-ridden city, but on some issues, he and Bowser appear to be aligned, the Post reported, including a more aggressive approach to crime and increased resources for law enforcement.
“We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it and rebuild our capital city so there is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime,” Trump said on the campaign trail last year.
Axios reported that the White House has been reaching out to members of the D.C. community to find individuals who have been victims of violent crimes to attend an event on Friday, which could be the signing of the executive order.
The Post, meanwhile, expressed concerns that Trump could take away some of D.C.’s ability to govern itself, with two Republican members of Congress recently introducing a bill that would repeal “home rule” – giving the federal government more control over how D.C. operates.
