Washington, D.C., Sued the Trump Administration — But Won’t Advertise It

Matt McClain/The Washington Post
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb joined a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship but was the only plaintiff not to issue a news release or conduct interviews on it.

D.C. sued on Tuesday to block President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship – but the city’s top officials don’t want to talk about it.

The 18 states and another city, San Francisco, that filed the initial federal lawsuit in Massachusetts on Tuesday all blasted out news releases or spoke with reporters about why they felt Trump’s executive order was an “extreme” violation of the Constitution and denied basic rights to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

By contrast, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D), whose office typically alerts its every major legal action, was the only one who made no public statement. Through a spokesperson, he declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) also did not respond to requests for comment, and she has made no public statement about it.

The silence from top D.C. officials exemplified their emerging strategy for dealing with Trump. D.C., unlike other cities, has limited home rule and is subject to vast amounts of federal control. The city’s vulnerability has created a kind of inverse relationship between Trump and its top officials: As Trump has grown more vocal in his threats, D.C. officials have grown more muted, seeking to avoid inflaming a conflict.

On Day 1 of the Trump presidency, in which Trump signed executive orders cracking down on immigration, recognizing only two sexes and pardoning those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and attacked D.C. police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, Bowser’s only public statement was an expression of optimism, focusing instead on her shared priorities with Trump.

The posture – a contrast with the public resistance from Bowser and other top officials in Trump’s first term – has come in the face of escalating hostility from Trump and Republicans toward the city’s autonomy. On the campaign trail, Trump threatened a “federal takeover” of the District and fixated on graffiti and crime. In 2020 he expressed interest in taking over D.C.’s police force, a threat that has haunted D.C. officials since. And in Congress, Republicans have repeatedly targeted the District, at their most frequent clip in modern D.C. history.

“Please let your members of Congress know: It’s time to repeal DC Home Rule,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a frequent ringleader of attempts to strip D.C. autonomy, wrote Tuesday on X in response to a perception that it was taking too long for Jan. 6 defendants to be released from the D.C. jail.

Charles Wilson, chairman of the D.C. Democratic Party, said that considering the city’s vulnerability, Bowser’s approach was “smart.” He said he thought the lack of fanfare over the birthright citizenship lawsuit fit neatly within the strategy while still finding a way to defend D.C.’s values.

“How do we fight but not be the guy up front fighting – just be in the crowd? So you don’t get the most attention, but you’re still fighting for what you believe in,” Wilson said. “We’re in a very different position – we’re not a state. You’ve got a Republican Congress, a Republican president, so you have to be very careful.”

It’s been an adjustment for some who are used to seeing their Democratic elected officials push back loudly against Trump’s policies. But some advocates working with immigrants and LGBTQ+ people – two of Trump’s major targets – say they understand.

“You don’t necessarily need to shout it from every mountaintop,” said Abel Nuñez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, which works with immigrant communities in the District. “We don’t want D.C. to become a target of the Trump administration.”

Since Trump’s election, Bowser – who attended the inauguration in the Capitol Rotunda while many Republican governors were relegated to the overflow room – has remained consistent in her approach and tone toward Trump, whom she met at Mar-a-Lago in what she called a “great meeting” last month.

She has pledged to find areas of common ground, such as on returning federal workers to offices or enlivening half-vacant federal buildings – two areas Bowser sees as central to her downtown revitalization agenda. Trump’s return-to-office order ruffled many in the federal workforce, especially amid concerns that he could upend federal agencies and move them out of the region, which could hurt D.C.

Bowser and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) have long supported returning federal workers to the office. But her tone after the inauguration – mentioning her optimism three times – contrasted sharply with Mendelson’s.

“I am optimistic that by focusing on our shared priorities with President Trump – whether it is keeping DC safe and clean or bringing workers back to our Downtown – we will continue to deliver for DC and the American public,” Bowser said her statement Monday.

Hours later, Mendelson called the pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters, particularly those who assaulted police – the city’s own police – “disturbing.”

“January 6th was not just an assault on Congress and an assault on democracy, but an attack on law enforcement. More than 140 officers were injured in the attack on the Capitol. Those who support police do not pardon the individuals who assault police,” Mendelson said on X.

Bowser did not respond to questions from The Washington Post about the Trump executive orders. But late Wednesday night, 48 hours after the pardons, she issued a statement flatly declaring that “the events of January 6 cannot be forgiven or erased,” before going on to discuss separate pardons Trump granted Wednesday to two D.C. police officers convicted of misconduct in a 2020 deadly vehicle chase.

Mendelson said in an interview Tuesday that while, in general, he believes D.C. must pick its battles wisely, he felt the pardons were “important to speak out on,” given that D.C.’s own police officers were attacked that day.

“This is one of those moments when I think it’s important to stand up for law enforcement and say it’s wrong to attack them, and I don’t think those individuals should be pardoned,” Mendelson said. “I think it is important to choose our issues, because there are many we can disagree [on], with the White House and Congress.”

Mendelson said he spoke with Bowser and Schwalb on Tuesday morning in a conference call. He said Trump’s executive orders were a topic of the meeting but that the purpose of the call was to touch base so that all three leaders would “know what each other are saying and that we’re saying things that are helpful, not harmful.”

But later in the morning, after a council committee meeting, he said many council members took issue with the disjointed messaging from D.C. elected officials in response to Trump’s actions. Mendelson said that while they agreed with his sentiment about the pardons, they wanted to see more coordination and a more unified response.

Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) posted a video to Instagram in which he was vocal about “struggling” with messaging as Trump has begun to take action. He was wary, he said, of jumping at every disagreement and “falling for the chaos.” Still, he said, “for the people affected by the various things Trump is doing, silence from elected officials can hurt. So we have to figure out strategically: How are we going to approach this presidency?”

Ultimately, White said, it was his job to remember that D.C. “is more vulnerable than anywhere else in the nation to the whims of the president” – a reality that requires elected officials to be judicious with their words.

“I am not, right now, for waving a red cape in front of a chaotic bull,” he said. “That’s hard, because it doesn’t feel good. You want to go out there, you want to fight, you want to protest.”

Heidi Ellis, who coordinates the DC LGBTQ+ Budget Coalition, said Republican control of Congress – and, in turn, D.C.’s purse strings – means she understands Bowser’s reluctance to be the face of the anti-Trump resistance.

“Does [Bowser] toe a line? I think she has to just because of that,” she said.

Still, she said, advocates will probably want to hear some kind of affirmation that Bowser stands with them.

“Toeing the line can only go so far,” Ellis said. “There has to be some repudiation of [Trump’s] policy suggestions.”

Ellis described D.C. as still one of the “most progressive spots in the country in terms of protections for queer people” and said the coalition remains focused on advocating for investments in housing and health care in next year’s local budget. They are also in discussions with D.C. officials about bolstering safety precautions ahead of the WorldPride festival in the District, Ellis said, and do not feel the D.C. government has pulled back support for the coalition.

During Trump’s first term, Bowser vocally championed D.C. as a “sanctuary city” – a status she is not advertising this time around – and penned an open letter in defense of DACA, asking officials not to end protections for immigrants brought to the United States as children. Nuñez also recalled the time she launched a grant program for immigration legal services to much fanfare in 2017.

One day into Trump’s second term, Nuñez said he trusts Bowser will maintain her support for D.C.’s immigrants even if she is not vocal about it. He said he worries Republicans could attack D.C.’s use of local budget funds to support immigrants and immigrant-serving organizations.

It remains to be seen whether Bowser’s strategy of seeking common ground will help her achieve her goal of revitalizing the city’s downtown – or convince Republicans in Congress and in the White House to leave the city alone and not meddle with its laws or policies. But ultimately, Nuñez said, he will judge Bowser’s success as a leader not by her public statements but instead by her actions.

“It’s about making sure that the residents of the city are protected, that they receive services,” he said, “and that is not done by putting out press statements about how much you’re a sanctuary city.”