Trump Seeks Funding to Clean up D.C. in Latest Effort to Control City

The Washington Post

15:59 JST, August 23, 2025

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would request funding from Congress to beautify Washington, the latest development in his plans to dramatically remake a city he says was overrun with crime and decay before he intervened.

Trump said Friday morning that he would seek $2 billion for the clean-up. When a reporter asked him about the funding several hours later in the Oval Office, he said he “wouldn’t even know where to spend” that amount.

“It’s going to be not a lot of money,” Trump said Friday afternoon.

Trump said the administration would improve light fixtures and roads within a three-mile radius of the Capitol and the White House, as he accused D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) of failing to keep the city clean. His focus on public safety – including the false claim that he has solved local crime – has evolved into an all-out effort to transform the city where he lives into a place reminiscent of his private golf clubs.

“We’re going to have this place beautified within a period of 12 months,” said the president, while wearing a red cap emblazoned with the message: “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

Trump later promised in the Oval Office to use the powers of the federal government to wage war on the vermin that have long vexed D.C. residents.

“It was a crime-infested rathole,” Trump said of the city. “And they do have a lot of rats. We’re getting rid of them, too. And we’ve made a lot of progress.”

The project would mark an extraordinary intervention in the management of the nation’s capital. The White House has already flooded the streets with National Guard troops from across the country and ordered his staff to take over the municipal police force. Those troops will “soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons,” the Pentagon said in a statement Friday.

The campaign has backed top D.C. officials into a corner. They have spent the last six months trying to placate the president and GOP members of Congress to avoid his ire. Now, with little leverage, they are struggling to determine their role and how to limit the president’s intervention in city affairs.

Because of D.C.’s unique status as outlined in the Constitution, Congress has final say over its laws and budgets. Trump also has the power to take temporary control of the city’s police force if he “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist.”

Prospects for congressional approval of the new funding are unclear. Democrats have widely criticized Trump’s intervention in D.C., and fiscal conservatives within the president’s own party have raised concerns about adding to the deficit. The most likely path would be to tuck the funding in a government funding package that lawmakers are debating ahead of the end of the fiscal year, which concludes Sept. 30.

Such a move would require support from Democrats in the Senate, who would be forced to weigh the funding against the possibility of a politically unpopular government shutdown. Congressional Republicans could also add the funding into a resolution to extend Trump’s emergency in D.C. A Florida representative has already introduced a bill to allow Trump more time to make his mark on the city.

The pressure on Congress to approve the funding for Trump’s aesthetic ambitions comes as the legislative body is withholding more than $1 billion from D.C.’s local budget raised by local taxpayers.

Trump said he is confident Congress will provide funding for his beautification plans, and he said he discussed the proposal with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) announced earlier this month that the White House was “working on a package” that he and Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama) would shepherd through Congress. The “DC Security Fund” would provide Trump with “the resources he will need to improve the safety and quality of life in our nation’s capital,” Graham wrote.

“Every American should be behind this effort to make Washington, DC clean and safe so that it can truly become the shining city on the hill,” Graham wrote in the Aug. 13 post on X.

Britt posted on X that she agreed with Graham. Britt is the chair of the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, and employs a staff member who was robbed at gunpoint on Capitol Hill in 2023.

Trump, a longtime real estate developer and golf club owner, has taken a special interest in the aesthetics of Washington. He mentioned rusting light poles with mismatched lenses, and he promised to fix the roads with “beautiful, well done asphalt.” On Thursday during a visit to a U.S. Park Police facility in Southeast Washington, Trump also promised to improve the grass in D.C. parks to resemble Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia or his own clubs. The administration will work with Clark Construction, which is also leading construction of the White House ballroom, on the improvements, he said.

“You know, if you have a good asphalt worker, it’s the greatest thing you can have,” Trump said as he contemplated how he would retop the roads. “But there aren’t too many of them. But we know, I know all the good contractors.”

Trump’s remarks came during a visit to The People’s House, a museum focused on the history of the White House that includes a replica of the Oval Office. Stewart D. McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, joined Trump to announce that tourists can visit the museum while tours of the White House are canceled indefinitely amid Trump’s construction of a new White House ballroom. Trump has sought to inject his unique aesthetic into the White House with the addition of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a new Rose Garden patio and two 88-foot flag poles.

He has also sought to reshape the Kennedy Center in his image, and he announced in the Oval Office on Friday that the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw, where teams learn who they will play against, would be hosted at the arts center.

“Some people refer to it as the Trump Kennedy Center, but we’re not prepared to do that quite yet,” Trump said while flanked by Vice President JD Vance and FIFA president Gianni Infantino. “Maybe in a week or so.”

Trump also announced FIFA would open an office focused on the 2026 World Cup in the building. FIFA previously announced it also opened a temporary office in Trump Tower.

“So now when we have this event in December, it’s going to be very safe,” Trump said.

Trump has cast D.C.’s elected leadership as inept as he moves to reshape the city. While some of Trump’s efforts have required him to invoke laws to assert his authority – as he did when he ordered the federalization of the D.C. police department – other priorities are already in his control.

Most of the park land that Trump has described as dirty and in need of repair is federal property: swaths of the National Mall, parks outside the White House and Capitol, and grassy lawns in Dupont Circle and in the heart of downtown Washington have long been his to clean up.

He is also taking on problems that have vexed leaders for decades and persisted despite increased resources and planning. D.C. has a “rat academy” to train property managers and private exterminators to spot and attack infestations while rogue groups of dog owners root out rats with terriers.

“Mayor Bowser better get her act straight or she won’t be mayor very long because we’ll take it over with the federal government and run it like it’s supposed to be run,” Trump said.