Donald Trump has never hidden his love of power, praising strongmen like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and telling a recent rally he did not mind being called a "brilliant tyrant dictator." Since taking office, he has pushed his power to its limits with allies who subscribe to unitary executive theory, which holds that the president alone controls the executive branch.
However, despite his attempts at expanding his authority, Trump has run into the roadblocks of federalism, with state governments or the U.S. court system sometimes striking down or negating some of his power grabs. Visibly frustrated by these limits, Trump has turned to the one jurisdiction where his authority is largely unconstrained: Washington D.C.
In his second term, he has sought to project his personal vision for America onto the city, but the city is not a passive bystander. Through his actions, Trump has stepped into a new round of conflict in the centuries old tug-of-war between the district’s people and the federal government.
A Federal City
While the federal government owns land across the United States, much of this is either national parks, organised farmland, or military bases. What makes Washington D.C. unique is that the entire city, with a population of over 650,000, is directly under the control of Congress and the White House.
The capital was designed this way because of a lesson learned early. In 1783, when the Pennsylvania state government refused to defend Congress, then based in Philadelphia, from mutineering Continental Army soldiers, national leaders concluded the federal government needed its own land, free from state control.
The creation of the federal territory meant that the new residents, who had previously been enfranchised citizens of Virginia and Maryland, became disenfranchised federal subjects, as only states held seats in Congress. This arrangement suited many in the federal government, especially once it became clear that a major population bloc in the district would be free and enslaved Black men.
Chocolate city
It is a misnomer that D.C. came from empty swampland. The city’s land, though rural, was already worked by slaveholding tobacco plantations. Then, during D.C.’s early construction, Congress imported slaves from nearby estates to build the city and undercut white workers' wages.
