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   From: customerservice@fultoncountyga.gov   
      
   After Donald Trump won the presidential election, Washington, DC, Mayor   
   Muriel Bowser flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to see him.   
      
   When Republicans pressured her over the giant “Black Lives Matter”   
   lettering she installed in front of the White House during Trump’s first   
   term, Bowser agreed to remove it. Her reasoning: The city had bigger   
   fish to fry, particularly on managing the federal job cuts Trump has   
   enacted this year.   
      
   Now, as Trump federalizes the police in the capital and deploys the   
   National Guard, Bowser faces perhaps the biggest test to date of her   
   leadership and her ability to navigate the White House.   
      
   Bowser’s comments in response to the announcement illustrate how she’s   
   often trying to communicate multiple messages at one time.   
      
   Describing Trump’s executive action as “unsettling and unprecedented,”   
   Bowser on Monday blasted the city’s lack of full autonomy without   
   personalizing that frustration or criticizing Trump directly.   
      
   “I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past that we’re   
   totally surprised,” she said.   
      
   Minutes later, she suggested the federal intervention may work to the   
   city’s benefit and told reporters she didn’t have the legal authority to   
   stop Trump’s plans.   
      
   “The fact that we have more law enforcement and presence in   
   neighborhoods, that may be positive,” she said.   
      
   But Bowser struck a stronger tone during a virtual conversation with   
   community leaders on Tuesday.   
      
   Asked what residents can do, Bowser said, “This is a time where   
   community needs to jump in and we all need to, to do what we can in our   
   space, in our lane, to protect our city and to protect our autonomy, to   
   protect our Home Rule, and get to the other side of this guy, and make   
   sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this   
   authoritarian push.”   
      
   The following day, she responded to a question about her relationship   
   with Trump saying, “I’m the mayor and he’s the president. I mean,   
   that’s   
   always been our relationship, and the DC mayor and the president of the   
   United States will always have probably more interaction than any city   
   in the rest of our country. So, we’re going to keep doing our job.”   
      
   By comparison, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump has no   
   credibility in the law and order space.   
      
   “The crime scene in D.C. most damaging to everyday Americans is at 1600   
   Pennsylvania Ave,” Jeffries posted, referencing the address of the White   
   House.   
      
   Other Democrats like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who dealt with   
   Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in her own city, also dismissed   
   the president’s actions.   
      
   “To me, it just all boiled down to being a stunt and I just don’t think   
   you should use our troops for political stunts,” said Bass.   
      
   Christina Henderson, a member of the DC council, suggested she   
   empathized with the difficult balance Bowser is trying to strike. She   
   noted that only in 1973 did Congress allow DC residents to elect a   
   mayor, council members and neighborhood commissioners, but prohibited   
   the council from enacting certain laws and the city from having voting   
   members in the US House or Senate.   
      
   “You do not want to be the mayor that loses home rule and that there is   
   no mayor after you,” Henderson said.   
      
   Asked if she planned to push back harder in the wake of an unprecedented   
   undermining of her authority, Bowser said Monday, “My tenor will be   
   appropriate for what I think is important for the district and what’s   
   important for the district is that we can take care of our citizens.”   
      
   Veteran city reporter Tom Sherwood, a political analyst for DC public   
   radio station WAMU, says Bowser is trying to be strategic.   
      
   “I believe that the mayor has done all she can do to tend to the   
   weather-vane attitude of President Trump,” Sherwood said. “The image   
   from the president is that the district is a liberal, mostly Black city   
   that doesn’t care about fighting crime, and so that’s left the mayor and   
   the DC Council as prime targets for him.”   
      
   Anti-Trump sentiment is fierce in activist spaces across the city, which   
      
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