The Scoop
President Donald Trump’s pitch to spend $2 billion beautifying DC is turning into one of the biggest mysteries in the capital.
Multiple Republicans confirmed there is no concrete proposal working its way around Capitol Hill, beyond Trump’s initial comments floating billions of dollars in spending on close-in areas from the White House and the Capitol. Even Trump himself, hours after announcing his own beautification fund, suggested he “wouldn’t even know where to spend” that amount of money, which he claimed wouldn’t be “a lot.”
The money could theoretically get attached to next month’s government funding bill, although that legislation has its own challenges apart from DC issues. Typically, the White House sends Congress a supplemental spending request sketching out its funding asks; that hasn’t happened yet.
The White House declined to comment.
Know More
While Congress waits for more details, Democrats tore into the DC mobilization during the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis, where party chair Ken Martin was not the only official who called the president a “fascist.” Democratic mayors and governors fretted that the press was not paying enough critical attention to what Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called “a military take over our cities and the attempt to go into others.”
Barbara Lee, elected to be mayor of Oakland, Calif., in an April special election, said her city was making real progress on crime but getting “trashed” by Trump regardless. She suggested that the city would resist any federal takeover and didn’t need one: “Oakland is not afraid. We embrace all residents, including our immigrant communities. Our police do not cooperate with ICE.”
During a Monday morning session, Insha Rahman of Vera Action, a criminal justice reform group, said that Democrats needed to take credit for their own policies when they decreased crime, and be ready if Republicans claimed that the DC military mobilization was effective.
Their model, she said, should be Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who defended her city’s anti-crime policies at a preemptive rally against a military takeover. The message, said Rahman: “While you deploy military personnel to occupy American streets, we are building community safely.”
Comments