Lee has introduced numerous bills to take authority from the district’s elected officials.
(Eric Lee | The New York Times) Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, June 17, 2025.
Ahead of President Donald Trump announcing Monday morning that he would invoke emergency powers to make the unprecedented move to militarize law enforcement in the nation’s capital, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee fired off dozens of posts cheering him on.
Lee, as Trump did in saying he would activate 800 National Guard troops and take control of the District of Columbia’s police force for 30 days, has painted the district as a crime-ridden dystopia despite crime there hitting a 30-year low earlier this year.
And preceding Lee’s words are numerous pieces of legislation from the Utahn, dating back to early in the senator’s first term, that would grab power back from the government overseeing D.C., long led by Democrats.
“Trump’s right to demand a federal takeover of DC after juveniles brutally attacked a DOGE staffer — it’s time to end the Home Rule disaster!” Lee wrote Wednesday in a post that was pinned to the top of his X profile Monday afternoon. Following the post was a thread explaining why Lee wants Congress to pass his BOWSER Act.
(Doug Mills | The New York Times) President Donald Trump announces that he is assuming control of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the National Guard in the nation’s capital, citing high crime rates, at the White House on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. Officials said in January 2025 that violent crime in the city is at a 30-year low. Trump is joined by, from left: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum; Defense Sercetary Pete Hegeth (partially obscured); Attorney General Pam Bondi; and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Calls to solidify federal control of D.C. escalated among Republicans after a former worker with the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was allegedly attacked during an attempted carjacking.
Lee’s BOWSER Act — introduced in February and named for D.C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser — stands for “Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident.” It would repeal the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which allows the district’s residents to elect a mayor and council.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there are more than 700,000 people living in D.C., more than triple that of Salt Lake City.
Currently, people who live in the district do not have congressional representation, and any policies passed by its council are reviewed and can be rejected by Congress. Lee helped exercise that power in 2023 when he voted to block a criminal code rewrite passed after the council overrode Bowser’s veto.
Congress also retains control over D.C.’s budget.
Shortly after Lee announced the BOWSER Act, D.C.’s elected shadow Rep. Oye Owolewa — who is not recognized by the federal government as a member of Congress, but is chosen by district residents to lobby on their behalf — traveled to Salt Lake City to push back on the “anti-democratic” legislation.
“Senator Lee should be focused on the needs of Utahns rather than meddling in the affairs of D.C. residents,” Owolewa said in a statement at the time. “The people of Washington, D.C. have long fought for the right to govern themselves without interference from lawmakers who do not represent them.”
In a newsletter entry early Monday previewing Trump’s actions, Politico noted that Lee continues to lead a “niche group” among Senate Republicans to repeal the Home Rule Act.
Lee introduced another bill in late July to alter the Home Rule Act and limit the district’s emergency rule-making ability, which allows it to pass legislation that takes effect immediately and can remain in place up to 90 days without congressional review. Under Lee’s legislation, Congress could stop those short-term policies, too.
The senior member of Utah’s federal delegation also brought a bill taking aim at a widely criticized measure D.C.’s council adopted earlier this year to allow it to have more closed-door meetings.
Attempts by Utah’s senator to shape policy in D.C. began as early as 2012, a year after he took office, when he proposed passing abortion restrictions that would only apply to the district.
Lee has tried on multiple occasions to reduce education requirements for the district’s child care workers — a space conservatives have repeatedly looked to deregulate.
When Trump last tested the limits of his ability to use federal agents and deploy the National Guard in D.C. amid Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Lee supported that move, too.
(Tierney L. Cross | The New York Times) Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks to reporters at a news conference in Washington on Monday afternoon, Aug. 11, 2025. President Donald Trump announced on Monday morning that he is assuming control of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the National Guard in the nation’s capital, citing high crime rates.
He clashed with Bowser when she declined to allow members of the Utah National Guard to stay in a D.C. hotel on her taxpayers’ dime, resulting in them being removed from rooms that had been reserved for guard members helping with the city’s coronavirus response.
“Their labor and sacrifice on behalf of Washingtonians deserves better than this embarrassing spectacle,” Lee wrote in a statement. “If Mayor Bowser has a problem with President Trump, she should take it up with him, not take it out on National Guard personnel in the middle of a dangerous deployment in her city.”
Bowser told Lee then, in a post, “Senator — until they are recalled home — which I have formally requested from the President, your troops are in DC hotels. However, DC residents cannot pay their hotel bills. The Army can clear that up with the hotel today, and we are willing to help.“
In a news conference Monday afternoon, Bowser said she was not surprised by Trump’s activation of the National Guard and assertion of control over the district’s police force, but called it “unsettling.”
“We know that access to our democracy is tenuous,” the mayor said. “That is why you have heard me — and many many Washingtonians before me — advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia. We are American citizens. Our families go to war. We pay taxes and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship.”