Trump Demands Homeless People ‘Immediately’ Move Out Of Washington DC – BBC

• Max Matz, BBC News

US President Donald Trump has said homeless people must “move out” of Washington DC as he vowed to tackle crime in the city, but the mayor pushed back against the White House likening the American capital to Baghdad in Iraq.

The Republican president has also trailed a news conference for Monday about his plan to make the city “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before”.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said: “We are not experiencing a crime spike.”

Trump signed an order last month making it easier to arrest homeless people, and he last week ordered federal law enforcement into the streets of Washington DC.

Most were in public housing or emergency shelters, but about 800 were considered to be “on the street”.

As a district, rather than a state, Washington DC is overseen by the federal government, which has the power to override some local laws.

The president controls federal land and buildings in the city, although he would need Congress to assume federal control of the district.

In recent days, he has threatened to take over the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department, which Bowser argued was not possible.

“There are very specific things in our law that would allow the president to have more control over our police department,” Bowser said. “None of those conditions exist in our city right now.”

Trump has been critical of various Democratic-run city administrations during his two presidential terms.

In recent months, he has notably clashed with the Los Angeles leadership after ordering thousands of National Guard members to deal with unrest over raids on undocumented migrants.

That deployment became the subject of a legal battle which will reach a federal court in California on Monday.