House Republicans look to intervene in D.C.’s response to GWU encampment
House Republicans have summoned D.C.'s mayor and police chief to testify before a congressional committee about their decision not to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University — part of the federal lawmakers’ multipronged approach to compel more aggressive police action at the demonstration unfolding five blocks from the White House.
The response from the District, which involved rejecting pleas from GWU to sweep out the encampment, has stood in sharp contrast to the scenes on other campuses across the country. Police departments in recent days have responded to requests from school officials to clear protests, at times dressing in riot gear and deploying chemical irritants to disperse demonstrators. The law enforcement crackdown has led to arrests of more than 1,600 protesters nationwide, according to a tally by The Washington Post.
Congress alone does not have the power to take over the District’s police force nor deploy the D.C. National Guard. Both actions, which are allowed in certain situations because of the city’s unique status as a federal district, require presidential action.
But there are tools at federal lawmakers’ disposal — holding hearings, striking down local legislation, controlling the city’s budget — that can hamstring D.C. officials. Bowser and her staff, city council members and other local officials have appeared multiple times before the House Oversight Committee in the last year at hearings that have often focused on the District’s response to violent crime.
Unfolding in the same building were contentious committee hearings about antisemitism on college campuses. Within weeks of appearing at one hearing in December, the presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who faced pressure on different fronts, resigned. Last month, the House Education and the Workforce Committee called on Columbia University’s president to testify. That day, a tent encampment appeared on her campus in New York that would kick-start a nationwide movement.
As the GWU demonstration continued Wednesday, more protesters have moved onto the campus’s adjacent H Street NW, a public street fully in the jurisdiction of D.C. police. The city’s police posture had not changed.
“The university hasn’t changed any request to [D.C. police],” said Tom Lynch, a police department spokesman. “And we haven’t changed anything about our posture.”
A spokesperson for GWU declined to address questions about whether the university had continued to request that D.C. police clear the encampment.
Meagan Flynn contributed to this report.