Washington, D.C
US House to vote on ‘reckless’ $1bn budget cut to Washington DC
Washington DC has found itself in the crosshairs of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in recent weeks, with efforts by both to exert more control over the overwhelmingly Democratic capital city.
The president on Thursday signed an executive order he said would make Washington DC “safe, beautiful, and prosperous” by stepping up crime fighting, arrests of undocumented immigrants and the processing of permits to carry concealed weapons. Trump separately directed JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, which has many museums in and around the city.
Weeks earlier, Republicans in Congress approved a $1bn cut to the city’s budget that the mayor, Muriel Bowser, warned would result in disruptive cuts to police, schools and health services. The Senate quickly scrambled to undo the reduction, an effort Trump has since endorsed, but it is unclear when the House of Representatives will act.
“The House should take up the D.C. funding ‘fix’ that the Senate has passed, and get it done IMMEDIATELY. We need to clean up our once beautiful Capital City, and make it beautiful again,” the president wrote on Friday.
The forays into the city’s politics come despite efforts by Bowser to improve her previously tense relationship with Trump, including by jackhammering the Black Lives Matter plaza installed near the White House. While the public-safety executive order had long been anticipated, the budget cut was a surprise that was enacted as part of a federal government spending bill passed hours before a shutdown would have occurred.
Tazra Mitchell, chief policy and strategy officer at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute thinktank, said a cut of that magnitude to the city’s budget would ripple beyond its borders and affect transit and healthcare systems shared with neighboring Maryland and Virginia.
“We’re taught as children, if we make a mistake, we own up to it, and we try to do better and right the wrong that we’ve caused. And what we saw is that the US House had that opportunity and chose not to right the wrong,” Mitchell said.
The legislation, written by House Republicans and making use of Congress’s ability to review Washington DC’s laws, omits language approving its budget for the 2025 fiscal year. That prevents the city from spending its own locally collected tax revenue and forces a reversion to 2024’s spending levels, with likely devastating effects on its municipal services.
“These are local dollars. It doesn’t save the federal government any money. We’re halfway through our fiscal year, and cutting now would be reckless,” Bowser said at a press conference after the spending bill was approved.
While she did not say when the cut would take effect, the mayor warned that “if we had to make a billion-dollar cut right now … we have to go where the money is in our budget to cut that fast. And our top areas of spending are schools, public safety and the human services.”
It is unclear how the language approving Washington DC’s budget was removed from the federal spending bill, but just after it passed the Senate, the Republican Susan Collins described the omission as “a mistake”, and the chamber unanimously passed her legislation to fix it.
In the House, Republican leaders have not said when they will put it up for a vote, and a spokesperson for the speaker, Mike Johnson, did not respond to a request for comment. After Trump weighed in, Punchbowl News reported that the House would likely vote on the measure in early April.
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Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee, tried to get language approving the city’s budget added back in when her chamber passed the spending bill, but Republicans refused. “Speaker Johnson continues to drag his feet on putting the DC funding fix on the floor of the House of Representatives. This should have never happened,” DeLauro said. “President Trump is right to call on the House to take up the bill that the Senate has already unanimously passed.”
Some allies of the president have encouraged passage of the fix, including the National Fraternal Order of Police, which warned of a “quite severe” public-safety impact if the funding is not restored. The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute called the funding cut “deeply unfortunate”, while Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed interim US attorney for the district, told a neighborhood group this week that he had asked Johnson to bring the fix to the floor.
Some aligned with Trump regard the fix as leverage that should be used over the city. Before Trump weighed in, Andy Harris, chair of the far-right House Freedom caucus, told the Hill the measure’s passage should be delayed because his group needs “a little while to come up with a list of what requirements we should put on DC”, and criticized the city for spending “dollars in ways that in the past we thought were pretty foolish”.
Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, outlined in the Daily Signal a series of policies Congress could impose on Washington DC in the fix, including banning non-citizens from voting in local elections, preventing the city from spending money on undocumented immigrants and giving federal prosecutors the ability to prosecute juvenile offenders as adults.
If House leaders agree, it would be the latest instance of congresses, Democratic and Republican alike, interfering in the affairs of a city that many residents believe should be a state.
“It’s not even a budget cut. It’s really like a power grab over DC’s budget,” said Alex Dodds, co-founder of Free DC, a group that advocates for the city’s autonomy. “There’s just no way that people in Congress or this president know what we need better than we do.”
Washington, D.C
Nurses at Washington D.C.’s largest hospital call on leadership to reverse planned cuts to maternal health
RNs at MedStar Washington Hospital Center say closure of postpartum unit will disproportionately harm marginalized and underserved communities
Union nurses at MedStar Washington Hospital Center (MWHC) in Washington, D.C. are demanding that management stop the planned closure of an entire postpartum unit, announced National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU). The hospital notified the union on May 26, 2026 of its intention to eliminate 11 maternal health beds and displace eight nurses by July 26, 2026, leaving MWHC with one postpartum unit.
In a follow-up town hall with staff nurses, Chief Nursing Officer Ariam Yitbarek confirmed the closure. Other leaders have additionally informed staff that the hospital will strictly limit scheduled C-sections and inductions for patients from numerous D.C. maternal health organizations. The list of organizations includes many that primarily serve low-income patients, immigrants, and patients of color, all communities with significantly higher risks of maternal mortality. Additionally, staff were informed that Kaiser Permanente, which notably insures a large number of DC city employees and even many of MWHC’s own workers, will see a strict limit on scheduling inductions and C-sections for their patients as well.
“Closing postpartum unit 5F will gravely impact those most affected by health disparities,” said Stephanie Sims-Coates, RN in the neonatal intensive care unit. “Our low-income families and families of color will be most affected by this closure. Families trust the medical staff at MWHC and plan to come to us for their care. In a city where Black women make up 90 percent of pregnancy-related deaths despite being only half the population, the hospital’s decision to close this unit is a significant mistake.”
Community leaders and healthcare workers are joining the call for MedStar to put patients before profits and keep the unit open. This past weekend, nurses met with D.C. mayoral candidate and Ward 4 councilwoman Janeese Lewis George about the planned closure and the impact it would have on DC’s most vulnerable residents.
“Maternal mortality is a crisis for Washington, DC, and our healthcare system needs to address the crisis immediately, rather than exacerbate the challenges that birthing parents face,” said Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George. “Now is the time to invest in health care, rather than make cuts. I want to work with the hospital to identify solutions that work for patients and the provider.”
“In my time at Washington Hospital Center, I’ve seen the hospital tout its Safe Moms, Safe Babies program and host a community baby shower specifically designed to call attention to the maternal mortality crisis,” said Marcqueata “Tiya” Butler, RN in the Mother/Baby unit. “Their current plan to shut down 11 postpartum beds betrays the hospital’s stated commitments. They are aware of persistent inequities in access to care. We are calling on the hospital to consider the impacts on the community, safeguard the mothers and infants of DC and commit to addressing the maternal mortality rate.”
In 2024, MedStar Health, a registered non-profit, reported $9 billion in operating revenue.
NNOC/NNU represents more than 2,200 registered nurses at Washington Hospital Center.
National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.
WASHINGTON (7News) — Tuesday was the last day the D.C. Council could vote to enact an expanded curfew in time for summer.
7News learned it never even made it on the agenda for a discussion and went to council members to find out why.
For the next two months, it’ll be up to the mayor to declare a curfew until the permanent version kicks in. There is already a city curfew. The curfew that has been up for debate for more than a year is the expanded version of the curfew. The expanded version allows the Metropolitan Police Department to create zones where teens 17 and under cannot gather in groups of nine or more.
RELATED | DC curfews pushed large groups into local neighborhoods, some residents say
Mayor Muriel Bowser currently has her own curfew order in place, which ends Saturday. The mayor can continue issuing an order. Councilmembers against the expanded curfew said that’s why it doesn’t need to come from the council.
In a video posted two weeks ago, D.C Council public safety chair Brooke Pinto said she wanted her councilmembers to vote to fill the gap today. 7News asked her why she never presented it to the council.
“Unfortunately, in working with my colleagues over the last several weeks, we did not have the votes,” said Pinto. “We have to have enough votes to pass the law and make sure that we didn’t have a gap.”
Bowser, in a letter to council Tuesday, said councilmembers Trayon White, Robert White, Zachary Parker, Brianne Nadeau and Janese Lewis-George are “blocking the will of the public and majority of council.”
7News spoke to three of the members she called out about the mayor’s pushback.
“I reject the rhetoric and the political games that are being played, and I’m wanting for us to get to the bottom of how do we stop the teen takeovers and the delinquent behavior we’ve been seeing,” Parker said.
“I stand by my belief that a curfew policy is a failed policy, kind of smoke and mirrors, and what we really needed is investments in our young people, so I’m pretty firm on that,” Nadeau said.
“We have to choose our tools and the time we use those tools. I’ve supported the curfew in the past, but I think with the current surge of more federal troops that have been impending, we’re putting our youth in even more danger by extending that work. I know the executive has put in an emergency executive order that will fill the gap. I hope that comes alongside extended hours, I’ve funded at DPR, extended weekends, and opening more safe spaces for youth here in the city. And that’s the solution that we do agree on,” Lewis-George said.
The mayor has not confirmed if she’ll issue another order, but it is on the table.
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