DC braces for funding fight in Congress amid Trump crackdown
Source: The Hill
08/24/25 5:00 PM ET
The battle between top Republicans and Washington, D.C., could see another wrinkle next month, when Congress returns to a race against the clock to prevent a government shutdown by the end of September. Local leaders said the last shutdown showdown left the District with a roughly $1 billion budget hole after Congress overrode its local spending plans. And the looming Sept. 30 funding deadline comes as tensions between Republicans and Democrats over the District have hit a fever pitch amid President Trump’s crackdown in the capital.
D.C. Council member Christina Henderson said Friday that local leaders remain in discussions with spending cardinals on Capitol Hill to prevent history from repeating itself. “We are continuing our conversations with our appropriators and the four corners in Congress, because we know that sometimes the politics of the White House are very different from the politics of appropriators in terms of actually doing appropriations,” Henderson said.
D.C. was granted what’s known as “home rule” in the 1970s, but its budget is still approved by Congress. Congress in March passed a GOP-crafted stopgap to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, or late September, at mostly fiscal 2024 levels.
But unlike previous stopgap funding bills, the measure passed in March notably left out language allowing D.C. to spend its local budget — which consists mostly of funds from local tax dollars, fees and fines — at already approved 2025 levels. As a result, D.C. officials said the District was forced to spend at its fiscal 2024 levels like federal agencies under the stopgap — despite running at its updated budget levels for roughly half a year.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5466867-dc-funding-fight-trump-police-takeover/