Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Sen. Mike Lee introduced a bill to block secret D.C. Council meetings.
- The council's emergency legislation allows closed meetings on sensitive topics.
- Lee argues the bill circumvents President Donald Trump's orders, while D.C. officials cite Home Rule rights.
WASHINGTON — The D.C. Council could be blocked from holding secret meetings to discuss sensitive topics and strategic plans under a new bill introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, last week.
The council passed emergency legislation earlier this month to hold closed-door meetings in order to have conversations about economic decisions, the city budget and political strategy amid efforts from congressional Republicans and the White House to limit the local government's authority. Lee criticized the bill as an effort to circumvent executive orders from President Donald Trump to crack down on city crime and exempt the district from congressional oversight.
"Our nation's capital should be safe and beautiful, but after President Trump created a task force to achieve exactly that, D.C. city council members used an emergency process to exempt themselves from a sunshine law mandating open meetings," Lee said in a statement. "The D.C. Council should be enthusiastically cooperating with the president of the United States in cleaning up Washington and fighting crime, not ducking accountability to make plans in secret."
Lee's one-page bill would repeal the Open Meetings Clarification Emergency Amendment Act of 2025, which the D.C. Council passed on April 1. Council members pushed for changes over claims that current guidelines opened the council up to unnecessary scrutiny from the press.
"I'm tired of having to defend against the challenges from the press," Council Chairman Phil Mendelson told colleagues in a pre-legislative meeting, according to Axios.
The emergency bill comes after Trump passed an executive order in late March aimed toward "making the District of Columbia safe and beautiful." As part of the order, the White House established a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force chaired by Trump administration officials to work with the city to crack down on local crime.
The task force would specifically focus on enforcing "quality-of-life laws" such as drug use, vandalism, public intoxication, and unpermitted demonstrations. The group would also be tasked with maximizing immigration enforcement to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.
The Trump administration will pour resources into helping the D.C. Police Department recruit and retain police officers under the emergency order and strengthen pretrial detention policies to "keep dangerous criminals off the streets."
D.C. lawmakers pushed back against the order, arguing it violated the D.C. Home Rule, an ordinance that gives the district authority to govern its own local affairs.
"President Trump's thoroughly anti-home rule (executive order) is insulting to the 700,000 D.C. residents who live in close proximity to a federal government, which continues to deny them the same rights afforded to other Americans," said Rep. Eleanor Norton, D.C.'s nonvoting member of Congress. "The task force created by the (executive order) would not include a single D.C. official to represent the interests of the people who reside within the district."
However, Republicans like Lee have long sought to rein in that local authority, accusing district lawmakers of not doing enough to keep its citizens and visitors safe.
Lee cited a number of "failures of governance" to justify his bill repealing efforts to have closed-door government meetings, such as recent federal bribery charges against former council member Trayon White, reported carjackings and attacks by teenagers, assaults and robberies against members of Congress, and a recent law change to allow undocumented residents vote in local elections.
