Hello, I'm Adam Red.

Hey, Mike DeBonez here.

It's Monday, August 11th, and this is the Playbook podcast.

This morning, I have the pleasure of welcoming our senior Congress editor, Mike DeBonis, to the show.

Adam, glad to be here.

Let's get right into what's driving the day.

Today's biggest story comes from Washington, D.C., where at 10 a.m., President Donald Trump

is headed to the James S. Brady briefing room, where he's expected to make an announcement

about exerting further control over the nation's capital by deploying federal forces to police the streets of the city and to, quote, immediately clear out the city's homeless population.

This comes as Trump has reportedly eyed a federal takeover of Washington in response to what he characterizes as a, quote, out-of-control crime problem,

even though statistics from law enforcement show that violent crime and the district has dropped

substantially over the past two years, in that the apparent assault of a Trump administration

staff for last week and has been something of a catalyst. In the days since,

Trump has taken to social media to criticize the city, floating federalizing it, and just this

past weekend deployed hundreds of federal law enforcement officials, including from the FBI and

ICE to patrol the city. I've reached out to the White House to see if they can clarify what they expect

to announce at 10 a.m. and they said they do not want to get ahead of the president. But this comes

as people like the Magat legal firebrand Mike Davis is talking about repealing the Home Rule Act

of 1973. There's a small movement in Congress led by Senator Mike Lee of

Utah to repeal this as well. And I want to bring in your expertise, Mike. You cover DC City

government for a significant amount of time. What are the options here that Trump has,

short of taking over the city to remedy what he says is a crime and homelessness problem?

...