AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In a letter to residents Friday, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged her city's complicated relationship with the federal government.
We know that our access to democracy is different than anywhere else in America, she wrote. That said, while our home rule is limited, we still have rights as American citizens, and we still have powers of local self-government.
That follows the mayor's criticism of President Trump's moves as an authoritarian push. Last week, a think tank that studies authoritarianism happened to be holding a conference here. NPR's Frank Langfitt went to find out how experts are thinking about events in D.C.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Sabina Cudic is a former political scientist who serves in the Bosnian Parliament. She attended the conference held by a new think tank. It's called the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism. Now, during her visit, Cudic went to Washington's Union Station, and she saw military Humvees parked outside.
SABINA CUDIC: For those of us who lived through wars and siege and occupation and so on, these scenes are triggering. They're not triggering just on the visual sense, but they're triggering in a kind of conceptual sense that, A, how quickly things escalate, B - and probably more devastatingly so - how quickly they're normalized.
LANGFITT: Damon Linker teaches political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He also attended the conference, which drew center-left and center-right thinkers, as well as libertarians. Linker believes Trump's moves are not about crime but power.
DAMON LINKER: Trump is a kind of political genius at finding wedge issues that will make Democrats squirm. So his idea is to say crime is terrible in the nation's capital. The federal government runs the nation's capital. So I have a very easy way to take it over and make a show of force.
LANGFITT: Trump insists he's deployed forces - including FBI and DEA agents - to protect the people of Washington. He also says he wants to spruce up the city.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: What we want to do is make Washington, D.C. the greatest, most beautiful, safest capital anywhere in the world. And that's going to happen.
LANGFITT: Under pressure from a federal judge, the Justice Department said Friday that Washington's police chief will retain control of the city's force.
The conference here was called liberalism for the 21st century. Trump's second term was a constant theme. Alexander Sikorski started a foundation in Poland that helps young people get into public service. He spoke on a panel called practical strategies for resisting authoritarianism. Sikorski says he recognizes the president's tactics from elsewhere.
ALEXANDER SIKORSKI: Looking at it from a kind of perspective of someone who's worked in dictatorships and has worked in declining democracies, what strikes me about this deployment is not that it's being used to combat a particular crisis or event but that it is a communication exercise.
LANGFITT: Sikorski says the president's message is clear.
SIKORSKI: Crime rates under Democratic leaders have soared and that it requires the strong arm of President Trump and his administration to quiet that.
LANGFITT: Sikorski, who's worked in Mongolia and the country of Georgia, suspects there may be another reason to deploy troops.
SIKORSKI: It normalizes the presence of soldiers on American streets so that if Trump were to lose another election, the deployment of those troops would not appear so strange anymore.
LANGFITT: The Constitution bars Trump from running a third time, but midterms are next year. Trump says Washington is in the grip of a crime wave. U.S. Justice Department statistics show that violent crime actually dropped to a 30-year low last year. Although, people in some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods say crime is still way too high.
Not everyone at the conference opposed the president's actions. John Dickerson, a retiree, drove up from Jacksonville, Florida, to attend.
JOHN DICKERSON: In my visits over the years to Washington, D.C., it's gone from being a very pristine, beautiful city - a capital of my country that I can be very proud of - it's degenerated over time. Whether it's tent cities or homeless on the streets or it's just seems to me that it's gone downhill. And so I've got no problems whatsoever with President Trump trying to solve that problem. Whether he can or not, it's a different story.
LANGFITT: Dickerson said now that Trump has taken over law enforcement in Washington, he owns the issue. And Dickerson says he hopes the president succeeds.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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