Comer reveals House Oversight will hold hearing on federalizing Washington, D.C. after recess

House Oversight Chairman James Comer on Thursday night outlined two major priorities for the lower chamber and his committee when the House returns to Washington, D.C. next month.

Both chambers of Congress are currently out for their annual August recess, where lawmakers and senators return to their home districts in order to meet with constituents and take a month-long break from Capitol Hill. 

Comer said one of his two biggest priorities when Congress returns is to hold a hearing on President Donald Trump's plan to federalize Washington, D.C., which could include activating the National Guard after recent carjackings and crimes committed by minors. 

"The city of Washington, D.C. is just not getting it done when it comes to crime," Comer said on the "Just The News, No Noise" TV show. "One of the big problems, and I hear this from members and staffers and everyone I interact with in Washington, DC is there are so many young people that are just running around at all hours of the night, going in businesses, spray-painting graffiti, stealing, trying to carjack and it doesn't seem like there are any consequences for their actions."

Comer said his real issue when it comes to crime is with the Washington city council, rather than the city's Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, noting that the council seems to be afraid of prosecuting minors.

"They are so politically correct, they don't want to do anything that they feel is politically incorrect, and they feel that doing anything with children running around is either racist or inappropriate or whatever, and they just turn a blind eye," he said. "They don't want to arrest anyone. If anyone's arrested, they don't want to incarcerate them, so there's no consequences for bad behavior."

Comer appeared supportive of Trump's plans to federalize the city in response to the crimes, stating that he will hold a hearing in September about what Congress can do since Trump will take action through executive orders.

"We still need to kind of figure out, if he does federalize it, what role the mayor and city council will have," he said. "At the end of the day, the most important question is, how do we get crime under control in Washington, D.C.?"

Comer said another priority will be codifying some of Trump's recent executive orders in order to protect the changes made under the Trump administration from future presidents. 

"The taxpayers are in better shape than they've been in a long time," Comer claimed. "We're safer than we've been in a long time, with the exception of some of these Democrat-run cities. And I think that we need to focus as a Congress on trying to codify and go in and make sure that these executive orders become the law of the land as enacted by Congress."

Comer added that some of the orders they plan to codify are Trump's latest border policies, tariffs and energy policies, among others.

The House is currently scheduled to return to Washington on Sept. 2, where lawmakers will also work to advance 12 annual funding bills by October to avoid a government shutdown.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.