House Republicans are briefly setting aside their concerns about Hunter Biden this week and instead turning their attention to crime and police reform in D.C.

On Wednesday morning the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is holding a hearing on crime, homelessness, and the overall financial picture in the city. In the afternoon, the committee will debate a resolution that would block a police accountability and discipline bill passed by the D.C. Council.

Both hearings reflect the more aggressive stance congressional Republicans have taken towards the city and its elected officials since claiming the majority earlier this year.

Republicans say that they are merely exercising their constitutional duties in overseeing the nation’s capital, especially as the city continues to experience an increase in some violent crimes and a 20-year-low in police staffing. They also say that they are concerned with visible signs of homelessness in the city and D.C.’s financial future as ongoing remote work starts to take a bite out of the city’s revenues.

“Congress has sent a clear message to the D.C. Council: it’s time to make our nation’s capital safe again. All Americans should feel safe in their capital city, but radical left-wing policies have led to a crime crisis and rampant homelessness,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), the House Oversight committee chair, in a statement earlier this month announcing the hearing.

But critics and some local officials say that the two congressional actions are mostly politically motivated interference in D.C.’s local affairs. Earlier this month Congress blocked a D.C. bill that revised the city’s century-old criminal code, representing the first time in three decades and only the fourth time in a half-century that the country’s legislative body overturned the will of the city’s lawmakers. And just last week a group of Republicans toured the D.C. Jail, saying they were concerned about conditions faced by 20 detainees accused of crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Democrats who tagged along said those detainees were being treated well.)

In his own statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) called the hearing “one more political distraction designed to placate the ultra-MAGA base and one more affront to self-government in local Washington.”

Wednesday morning’s oversight hearing — which Republicans touted as “Part I,” hinting that more hearings will follow — will include testimony from D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson; Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6); Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee; and Gregg Pemberton, the head of the D.C. Police Union, which represents some 3,300 police officers in the city.

“The invitation said they wanted to look at the issues of the crime crisis and poor management. And the message I intend to give is that the city is actually run quite well, and while crime is of concern we’re not in the midst of a crisis,” said Mendelson in an interview with DCist/WAMU. (Violent crime was down 7% last year from the year before, and is currently at the same level it was at this same time last year.) “Some members of the committee have suggested that the council and the government are out of control and extremely left-wing. I intend to convey to them that we are actually very thoughtful and deliberative, and while some of our policies might be more liberal than some other jurisdictions, we’re not a bunch of left-wing crazies.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser was not invited to speak at the hearing, but said Monday that if she had been, she would tell Congress that D.C. is doing fine for itself. “My message is clear: The District is strong, our finances are strong, our local government is in charge, and we have a plan [and] a balanced budget to deal with the challenges that all American cities are dealing with,” she said in response to a question from DCist/WAMU at a press conference.

Speaking last week on her proposed 2024 budget, Bowser said that if Congress did want to help address crime in the city, it could allocate more funding for the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes violent crime but has recently come under criticism for dismissing almost two-thirds of the cases D.C. police bring. City officials have also said that the federal government could help by more rapidly filling judicial vacancies in D.C. Superior Court; judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but the process is regularly bogged down and leaves the city’s court system short-staffed.

A significant amount of Republicans’ attention is likely to be focused on the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act, a police accountability and discipline bill the council first passed on an emergency basis after George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020 and has now moved to make permanent. The bill, which House Republicans want to block, includes provisions prohibiting police from using chokeholds and other neck restraints, requiring body-camera footage from police shootings to be made public within five days, creating a new database of sustained police disciplinary records, expanding the authority of the independent Office of Police Complaints, and removing disciplinary matters from collective bargaining with the police union.

The union has fought that latter provision tooth and nail, unsuccessfully waging a legal battle that nearly reached all the way to Supreme Court. More recently, the union — which supported Republicans’ move to block the revised criminal code — took broader aim at the whole police accountability bill, saying that it has “brought policing to a grinding halt in our nation’s capital.”

“I don’t think anyone is afraid of the accountability, and the officers go out and do the job professionally and constitutionally and responsibly every day, but there is an environment, if you will, that officers are constantly doing things wrong even when they are going out and doing the right thing,” said Pemberton in testimony to the council last month.

Republicans have called the bill “anti-police,” but Jonathan Smith, the director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, says that accountability and public safety can go hand in hand.

“The Republicans in Congress are setting up this argument that somehow or another, by holding police accountable to the Constitution and to the rules of the District of Columbia and providing more transparency about the operation of the police department, that that is going to harm public safety,” he said. “I’ve been working at police departments, about 30 or 40 police departments across the country, and I tell you, the one thing that actually improves public safety and police reform is greater accountability and transparency. When communities know and can have a role in the operation of those police departments. When police officers are made to comply with the rules, that improve public safety.”

Both D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee and Bowser have raised concerns with some provisions of the council’s bill, but earlier this month Bowser and Mendelson sent congressional leaders a joint letter opposing the House bill, H.J. Res. 42, that could block the council’s police accountability bill.

“We encourage you to see this legislation for what it is: a package of reforms not unlike reforms under consideration elsewhere, including the United States Congress. Regardless of the substance, we are united in opposition to H.J. Res 42 because it offends the basic democratic principles of self-determination and local control,” they wrote. “Not only should our policy decisions not be overturned by officials not elected to represent our residents, but piecemeal interference hurts our ability to confront crime and improve public safety in the District of Columbia.”

In his own statement on Tuesday, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb echoed those sentiments, saying that the legislation is “essential in ensuring the swift and certain discipline of officers who use excessive force or violate constitutional rights, which will go far to improve trust and mutual respect between police officers and the community.”

That united front — which did not exist during the GOP push to block the revised criminal code — could give congressional Democrats a bigger push to fight the Republican move.