Donald Trump has federalized the Washington, D.C. police and deployed National Guard troops to the city. Trump is arguing that the deployment is in response to a crisis in public safety.
Any president in the last 40 years could have declared the same emergency in the district and deployed troops. Trump's move is perfectly legal under the authority granted by the district's Home Rule statute. But Trump's pledge to federalize the police forces of other cities like Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore will be met with a blizzard of court challenges, given that the president cannot unilaterally send federal troops or federal law enforcement to a city without being invited. That's federalism, and Trump can't do anything about it.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser claims that Trump's actions are unnecessary because the district's violent crime rate has dropped to a 40-year low.
Congratulations are in order for the mayor. D.C. crime is no longer intolerable. It's now only unbearable.
Indeed, the statistics Bowser is talking about may have been more than a little cooked. The city recently overhauled its justice system, eliminating dozens of offenses and reducing others from felony to misdemeanor. Also, there is a question about the accuracy of D.C. police reporting.
"Data from the US Attorney's Office shows a high rate of declined prosecutions, suggesting a potential disconnect between arrests and actual charges," according to the White House.
"Fact check: Violent crime in DC has fallen in 2024 and 2025 after a 2023 spike," claims CNN. Even if this is true, does that mean that Washington, D.C. is "safe" or even "safer"?
Trump's point is an important one; we shouldn't have to settle for a "reduction in violent crime." That's a statistic that's meaningless if a family member is a victim or if a citizen doesn't feel safe taking public transportation. We need to make cities safer so that the perception among residents is that they and their families feel safer. It's a point that left-wing Democratic mayors refuse to deal with, which is why Donald Trump made significant electoral inroads in urban America.
It's a quality-of-life issue that is becoming increasingly important to citizens. As the quality of life worsens, the desire to improve it increases, and the demand that politicians do something about it grows louder.
Once again, Trump has read the room correctly and is taking a course of action that may not be overwhelmingly popular when filtered through the hysteria of the left-wing noise machine but will be seen as necessary by most of his supporters.
Others see the federalization of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., and the threat to federalize other big city police departments as a clear sign that Donald Trump is a racist.
Yes, really.
“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.
“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.
This woman must be from a different planet. There were thousands of protesters ("peaceful" is a relative term) threatening the most sensitive places in our democracy. Many in the crowd were doing their utmost to provoke the kind of response the ACLU mouthpiece was talking about. Does that count for nothing?
If the worst that happened to those protesters was military helicopters "swooping" over protesters, then they can all thank their lucky stars.
Recommended: Ayanna Pressley Has a Problem With Texas Redistricting. You Should See How Dems Drew Her District.
The San Francisco Chronicle was even more hysterical about the racism of Donald Trump.
“I see this as a political dog whistle to his base, evoking long-running stereotypes that Black mayors cannot adequately govern or are soft on crime in their cities,” said Jordie Davies, a professor of political science at UC Irvine. “Donald Trump is engaging in political theater so he can be seen as responding to the racist ideas that these cities are poorly run and overrun with crime — even as statistics demonstrate that violent crime in major U.S. cities, including D.C., is down this year.”
What's most frightening is that the good professor and the Democratic mayors are accepting the status quo. It's not a question or "race." It's not even a question of "competence." It's a question of ideas. Left-wing politicians, regardless of whether they're black, white, red, yellow, pink, or purple polka-dots, are governing based on flawed, ignorant ideas with little or no connection to the real world.
In 2020, Trump said of Detroit, Oakland and Baltimore, “these cities, it’s like living in hell.”
“And everyone gets upset when I say it, they say, ‘Is that a racist statement? ’ It’s not a racist,” Trump told Fox News. “Frankly, Black people come up to me, they say, ‘Thank you. Thank you sir for saying it.’”
Davies, the UC Irvine professor, said using the fear of crime — especially the idea of “Black crime” — has always been an effective political message in the U.S. It was a message Trump hammered consistently in the 2024 election, a race in which he doubled his share of Black voters from 2020. (still, Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, won 83% of Black voters.)
The Democrats are whipping up hysteria because it's all they have to fight with. Their ideas on how to "fight crime" are more about managing the chaos rather than making residents feel safer.
Until Democrats figure that out, Trump and anyone who says "we can do better" will win the battle of ideas.
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