Lots of misinformation is being spread about President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize law enforcement in Washington, D.C. Much of it is the usual Trump Derangement Syndrome: “fascist” tendencies toward “authoritarianism” at the expense of “black and brown” people because of DJT’s “racism” and desire to bury the Epstein scandal. There’s no “emergency” justifying the takeover. The “solution” is to do what Democrats failed to do for decades: Make DC the 51st state so it need not undergo such “humiliation.”
Where to start?
My point of departure is political. Washington is the “federal city.” The Constitution is explicit. Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over “the district constituting the seat of government.”
Washington was a political compromise — neutral territory between North and South, chosen as an uninhabited swamp between Maryland and Virginia (and conveniently upriver from George Washington’s Mount Vernon). It was supposed to be apolitical. Democrats want to make it hyper-political.
The reaction to the Trump federalization of D.C. law enforcement is to claim that “this proves we should have made D.C. a state!” Well, no it doesn’t. All it proves is your naked political ambitions to guarantee the left two senators and a bunch of congressmen.
There’s a lot of jabber about “home rule.” There are two largely unmentioned facts about “home rule.” First, it is an historical anomaly. Nobody talked about D.C. “home rule” until 1974. For nearly 185 years of the Republic, D.C. functioned under its constitutional identity as the “federal district.” And don’t tell me that the string of illustrious nobodies leading D.C. for the past 50 years — including such a distinguished figure as Mayor Marion Berry, convicted for possession and use of crack cocaine — proves the merits of “home rule.” It arguably demonstrates the opposite.
Second, whatever “home rule” D.C. has is whatever Congress gives it. Its government has the powers Congress delegates — no more, no less. It exists at the sufferance of Congress — i.e., the collective decision of the people of the United States (as the Constitution intended). So all these claims about “denying home rule” are so much political smoke.
Congressional Democrats have been trying to hike Washington’s political clout for decades. Back in the days of “home rule,” the Democrat Congress even thought of giving D.C. congressional seats as if it were a state. Such a constitutional amendment was even proposed in 1978. It passed the Senate with the bare minimum of votes and died in ratification, having been approved by only 16 (mostly blue) of the required 38 states.
Democrats learned their lesson: A constitutional amendment to give D.C. congressional seats would never be ratified, because small (especially small red) states were not going to lose seats to the District. They understood the difference between a state and a district. That’s when liberals switched to their “statehood” tactic — it avoids needing approval from those pesky states!
I’d argue that Congress cannot constitutionally make D.C. a “state.” What would be the “State of Columbia” is land given by Maryland to create “the district constituting the seat of government of the United States.” That bequest was for a specific purpose. If Congress does not want to administer all that land, it cannot invent a new state. The proper response would be to return the land to Maryland. There’s precedent for that: Congress in the 19th century gave back the land Virginia had ceded for the capital, which is today’s Arlington.
That does not amplify Democrat political power in Congress, while it introduces a new squabble into very blue Maryland’s Democrat politics: the boys of Baltimore and Annapolis would now have to share power with the Washington crowd.
I make these points because, despite all the rhetoric about “home rule,” the truth is that Americans think of Washington first and foremost as our capital. It is the nation’s capital, not the next oppressed victim stifled by the norms of the U.S. Constitution. And as long as Americans as a whole regard Washington in a qualitatively different way from other places — as “our capital” — that aligns with the constitutional vision of a congressionally governed district and not the next blue political machine.
That leads me to my second point: crime. Liberal apologists have fomented all types of excuses to claim that the president had no authority to federalize D.C. law enforcement, that it was discriminatory and diversionary, etc., etc. Crime is supposedly on the way down. Let’s talk.
In 2023, there were 274 murders in Washington, D.C. That means one human being killed every 31 hours. Every day and a half.
Senate Democrat whip Dick Durbin of Illinois claimed there’s no “emergency” justifying Trump’s action. Does one dead human being every 31 hours not constitute an “emergency”? In whose cosseted world?
Perhaps a murder every day and a half is “normal” or “statistically to be expected” in some people’s minds — but I suspect few of those holding that opinion have ever stood in front of the business end of a knife or gun.
A murder every day and a half is an emergency. Maybe it’s not an emergency in Chicago or New York, but Washington is at root “the district constituting the seat of government of the United States,” and most Americans would think a murder every day and a half is an “emergency.”
Because Washington stands in a unique relationship with congressional and executive power, it is also appropriate that the national capital be a showcase of law and order, not the morass of “restorative justice” and the latest liberal pipe dreams of “criminal justice reform” that exacerbate crime. Therein lies the real liberal objection: If Donald Trump can make an example out of Washington, it calls into question the “policing reform” and “criminal justice” agendas of crime-ridden major cities, potentially auguring political realignments there that liberals do not want to see.
Yes, the talking heads attacking Trump cited other cities as being more crime-ridden. You do have a better chance getting murdered in Detroit than D.C. But national tourism to Detroit hardly mirrors D.C., and most Americans don’t want to die in either. So let’s stop the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” and address the reality of what’s behind this opposition: pursuing political ambition and defending failed policies.
Image via Picryl.