President Donald Trump has pledged to “make D.C. safe again,” with a federal intervention to stop crime in the nation’s capital. To emphasize the point, Trump is doing a ride along with law enforcement around Washington Thursday night.
“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police and with the military, of course. So we’re going to do a job. The National Guard is great. They’ve done a fantastic job,” Trump said to radio host Todd Starnes, noting that he hoped that by focusing on crime in the district. he would trigger more cities to follow his lead.
Trump’s actions could mark a real turnaround for Washington and many other big cities in the United States plagued by crime and disorder. The Left is livid.
The media is having its usual mental breakdown over Trump’s actions, portraying the move to clean up the nation’s capital as authoritarian, a prelude to fascism (which is always just around the corner in America but always seems to land in Europe).
The legacy media and left-wing Democrats should be worried, but not over their phantom concerns about tyranny. They should be worried about the likely success of Trump’s policies, which appear to be having an immediate, positive impact on stopping crime in D.C.
The city just had a full week without a murder, which is unusual in the high-crime summer months. And other crimes seem to have momentarily decreased too.
I think the federal takeover of Washington could be a prelude to something much bigger.
In a sense, the district crime issue is like the border problem. For years we were told that the historic crisis at the border that began nearly the day Joe Biden became president, was unresolvable. It was a product of obscure “root causes” that never seemed to be rooted out. Then, suddenly and mysteriously, the problem was not only alleviated the moment Trump returned to the White House, but we also witnessed border crossing numbers hit historically low levels. Again, this happened almost instantly.
What the American people saw was that the crisis was a choice. The whole time we could have stopped the rampant violation of our laws. The only thing that changed is that an administration was willing to enforce those laws and made its intent to do so crystal clear.
We have a similar choice about crime and chaos in our big cities. The crime that they suffer is not just part of the reality of urban living. That’s the lie the Left wants you to believe so they are never held accountable for their terrible policies.
Washington, D.C., is exactly the kind of left-wing city that chose its dysfunction. It’s done so while obnoxiously demanding that we should give the city even more power nationally by making it a state. This despite the fact that it’s demonstrated quite clearly that it struggles to govern itself.
In 2023 Congress had to intervene to stop the city from loosening penalties for people who’ve committed carjackings while the city was going through a carjacking crisis. Even the Biden administration knew that was a bit of a problem and signed off on the congressional override.
And even though the massive crime spike that began after the George Floyd riots in 2020 is subsiding in Washington and elsewhere, the nation’s capital is hardly a “safe city.” Though, you would think it’s practically a utopia given how many on the Left have been talking about it in recent days.
But touting Washington’s possibly cooked crime stats as an indication that all is hunky dory in the nation’s capital is a bit like saying that Mordor is nice now that Mount Doom is only percolating hot magma and sulfurous fumes in the air instead of erupting.
The District of Columbia had a homicide rate of 27.3 per 100,000 people in 2024. This is supposed to be great news for the city since it had been at a staggering 39.4 in 2023. But going from the seventh circle of hell to the fourth circle of hell isn’t much to celebrate.
For comparison, New York City, at the closest it’s ever been to a real life “Escape From New York,” reached 31 homicides per 100,000 people in 1990.
So, the district is as “good” now as New York was at its worst, when it was still inspiring movies and popular media focused on its crime problem.
But here’s the actual good news. New York proved that cleaning up a crime-ridden city was quite doable with a significant change in policies. Mayor Rudy Guiliani ushered in a crime fighting revolution by focusing on order, arresting criminals, and prosecuting them (something the district’s leaders say doesn’t work).
Graffiti was cleaned up, homeless people were moved off the street and into shelters, panhandlers and prostitutes were aggressively removed from Times Square, the squeegee men were banished to the nether realm.
The result was that by the early 2000s, New York of all places was one of the safest big cities in the country. It has since backslid from those halcyon days, and may soon descend much further, but the template is there for how to tackle the crime issue.
Washington, D.C., doesn’t have to be a crime-ridden nightmare. It doesn’t have to be a place where you just hope you get lucky and avoid being victimized. The disorder and crime in the district have been the product of many bad choices. Those choices were made by the leftists who run the city council, the mayor, the police chief, the courts, and all the powers that be in Washington.
No longer.
There may finally be something resembling justice and a lot more safety in the nation’s capital.