A member of the DOGE team was nearly beaten to death in Washington, DC, this week. Edward Coristine had rushed to help a young woman who was being carjacked by a pack of teenage thugs. As the two initial carjackers started punching Coristine, a group of eight additional teens jumped in and started punching and kicking him as well. DC police arrested the initial two carjackers, but the rest of the attackers got away. The crime situation in the nation’s capital has gotten so out of hand that President Trump is now “threatening” to take federal control over the city.
We already know how the fake news media will portray this. They’ll say that the fascist Trump is doing fascisty things to advance the cause of fascism. “Taking over” Washington, DC, is exactly the sort of thing that Hitler would do. Yadda-yadda-yadda.
What it really means is that President Trump would bring the city back to the form of government that was intended in the Constitution. Washington, DC, was never intended by the Founding Fathers to be a “state.” It was supposed to be a neutral seat of government.
Does it seem neutral? Defense attorneys for peaceful January 6 protesters were unable to get a single jury seated in Washington, DC, that found their clients guilty. Prosecutors had a 100% conviction rate against January 6ers, because the jury pool in DC was fervently convinced that an insurrection had happened. Kamala Harris won 90.3% of the vote in DC last year. That’s not a neutral place.
And it’s not governed like a neutral place.
The mayor and city council in DC have adopted a “Don’t Arrest the Violent Criminals” policy that has made the city completely unsafe for normal people.
In February 2023, Congresswoman Angie Craig (D-MN) was attacked in her apartment elevator. A man punched her in the face and tried to trap her. She escaped after throwing a cup of hot coffee in his face.
In March 2023, one of Sen. Rand Paul’s staffers was attacked and stabbed near a DC restaurant. He suffered brain bleeding and a punctured lung, but fortunately survived.
In May 2023, a “Virginia man” named Xuan-Kha Tran Pham walked into Congressman Jerry Connolly’s office and whacked two staffers with a baseball bat.
In September 2023, three female staffers decided to walk three blocks from the US Capitol to a nearby coffee shop. A crazed hobo with a straight razor jumped in front of them and threatened to kill them. They were forced to run for their lives.
In October 2023, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) was walking up to his car near his residence at the Navy Yard. His car was stolen from him at gunpoint.
That’s what life is like now in DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Boston, Denver, and everywhere else under Democrat rule. This is the result of the Defund the Police movement, no cash bail, and other failed pro-crime policies.
Each of the 50 states has its own legislature. But in the Constitution, Washington, DC, is under the exclusive control of Congress (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17). The purpose of the clause was to prevent any single state from influencing or obstructing the federal government’s operations.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act into law. This allowed Washington, DC, to elect its own mayor and city council. So long as they behaved themselves, they could have that little bit of autonomy. The act, however, reserved the right for Congress to override the city budget and local laws, and to maintain control over the city as needed.
That’s what President Trump is considering right now. (His mind is probably already made up. He’s just prepping the public for when it happens.)
The policies enacted by Washington, DC’s mayors and city councilors look a lot more like the policies of California and New York than like the neutral seat of government it was supposed to be. It’s like having a vicious foreign enemy in charge of our nation’s capital. The city clearly can’t govern itself when packs of teenagers are carjacking, raping, murdering, and robbing everyone, and facing no consequences.
DC was never supposed to be a partisan city. The city government idea has failed in DC, and it’s time for President Trump and Congress to revoke the Home Rule Act. Trump ran on a campaign promise to restore law and order. That’s exactly what needs to happen.