Remember “I can only fix it“? Donald Trump, who made that ridiculous statement in his acceptance speech of the 2016 Convention, is now testing the theory in Washington.
Trump and his party have been threatening an acquisition of DC for years and made it part of the Republican platform last year. But everything was just an empty talk and randomly capitalized words until a former employee of the Government's efficiency department was As reported, attacked in an attempted car theft In the early hours of August 3 in an occupied area of bars and restaurants.
It doesn't matter at all to Trump that the violent crime rate of DC fell to a Minimum of 30 years last year and it is Below another 26% So far this year compared to 2024, or that a police report suggests that the police saw the incident and intervened. This particular victim, an Elon Musk adolescent protected and a notorious Operational of Duxt, gave this particular president the “emergency” he needed to declare a “”Public Security Emergency. “
Of course, he called it “a Historical action to rescue the capital of our crime nation, bloodshed, deadline and misery and worse. “The city's metropolitan police department has federal and deployed 800 members of his National Guard (to begin). 450 Federal Police officers of 18 agencies to patrol the city.
It is the second time this year that Trump has played the National Guard letter to show who the boss is. He sent 4,000 guard troops and 700 Marines To Los Angeles in June, about the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, apparently to restore order amid immigration raids. But the movement caused new tensions, protests and at least one surrealist incursion By armed and masked agents in a park where children attended the summer camp. He also drew a legal challenge of Newsom, which takes place in court this week.
There will be no similar demand in DC, where I have lived for decades. That is because the president of the United States control Our National Guard. The hard truth is that although Wyoming and Vermont have fewer people than the more than 700,000 DC residents, DC is not a state. It is still in a semi-colonial status, with a mayor and a town hall whose shares can be annulled by Congress, and without voting representation in that Congress.
In fact, the Congress accidentally cut $ 1.1 billion of the DC budget: our own money, not federal dollars! -In your cost of costs the past spring. A promised solution never arrived, Force cuts that affect public safety and much more. And yet, the city's crime rate has continued to fall.
Compared to California, an economic giant of more than 39 million people located thousands of Washington miles, DC is a tiny and very convenient objective for an executive with the aim of testing their virility, presuming autocrats in other countries or creating headlines to distract from the news that they do not like.
He could go to Trump for his lies, overreach and lack of respect for DC and his right to govern himself. Or the various Republicans who have tax Conservative policies in DC for years and are now trying to Repeal your rules of origin.
But what really enrages me is the lack of democratic nerves, or even Bravuconería, which has left DC so vulnerable to Trump and conservative congresses. Where was the modern Lyndon Johnson (the “Senate Master”, in Robert Caro's phrase) in 2021, to launch support in the closely democratic Senate after the camera approved A DC State Law for the second consecutive year?
Trump has no domain beyond intimidation and bribery – But those tactics are working well with Congress, corporations, lawyers, academy and sovereign nations worldwide. As former student of the House of Representatives, Giningrich said it Last week: “You have this rock in the middle of the story called Donald Trump. And he says:” Do you want to do it in my way or do you want to be crushed? I prefer that you do it in my way, but if you have to be crushed, it is fine. “
Giningrich correctly characterized most of the responses to Trump as “you know, I always wanted to be part of the team” and added: “If you can hold this, you are moving to a league that, apart from Washington and Lincoln, nobody has reached the level of energy, impulse and effectiveness we see with Trump.”
Unfortunately, Trump aims to follow the speed of what Washington and Lincoln built. (Keep alleging what is “Day of release“For DC, but the last” day of liberation “, its rates ads on April 2, In handkerchief The stock market.) The only conceivable antidote is to choose a crazy democratic congress as a bit in 2026 and, in 2028, a democratic arm president, with a strong and inspiring arm who is in a hurry to do things. Someone who is overwhelming, persuasive and resolved to use the power they have while.
The main priorities, beyond reversing the greatest amount of institutional and constitutional damages as possible, must be structural: the Supreme Court term limits and Ethics rules with teethA national prohibition of Gerrymandering, a national policy of identification of sensitive and uniform voters, and minimum national standards for early vote and vote by mail, to protect the will of people and the republic themselves.
Equally important, do DC Douglass's Commonwealth statusnamed for the abolitionist Frederick Douglass instead of the colonization of Christopher Columbus. Rural America has exercised disproportionate power since the late 1800When the Republicans added states scarcely populated and permanently skew the Senate. Two new DC senators would help correct that imbalance.
The problem is that the next president, or even the next congress, could be too late for DC Trump to have already begun The federal acquisition He has threatened so often for so many years. He took over the Kennedy Center. He took care of Congress. We should have waited for it to be next.
In March, representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) Proposed that DC seeks Temporary Sanctuary With Maryland, who gave most of the land to create the capital first. “You would definitely be safer,” he said he told Mayor Muriel Bowser.
That offer, joke or not, practice or not, seems increasingly attractive day by day.
Jill Lawrence He is a writer and author of “the art of political agreement: how Congress exceeded probabilities and broke the stagnation.” @jilldlawrence.bsky.social
