Democrats and their media allies are in full outrage over President Trump’s federal intervention in Washington, D.C., painting it as racially motivated. Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC) told MSNBC that Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police and National Guard deployment was invoking “Jim Crow 2.0.”. This ignores a glaring fact: Jim Crow laws were the creation of Democrats in the post-Civil War South, used to oppress Black citizens for over a century after Lincoln freed the slaves. Now, as then, the accusation is political theater. It’s the same script Democrats ran in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan cracked down on crime and prostitution near the White House.
The catalyst for Trump’s move came in his August 11 memorandum: “The local government of the District of Columbia has lost control of public order and safety… as evidenced by the two embassy staffers who were murdered in May, the Congressional intern fatally shot a short distance from the White House in June, and the Administration staffer beaten by a violent mob days ago.” Trump called the situation “a point of national disgrace,” noting that citizens, tourists, and staff cannot live peacefully in the nation’s capital. His duty, he said, is to ensure the safety of the federal government, its workers, and the city itself. These aren’t idle claims. In 2024, D.C. recorded a homicide rate of 27.54 per 100,000—higher than any U.S. state—plus the highest vehicle theft rate in the country at 842.4 per 100,000, more than triple the national average.
The press and Democratic leaders counter that D.C.’s crime is “falling” and that Trump is overstating the danger. But statistics tell a different story. Even with a two-year decline, D.C. still ranks among the most violent places in America, with robbery and murder rates topping all 50 states. By some measures, it sits in the top 20 percent of the most dangerous cities in the world. Ignoring these facts, opponents frame the crackdown as an assault on civil rights—a tactic honed decades ago. In the early ’80s, when Reagan ordered similar law-enforcement sweeps to clean up 14th Street—then a strip of open-air vice—Democrats and the media decried the moves as racially tinged and claimed the problem was exaggerated. The result back then was safer streets. The result today, if left unchecked, will be more victims.
As a reporter and Congressional staffer during the Reagan years, there was a credible concern that one’s life in D.C. was in danger. I remember driving down 14th Street (a main way out of town) on my way home and having to stop at a red traffic light, prostitutes tried to pry open my car door. In those days, that street was lined with “ladies” in windows, peep shows, and drug deals. This changed only after decisive law-and-order action. Forty years on, the pattern repeats: crime plagues Democrat-run cities, and their leaders undermine enforcement in the name of “civil rights” while law-abiding citizens bear the cost. Ecclesiastes 8:11 says, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Without enforcement, justice dies—and with it, public peace.
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