President Donald Trump’s decision to send the National Guard to Washington, D.C., should be welcomed not just as an essential step to fight crime in our nation’s capital, but also as a salvo against the social malaise that afflicts urban America.
Many of our cities now face an existential crisis. Declining tax bases, overwhelmed social services, rampant homelessness and drug use, soaring crime, and shrinking populations have pushed them to the brink. The massive influx of immigrants — in which the Biden administration was deeply complicit — has only worsened the crisis.
The reaction of many in the Republican base to our cities’ plight could be summed up by a pithy phrase: “It serves them right.” These liberal Democrat-ruled metropolises, goes this argument, have reaped what they sowed. As for the remaining residents and businesses caught in the downward spiral, they should leave for friendlier climes, such as Florida or Texas, if they know what’s good for them.
But any strategy to make America great again must also make our cities great again. Places like New York and Chicago are central to our national story and development, and to what it means to be American. Despite a woke and inept urban political class that seems unable to address public safety, we can’t consign our enormous urban population — a population that yearns to be productive and dynamic — to endemic violent crime and permanent decline.
To their credit, President Trump and a few GOP members of Congress seem to recognize this. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced a bill in February repealing the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973 and returning the governance of our nation’s capital to Congress.
“Washington is now known for its homicides, rapes, drug overdoses, violence, theft, and homelessness,” said Rep. Ogles on introducing the measure, dubbed the BOWSER Act after the incumbent mayor. “It seems appropriate for Congress to reclaim its Constitutional authority and restore the nation’s Capital.”
Trump clearly agreed and told assembled press at the time that the federal government should run the city because Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council “are not doing the job.” He argued that Washington has “too much crime” and “too many tents on the lawns,” suggesting that “we should run [the city] strong, run it with law and order.” The measure was met with howls of outrage from the bien-pensant ruling class that’s responsible for the city’s descent into hell since 2019. And the same people, it would seem, are up in arms against the deployment of the National Guard.
Between 2010 and 2019, D.C. experienced a real boom, with the city’s population growing from 605,000 to more than 700,000, reversing decades of demographic decline. Once-blighted neighborhoods became hipster destinations as trendy new restaurants and businesses blossomed in areas that were once no-go zones. Housing prices exploded and young families began to consider living in the city as a viable alternative to an increasingly arduous and unappealing commute from the suburbs.
All that progress was scuttled in 2020, first with the pandemic-related shutdowns of businesses, then with the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and resulting civil unrest in May. Like many cities, Washington defunded its police department and “reformed” the criminal code, leading directly to a collapse in police-force numbers (staffing fell to a half-century low) and a consequent explosion in crime. The demographic boom went bust, and D.C. suffered one of the biggest outflows of population per capita in the country in 2021 and 2022. Out-migration was more than 2% each year.
In 2023, a year in which many cities experienced a slight decline in homicides, Washington recorded the highest number in a quarter-century, making it among the deadliest cities in the First World. Carjackings were out of control, with nearly 1,000 in 2023 alone, up from 148 in 2018. Homelessness, which had reduced in the years before the pandemic, once again surged.
Mayor Bowser and her all-Democratic city Council are now scrambling to deal with the fallout of a fleeing tax base and the prospect of a federal takeover, pointing to recent declines in violent crime (still above 2019 levels after coming off its 2023 peak). But there appears to be more consensus than ever before among residents that the city government is not addressing public safety adequately.
By calling the bluff of the dysfunctional D.C. government, Congress could impose sweeping reform policies, while demonstrating to the rest of the nation that the death spiral of American cities is a policy choice, not an inevitable outcome. Congress should make the nation’s capital the laboratory of every good policy idea for reviving our great cities — from creating jobs and business investment with enterprise zones, to implementing a model school-choice program to address the utter failure of D.C.’s atrocious public education system, to fully funding innovative law enforcement policies (akin to the revival of New York City in the 1990s).
PATEL REPORTS 380 FEDERAL ARRESTS SINCE BEGINNING OF DC TAKEOVER
If the BOWSER Act stalls in Congress, the president should federalize law enforcement in the nation’s capital, expanding the jurisdiction of the U.S. Capitol Police to the entire city, while demanding the replacement of U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves with someone who will actually prosecute those arrested. A comprehensive approach to crime could ensure the safety of D.C.’s schools and neighborhoods by deploying new AI technology that has already prevented school shootings and suicides in forward-thinking districts.
The dramatic reversal of Washington’s fortunes (using the playbook with which Mayor Giuliani revived New York 30 years ago) would not only demonstrate that the decline of our great cities can be reversed. It would also illustrate the effectiveness of long-standing policy ideas — Republican, to be sure — that have never been implemented in Democrat-dominated cities. A dramatic policy success like this on the national stage could lead to an unprecedented political realignment. Urban Americans will witness what they haven’t seen in decades: a city actually fixing problems instead of explaining why everyone must just shut up and live with them.
Mr. Elliott Broidy is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Broidy Capital Management.