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Good morning,
Residents of the nation’s capital are waking up this morning to a much heavier and more visible law enforcement presence on the streets after President Trump seized control of the city’s police force and surged 800 National Guard troops to address a crime situation that makes DC, in the words of the POTUS, “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world.”
This is vintage Trump in action. Cynical, over-the-top, but also savvy. His ability to use the bully pulpit to shift the national conversation and attention onto terrain more favorable to him, on his terms, continues to be his greatest power (which is why his inability to do it on the Jeffrey Epstein story has been so notable).
Talking about crime in America, particularly urban crime, is really two conversations that we tend to mash into one. There’s crime in the strict definition: homicides, shootings, carjackings, robberies, etc. Then there’s the more ambient forms of social disorder: homeless encampments that pop up and spread, a noticeable increase in crazy people roaming the subways, brazen shoplifting and farebeating, street takeovers, etc. Democrats and the left like to focus on the former at the expense of the latter. But the latter is arguably a bigger political problem than actual violent crime, because it tends to be much more visible and socially corrosive.
Here in the Big Apple, Trump got about 100K more votes in 2024 than he did in ’20. I am convinced that a significant slice of those votes could be attributed strictly to the fact that you can’t pop into a CVS or Walgreens in the city to pick up toothpaste without having to get the merchandise unlocked for you. I’m not kidding. I believe that experience alone probably created tens of thousands of new Republican voters in New York. There is something so dehumanizing about having to press a button and wait for some underpaid teenager to saunter over and unlock your deodorant, that it gives you the time to wonder whether the liberal governance of your city has actually made your day-to-day life worse.
As far as actual violent crime, the Post, Times, CNN, NBC et al. have pointed out how DC is actually seeing “historically low” crime rates, or at least a significant dip in crime. That may be true (though it probably isn’t. The city’s police department is under investigation for allegedly cooking the stats to make them look better than they are). But it doesn’t reflect what people see with their own eyes. Dems made this exact mistake with inflation during the Biden years. “Oh, it’s transitory.” “It’s not as bad as you think.” Or my favorite, “Inflation is good, actually.” Then you go to the grocery store and your bill is, like, double what it was a few months earlier for the same stuff. But the New York Times told me inflation is “only” up 3 percent?!
DC also does have a very specific violent crime problem, which is carjackings. I suspect that’s because of how easy it is to get onto the interstate and disappear into one of three or four states within a few minutes. But crimes like carjacks scare the public because it could (and does) happen to anyone. This is the other thing that doesn’t get talked about in the crime discourse, because it is impolitic to say. Urban crime doesn’t draw the ire of the political class unless it starts to happen in places where they, or their kids or friends’ kids, start to see it. In DC, you might have a spate of gang shootings in Anacostia that never make the news. But when a college kid gets grazed in a drive-by while having brunch in Dupont Circle, or a Congressional intern gets murdered walking to the Metro, that becomes a political problem for the mayor and, by virtue of DC’s weird and confusing governance structure, the federal government.
The shame of it all is that what’s happening in DC masks what is an actually remarkable crime story playing out across the country. In nearby Baltimore, the city is tracking to have its lowest murder rate in 50 years. Up I-95, in Philly, fatal shootings are at a decade low. In St. Louis, all categories of violent crime are down sharply. Boston recorded just 24 murders in all of last year. Here in NYC, the first half of the year showed the lowest number of shootings and murders in recorded history. Putting aside the “ambient social disorder” problem, the actual chances of getting shot or violently assaulted in our big cities has plummeted. The murder spike we saw during Covid is, for all intents and purposes, now over. This is amazing, and reflects a combination of smart policing, new technologies, poverty reduction and community involvement. But it’s very difficult to wave around stats like this without coming across as apathetic to people’s “lived experience.”
Because the fact is there is no “good” level of crime. And crime is one of those few things, like inflation and immigration, that voters really, really care about because they see its effects in their day-to-day lives.
Trump’s EU Allies Send Him New Ukraine Plea Ahead of Putin Summit
European Union leaders have issued a fresh appeal to President Donald Trump on Ukraine, imploring him ahead of his crunch summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday to protect the country and Europe’s security interests and not to exclude Kyiv from any agreement. Read more.
Also happening:
- U.S. economy: Federal data shows that inflation held fairly steady in July, defying fears of a tariff-driven spike in consumer prices and good news for President Trump, who is continuing to push for the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates. Here’s the latest.
- Redistricting: Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott has warned Democrats that he could “eliminate” 10 of his state’s 12 Democratic-held seats if the two parties were to launch a nationwide battle to redraw congressional maps. “All those big, blue states, they’ve already gerrymandered. Look at the map of Illinois, look at the map of California, New York and Massachusetts and so many other blue states, they gerrymandered a long time ago, they’ve got nothing left with regard to what they can do,” he said. Read more.
This is a preview of The 1600—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.