Let the Feds Take Over the Capital District

It’s hard to say what President Trump has in mind by proposing to “take Federal control” of the Columbia District, but it’s sure to be an improvement over the Home Rule regime that is mismanaging the nation’s capital. The district’s crime epidemic is the tip of the city’s dysfunction. As Mr. Trump’s pick for United States Attorney for D.C., Judge Jeanine Pirro, puts it: “People come here for pride and patriotism, not to get assaulted, carjacked, or shot.”

Mr. Trump, pointing to a weekend attack by juveniles on a former DOGE employee now working elsewhere in the executive branch, avers that “if D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly,” he will federalize the management “and run this City how it should be run.” The city’s elected officials and their liberal apologists in the press, though, seem to find nothing awry. Crime is down over last year, Mayor Muriel Bowser insists, even if D.C. “has work to do.”

The news columns of the Times contrast Mr. Trump calling D.C. “totally out of control” with the attempted fact check that “the city’s crime rates have been falling.” Mr. Trump’s outrage over juvenile violence is described by the Times as merely “tapping into a thorny local issue.” In the Times’ telling, “youth crime remains a trouble spot for Washington.” As if brutal assaults against law-abiding citizens are a minor inconvenience.

In other words, the Times’ euphemistic account suggests, there’s nothing to see here, folks. A clearer-eyed appraisal of the capital’s crime woes comes from Charles “Cully” Stimson of the Heritage Foundation. He points out that the district’s persistently high annual murder rates mean that “if D.C. were a state, it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the United States, and would be retaining that dubious title year after year.”

D.C.’s liberal boosters like to tout the fact that violent crime in the capital has hit a 30-year low. That statistic might sound favorable until one recalls that in the 1990s Washington was known as the “murder capital” of America. “Violent crime has long been a part of Washington life, the worst of it during the early 1990s when drug trafficking propelled the annual homicide toll to nearly 500,” the Washington Post reported in 2023.

At that time, Republicans in Congress helped lead the charge to combat the crime wave, our columnist, Speaker Gingrich, has written. The GOP solons “insisted on a wide range of changes which turned Washington into a much safer place,” he wrote. The legislative intervention is a reminder that “Washington is the nation’s capital and home rule only exists within limits which are acceptable to the entire country,” Mr. Gingrich offers. 

Judge Pirro is astute to zero in on the problem of “youth violence,” as she puts it, which “is on the rise, not just in D.C., but across the country.” Her approach marks a bracing antidote to the prevailing hand-wringing by liberal policy makers. “If you think that these kids need to be coddled, and they need to be hugged — they need to have consequences,” she said yesterday. “They need to understand that enough is enough.”

Judge Pirro’s clarion call for crimefighting is welcome, but her role as United States Attorney is limited to prosecuting federal crimes. To tackle the broader problems confronting the capital, action will likely be needed by Mr. Trump and, as Mr. Gingrich pointed out, the Congress. The president is constrained, to some extent, by the grant of self-government to the federal district in the Home Rule Act of 1973. Amending or repealing that would require legislation. 

Congress, too, can intervene in the district’s affairs by law. It has the power to negate measures passed by the D.C. Council. Mr. Trump, for his part, could “call up the D.C. National Guard and deploy it without local consent,” the Post reports, and has “the authority to temporarily take over the District’s police department.” Given the failure of the district’s leadership to keep the capital safe, such measures could well prove warranted.