President Donald Trump arrives for a press conference announcing the "federalization" of Washington D.C. police and the deployment of the National Guard to address what he incorrectly claims is record violent crime in the nation's capital on August 11, 2025. Photo: Allison Bailey / NurPhoto via AP

The Justice Department announced in January that violent crime in D.C. hit a 30-year low in 2024. So far this year it’s down 26 percent from that . This, in other words, is a curious time for the president to declare that the nation’s capital is a violent cesspool that demands the sort of crime-fighting expertise that only a 79-year-old man who fetishizes dictators and whose entire world view is perpetually stuck in the 1980s can provide.

The motivation for Donald Trump’s plan to “feder

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