Donald Trump’s decision to seize control of the police department in Washington, D.C. , and dispatch 800 National Guard troops to combat crime there is a reminder that all of this, really, did not have to happen. Trump didn’t have to get elected president twice. And, more crucially, the District of Columbia didn’t have to remain, all these centuries later, a prisoner of Congress and the White House. The dark reality of the present moment is that Trump, when it comes to the city of D.C. and its roughly 700,000 residents, many of them working class and poor, can effectively do whatever he wants.

Unlike any other major city in America, Washington is completely at his mercy.

Violent crime has been a challenge there, but it has been falling off in the last year; trends in Washington have mi

See Full Page