How ‘structural racism’ came to dominate medical research



President Trump's recent push to send federal health care dollars directly to individuals, rather than insurers, reflects a broader demand for transparency and effectiveness in how public funds are used. Government-funded medical research, which forms the foundation of much clinical care, also requires such scrutiny.

In recent years, academic medicine has advanced a nebulous theory of “structural racism” that echoes the 19th century “miasma” theory, which blamed disease on “bad air.” Despite scant evidence, studies attempting to validate this vague framework have multiplied, often funded by largely unaware taxpayers. Refocusing federal research dollars on rigorous science and evidence-based care is essential to correcting this trajectory.

The incentives were clear: Few researchers — early-career or established — would decline funding in an area where the NIH was investing heavily.

How did this happen? The construct of “structural racism” was virtually absent from medical literature until a decade ago. Since then, it has become the default explanation in academic medicine for differences in health outcomes across racial and ethnic groups. Its rise accelerated during the 2020 anti-racism craze, which swept through corporate boardrooms and university administrations while also becoming a core ideological pillar of Black Lives Matter and other political movements.

Academic medicine was no exception. This philosophy quickly gained favor in medical education, academic health centers, elite journals, and professional associations, eventually influencing federal agencies that distribute research funding.

The result: a surge of grant-funded studies built on the premise that racism causes health disparities. Of the nearly 2,300 articles indexed under the term “structural racism” in PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database of leading biomedical and health journals, 95% were published after Jan. 1, 2020. In 2025 alone, PubMed lists 400 such papers — nearly four times the total published before 2020.

This proliferation has been supported by a tsunami of federal taxpayer dollars coming from the National Institutes of Health. From 2020 to 2025, an NIH database search found nearly 750 projects mentioning “structural racism” in their abstracts, totaling almost $533 million in funding. More than 70 of those projects were funded in 2025 at just under $40 million — significantly down from more than 220 projects in 2024 totaling $150 million, but still far above 2020, when only 12 projects received a little over $12 million in the aggregate. Before 2020, the NIH had funded just 10 such projects at a combined cost of $4 million.

Funding patterns across NIH’s 27 Institutes and Centers from 2020 to 2025 make clear that ideology, not medical science, drove much of this growth. The largest investments came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse ($147 million in total funding), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities ($70 million), and National Institute on Aging ($57 million), each pouring substantial resources into “structural racism” research.

In 2025, for example, NIDA supported a project under the Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium that identified “structural racism” as a risk to babies before and after birth, alongside more recognizable factors like maternal health, toxic exposures, and child abuse — thereby conflating an abstract, ill-defined, and ideological social theory with measurable, scientific variables as a threat to child development.

Also in 2025, NIMHD funded the Clinical Research Scholars Training program, a “health-equity focused” initiative created in part due to NIH calls for research on “the impact of structural racism and discrimination on health disparities.” Eligibility for this program was limited to those deemed “underrepresented in biomedical research.” All others need not apply.

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Douglas Rissing / Getty Images

And just last year, a NIA-funded project invoked “interrelated systems of structural racism” and “race-specific stress” as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, diverting attention and resources away from well-established contributors such as genetics, medical conditions, lifestyle and environmental factors, and core biological mechanisms like amyloid plaques and tau tangles.

Unfortunately, a commitment to science gave way to ideology years ago. Under Francis Collins, the NIH “acknowledged and committed to ending structural racism,” without even defining the concept itself. “Structural racism” was accepted despite its questionable validity and lack of explanatory power.

With vague boundaries and mechanisms difficult to measure, claims of “structural racism” far exceeded the empirical evidence. Nevertheless, the idea was accepted wholesale and used to justify a wave of DEI initiatives, effectively recasting the NIH as an “anti-racist” institution in the Ibram X. Kendi mold. Objective science was no longer sufficient; the agency was expected to take an activist stance.

Proponents embraced this shift, seeing an opportunity to move health research from “individual-level risk, health behavior, and functioning” to “structural level concepts” with “structural racism” named specifically. Research dollars supported tools like the Structural Racism Effect Index to “guide policies and investments to advance health equity.”

The incentives were clear: Few researchers — early-career or established — would decline funding in an area where the NIH was investing heavily, especially when that support could provide a path to publication in top journals.

Yet the instruments used to quantify “structural racism” expose a basic flaw: They don’t measure racism.

The SREI’s nine dimensions, for example, largely track socioeconomic conditions — wealth, income, housing, employment. In practice, a high score identifies communities facing poverty. Even researchers linking SREI scores to hypertension, obesity, smoking, and low physical activity concede they “cannot make causal inferences.”

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Deagreez via iStock/Getty Images

These health risks may result from poverty, contribute to it, or arise from entirely different causes. Labeling them as products of “structural racism” adds no explanatory value, miscasts economic hardship as race-based, and downplays individual responsibility. It overshadows far more consequential drivers of outcome disparities, including access to care, personal choice, medical comorbidities, and genetics.

Nonetheless, no alternative explanation for health disparities has received anywhere near the same attention in leading medical journals — such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and JAMA — as “structural racism.” This concept has been treated as settled fact, with disparities alone offered as proof: If disparities exist, racism must be the cause. Likewise, many medical organizations have reinforced this view through policies and position papers that embed an anti-racism framework into scientific inquiry.

But change is in the air. The NIH’s recent miasma-like fixation on “structural racism” is finally clearing. Under Director Jay Bhattacharya, the agency is refocusing on its core mission of funding rigorous, evidence-based science rather than ideology-driven research. This shift will direct scarce taxpayer dollars toward work grounded in medical science and its practical application — research that can genuinely improve health rather than feed political currents.

This course correction is timely, and while sustained effort in 2026 will be needed to fully restore the NIH to its rightful mission, taxpayers can take comfort: America’s leading biomedical and medical science research institute will once again prioritize their dollars and their health.

Editor's note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

WaPo’s Axed Protest Reporter Leads Fired Journalists in Protest Outside Paper’s Headquarters

Fired Washington Post journalists protested outside the paper’s headquarters this week after management cut roughly 30 percent of its newsroom. They were led by Marissa J. Lang, whom the Post hired in 2018 to head the paper’s protest coverage.

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'Thugs do not rule America': Replica of Columbus statue toppled by liberal mob may soon have a home — the White House



President Donald Trump is preparing to install a statue commemorating Christopher Columbus outside the White House. So there's no mistaking the counterrevolutionary and restorative nature of this act, the White House will reportedly erect a replica of the figure that iconoclasts unceremoniously tore down and tossed into Baltimore's harbor on July 4, 2020.

Columbus' four transatlantic voyages opened the way for European exploration of the Americas. While once celebrated for his courage and ambition — such that counties, cities, and towns across the United States were named after him — the Italian "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" who sailed under the Spanish flag has in recent years been subjected to routine defamation and denunciations by liberals.

Columbus' memory and likeness were especially popular targets during the left's Black Lives Matter-bannered deracination and iconoclasm campaign of 2020 that saw graves dug up, animals and places renamed, church windows busted, and cities torched.

As various municipalities and institutions such as the Smithsonian advocated for dropping Columbus Day in favor of "Indigenous Peoples' Day," radicals vandalized and toppled statues commemorating the Italian explorer across the country.

'Thugs do not rule America.'

In Baltimore, masked thugs marched through the city's Little Italy neighborhood on July 4, 2020, in search of a target. After harassing restaurant patrons and other residents, the thugs set to work on toppling a Columbus statue dedicated in 1984 by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Ronald Reagan.

After tearing down the statue and jumping on the broken Italian Carrara marble likeness of the great explorer — acts that were brushed off by city officials — the cheering mob chucked the broken pieces into the harbor.

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A piece of the Christopher Columbus statue is pulled from the harbor in Baltimore on July 6, 2020. Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images.

Artist Tilghman Hemsley hired a dive team to recover the broken pieces, which were taken to his family's art studio. Using 3D scans of the remains, the artist, working in concert with his son, digitally reassembled the statue, then created a mold to fashion a replica out of crushed marble and resin, reported the Baltimore Sun.

"We brought it out of the harbor and reconstructed it, rebuilt it," Hemsley told the Sun. "So it's not really our artwork, but we were instrumental in putting it back together. It's like Humpty Dumpty."

Bill Martin, an Italian-American businessman, told the newly thinned-out Washington Post that he and his allies ultimately raised and spent over $100,000 on the recovery and restoration efforts.

'One of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.'

John Pica Jr., the president of Italian American Organizations United and a former Democratic Maryland state senator, told the Associated Press that he was contacted in 2025 by a middleman who indicated the White House was seeking a statue of Columbus.

Pica's organization took a straw vote and unanimously decided to send a statue to the White House. They reportedly signed the loan agreement on Wednesday.

Pica told the AP that he was "cautiously optimistic" that the statue would make it to the White House and noted that it could possibly be installed "within two weeks."

Two people with knowledge of the counterrevolutionary initiative told the Washington Post that the statue will likely be installed on the south side of the White House grounds, by E Street and north of the Ellipse.

Nino Mangione, a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates who was involved in the effort to recover the statue, stated, "Thrilled at the possibility our Columbus statue could be placed at the White House! Stolen, vandalized, and dumped in the harbor in 2020 yet never forgotten."

"Six years later it rises again as a symbol of Italian American pride. Thugs do not rule America," added Mangione.

The statue's potentially imminent installation comes just months after Trump issued a proclamation honoring Columbus, calling him "the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth."

Trump pledged to "to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory."

Although the White House would not comment on any statues, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement to Blaze News, "In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero. And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump."

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Mainstream Media Breathlessly Covered an Alleged Hate Crime in Which White Kids Forced a Black Classmate To Drink Urine. It Was a Giant Hoax.

It was a story that received blanket media coverage in March 2021. It alleged that white middle schoolers in Plano, Texas, viciously "tortured" SeMarion Humphrey, their black classmate, forcing him to drink their urine at a sleepover as they shot him with BB guns. A Black Lives Matter activist group charged the local public school district with doing "nothing" to stop "this racially motivated hate crime" as violent protests broke out outside the home of Asher Vann, the white child alleged to have organized the brutal attack.

The post Mainstream Media Breathlessly Covered an Alleged Hate Crime in Which White Kids Forced a Black Classmate To Drink Urine. It Was a Giant Hoax. appeared first on .

‘Not about Renee Good’: The real force behind Don Lemon’s church protest



When Justine Damond was shot by a Somalian police officer in Minneapolis, there were no riots or protests in her name.

Damond, a white woman, had called the police for help, but when they showed up, she was shot instead. The Somalian officer who fired his weapon claimed to have been spooked.

“For these people — for Black Lives Matter, for these left-wing agitators — it’s never about the victims. It’s not really about violence or injustice. It’s about the system. It’s about the belief that these activists have that America and its institutions are oppressive and unjust,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey comments on “Relatable.”


“And anyone who upholds these institutions, like the church — especially the Protestant church in America, who is still overwhelmingly conservative — is seen as an enemy,” she says, explaining that this was the entire reason former CNN anchor Don Lemon alongside Black Lives Matter activists stormed a church in protest of the ICE shooting of Renee Good.

“This demonstration … was not about Renee Good, or even the Somalians, or even any of the illegal aliens there. These were just — the exposing of the Somalian fraud, the killing of Renee Good — they were the trigger incidents used by these activists to justify terrorizing Christians and conservatives and anyone who stands in their way,” Stuckey explains.

“2020 wasn’t about George Floyd. 2026 is not about Renee Good. Understand this. It is about intentionally sowing chaos to ultimately weaken America and Western civilization. That is what George Soros and all of his funded initiatives and groups want to do,” she says.

Stuckey points out that the protest at Cities Church was livestreamed by Black Lives Matter — a group that received $90 million from the Soros-backed Tides Foundation just a few years ago.

And according to the New York Post, the Invisible Twin Cities group, which received $7.8 million from George Soros Open Society Foundations between 2018 and 2023, is behind the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis.

“They’re not good people,” Stuckey says. “So you have to think: Why would they fund anti-ICE protests? It’s because they hate America. America stands in the way of what they want to do.”

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European Union Doubles Down on ‘Hate Speech’ Censorship in New ‘Anti-Racism’ Strategy

The European Union on Monday unveiled an “anti-racism” plan that presses member states to censor online “hate speech” and adopt an “intersectional approach” to "structural racism.”

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'This is First Amendment activity': Democrats give church-storming mobs their stamp of approval



Radicals participating in a so-called "ICE Out Action" stormed a Christian church on Sunday in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The interlopers — ex-CNN talking head Don Lemon and a motley crew of leftists hailing largely from Nekima Levy Armstrong's Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities — not only lashed out at a pastor over his apparent role at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but intimidated parishioners, drowned out sound of worship with their propaganda, and pressured the prayerful to condemn ICE.

The Justice Department has indicated that criminal charges for possible Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act and KKK Act violations are imminent. Despite the clear language of the relevant statutes, some Democrats have defended the mob action, indicating that churches are viable targets for further desecration.

'When they find out that someone that's supposed to be speaking for the community in church is found out to be in ICE ... they have the right to go in there.'

When asked whether the DOJ has a case against the anti-ICE radicals who disrupted Minnesota Christians' lawful exercise of religious freedom in a place of worship, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) told CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday, "Under this DOJ, wrongdoing has nothing to do with whether they're going to focus or investigate you. So I wish in a normal time I would say no; I'd say this is First Amendment activity."

After she suggested that "the optics of going into a place of worship are not necessarily great," Burnett asked the Muslim Minnesota AG whether he was frustrated "that it happened this way."

RELATED: 'You are on notice!' Don Lemon backs anti-ICE radicals who stormed Saint Paul church — but DOJ vows reckoning

Nekima Levy Armstrong, the radical who led the intrusion into the church. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images.

Ellison avoided answering the question, suggesting he was instead frustrated by the number of ICE agents operating in his crime-ridden jurisdiction and the possibility that troops might be deployed to Minnesota.

Rep. Adelita Grijalva (Ariz.), a co-sponsor of a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and a recent participant in an anti-ICE operation, is another Democrat who evidently figures churches are fair game for intimidation campaigns.

On a CNN appearance Monday, Grijalva justified the mob action, suggesting that the supposedly ICE-affiliated pastor "now knows what it's like to have his daily life and privacy interrupted. This is a daily occurrence in our immigrant communities — being followed, being kidnapped, us out of our schools, churches, and hospitals."

The Democrat congresswoman underscored that she did not think it was a step too far for "protesters" to go into churches, noting, "I think that when they find out that someone that's supposed to be speaking for the community in church is found out to be in ICE, like a federal agent that is running ICE in their communities, they have the right to go in there."

"Churches have always been an open door," continued Grijalva. "And from my understanding in the videos that I saw, those protesters were not violent in any way."

'No cause — political or otherwise — justifies the desecration of a sacred space.'

Numerous Christian leaders and organizations evidently see things differently and have advocated for legal consequences in response to the intrusion.

Pastor Paul Chappell, president of the West Coast Baptist College, stated, "We condemn the actions of Don Lemon and the group of activists who stormed Cities Church today in St. Paul, Minnesota, in clear violation of the FACE Act. Christians everywhere should demand that the Department of Justice arrest those who participated. We must protect religious liberty in this country."

"This group trespassed on private property and willfully obstructed Christian worship," said Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board. "No cause — political or otherwise — justifies the desecration of a sacred space or the intimidation and trauma inflicted on families gathered peacefully in the house of God."

Ezell added, "What occurred was not protest; it was lawless harassment."

Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the mob action not only a "desecration" but an "unspeakably evil intrusion."

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon stressed on Sunday that houses of worship are not public forums for the protests of radicals but spaces "protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws."

"We don’t want to prejudge, but I think it is fair to say that I saw multiple federal criminal incidents yesterday, and there will be charges," Dhillon told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck. "It's only a question of when we can get a judge to sign off on arrest warrants and exactly what the charges would be."

"We will not let this happen to another church in the United States. It is un-American, unacceptable, and there is a zero-tolerance policy for it at this DOJ," added Dhillon.

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Don Lemon Made Himself Relevant Again, And Now He Should Be In Federal Custody

The disgraced former CNN host has-been and his thug buddies who terrorized a church should face charges for assaulting civll rights.

'You are on notice!' Don Lemon backs anti-ICE radicals who stormed Saint Paul church — but DOJ vows reckoning



Ex-CNN talking head Don Lemon joined other radicals in storming a Christian church on Sunday in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The White House and the Department of Justice indicated that those who disrupted the service, intimidated churchgoers, and screamed incessantly at the altar about Renee Good — a subversive who died driving her SUV into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent — may soon face a reckoning.

Rushing the altar

Radicals from Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities assembled on Sunday for a so-called "ICE Out Action." Rather than interfere with ICE operations like the woman whose name was on their lips, they rushed into Cities Church and did their best to drown out sounds of worship.

'A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest!'

Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network and former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, claimed responsibility for the disruption and indicated that Cities Church was targeted because "David Easterwood is a Pastor at this church and the Acting Field Director for the ICE office in St. Paul."

Footage from an October Department of Homeland Security press conference appears to feature the same David Easterwood who is pictured on the church's website. Blaze News has reached out to ICE and Cities Church for comment.

"It's time for judgment to begin," said Armstrong.

The mob refused requests from church officials to leave the premises and instead screamed and chanted in the aisles and pews.

In one video of the mob action, Armstrong yells, "Someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents. Think about what we experienced. The murder of Renee Good at the hands of ICE. A Venezuelan national shot by ICE."

RELATED: Don Lemon calls for 'black people, brown people' to take up arms against ICE

Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

After alluding to two individuals who were shot, one fatally, while allegedly attacking federal agents, Armstrong yelled, "How dare you claim to be a pastor of God? ... You are involved in evil in our community."

In another potentially incriminating video that BLM Minnesota shared online, radicals can be seen blocking the altar, yelling Renee Good's name, and pressing parishioners individually to answer whether they support ICE. One pair of visibly upset churchgoers can be seen in the video comforting one another while the radicals angrily condemn members of law enforcement.

Don Lemon, posing as a journalist on the scene, advocated for the mob action, stating, "There's nothing in the Constitution that tells you what time you can protest. You can protest at any time. That's the whole point of it — is to disrupt, is to make uncomfortable, and that's what they're doing, and that's what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something. You have to make people uncomfortable in these times."

Lemon — who suggested in October that "black people, brown people" should take up arms against ICE — lectured lead Pastor Jonathan Parnell after Parnell said the mob action was "unacceptable" and that it was "shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship."

RELATED: Blocking ICE with 'micro-intifada': Good's group taught de-arrest, cop-car chaos before her death

Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

"There's a Constitution and the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest," Lemon told Parnell, excusing the mob's interference and intimidation tactics.

Federal response

"President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship," said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. "The Department of Justice has launched a full investigation into the despicable incident that took place earlier today at a church in Minnesota."

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon indicated that her office was looking into potential violations of the the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act "by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers." Dhillon noted further that the FBI had been "activated too!"

Although liberally and primarily used by the previous administration to lock up pro-life activists, the FACE ACT also prohibits the use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.

Violations can result in prison time and hefty fines as well as civil lawsuits.

— (@)

Dhillon said in response to Lemon's defense of the mob action, "A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!"

After speaking with Pastor Parnell and Dhillon, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated, "Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law."

"If state leaders refuse to act responsibly to prevent lawlessness, this Department of Justice will remain mobilized to prosecute federal crimes and ensure that the rule of law prevails," added Bondi.

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Washington, DC, has become a hostile city-state



The District of Columbia wasn’t supposed to be like this. Hard as it is to believe today, the capital was set apart as its own district not to make it an untouchable bureaucratic citadel, but to make it work for all Americans. Unattached to any one state and free from the control of any one constituency, our government was supposed to serve the whole country.

Decades of misunderstanding, however, have muddled this design. Federalization gives us a fighting chance of restoring it.

Perhaps the most prudent solution would be to subsume the District’s entities into the federal government.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government resided in Philadelphia until a military mutiny prompted it to leave. With this in mind, the framers proposed an optional federal district.

Under the proposal, Congress could create a capital and be vested with “exclusive” legislative authority over it. This would put the government in a position to contemplate and sympathize equally with all Americans. The states approved. And so the framers’ proposal was ratified under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. Congress then placed the capital along the Potomac River, and D.C. was organized in 1801.

Confusion soon followed. Congress tried many approaches to local governance and settled on a semi-independent model, enacted as the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973. This established a congressionally appointed judiciary and a popularly elected city council, mayor, and attorney general. Under home rule, D.C. could make its own law, albeit with congressional oversight.

The founders warned us about this model, however. They anticipated that self-governance would embarrass, impede, and endanger the federal government.

This failure predates Trump

Trump derangement syndrome has only vindicated this position. In 2017, D.C.’s attorney general joined litigation against Trump’s so-called Muslim ban. Then in 2020, D.C. painted a “Black Lives Matter” memorial along 16th Street NW, flipping an urban bird at the Trump White House. And in 2025, the District’s attorney general protested Trump’s public safety initiative, contesting his right to seize the Metropolitan Police Department and deploy the National Guard across the city.

One might overlook these obstructions if the District’s fierce independence enabled it to ensure safe and efficient self-governance. But that doesn’t describe D.C. In 2023, a Senate staffer traversing the northeast part of the city was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stabbed in the head and chest. Then in May 2025, two embassy interns were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum. The following month, a congressional intern was fatally shot in the Mount Vernon Square neighborhood.

Nor is partisanship the only problem. D.C. behaves almost as poorly when Democrats wield federal power. In April 2024, pro-Palestinian protesters erected an encampment at George Washington University (a federally chartered school). City officials refused to remove the protesters for two weeks even though their disruptions interfered with students’ final exam preparations.

Bringing the capital to heel will ultimately require legislation. There’s already a proposal to repeal home rule. It’s a great start, but the proposal doesn’t detail how D.C. would operate afterward — not a promising omission when Congress tends to be so ineffective.

Perhaps the most prudent solution would be to subsume the District’s entities into the federal government. Then Congress need not work from a blank slate by creating new bodies for local governance. Instead, D.C.’s city council could become an advisory body to recommend local laws. This would meet the Constitution’s requirement that Congress make the laws without requiring it to fuss over the minutiae of local governance.

This idea won’t appease locals who want equal electoral representation to that enjoyed by other Americans, if not greater. We know that D.C. residents (or, more accurately, the Democrats in their ears) seek D.C. statehood. But if it’s a state they’re after, then they should entertain retrocession or repeal the District’s charter. Illegitimatizing the Constitution to preserve the mock state is not the way to go.

Forcing the issue through the courts

Knowing that Democrats in Congress will object on these grounds to any discussion of federalization, we should use litigation to force a solution on this matter. The difficulty with litigation is finding a plaintiff — a D.C. resident who believes in a federal capital and whose case wouldn’t be easily dismissed by local judges seeking to avoid the issue. But with so many conservatives currently serving in D.C. under the Trump administration, now might be the time to bring a suit.

The right litigant has two ways to attack home rule — challenge D.C.’s lawmaking power or neutralize its prosecutorial authority. The lawmaking approach likely faces two objections. First, judges might question how Congress’ ultimate legislative authority under home rule meaningfully differs from exclusive authority under the Constitution. Second, they might raise the constitutional liquidation theory, which posits that the post-enactment tradition fleshes out constitutional indeterminacies.

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Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Neither objection holds water. For one thing, exclusive legislative authority means what it says — one body enacts the law. Using D.C.’s city council as a think tank wouldn’t violate this principle, because only Congress would oversee legislation from introduction to enactment. But home rule fails because Congress shares its authority with another body. In fact, a law could exist under home rule without Congress touching it at all. The Constitution doesn’t envision such an anomaly.

Relatedly, liquidation presupposes that a constitutional provision is ambiguous. But here, the framers couldn’t have written a clearer provision. Congressional authority over D.C. is exclusive; that means only Congress can exercise it. And so even though Congress has handed lawmaking power to D.C. on multiple occasions, viewing this abdication as indicative of the Constitution’s original meaning would only sanction congressional laziness and cowardice.

A limited win that still matters

The prosecutorial approach would open a more straightforward path to a more limited victory. The pitch is simple: The D.C. attorney general is a federal creation. And yet he is elected and can sue the federal government at will. This flouts the appointment process, as well as the president’s power to remove officers and direct executive-branch entities. Now would be the perfect time to press this argument, as the Supreme Court aims to clarify the president’s removal power later this term and the D.C. Circuit recently questioned whether “the District possesses an independent sovereignty that can give rise to an Article III injury from actions of the federal government.”

The only issue is that D.C. could still make law. But some of that law will be unenforceable if the attorney general cannot prosecute. Hence, a small win — but a win nonetheless.

Congress has subverted the Constitution by entertaining home rule. The results have been ugly and will get uglier. District residents will grow increasingly radical in their demands for self-governance. The framers, in their wisdom, didn’t create a sovereign D.C. — they bequeathed us a federal city to preserve a neutral national government. We should restore that vision.

Editor's Note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind