Trump’s crime plan can’t repeat his first-term mistake



President Trump is right: It’s a disgrace that violent criminals and gangs roam freely through the nation’s capital — even in neighborhoods housing top government officials. Federalizing control over D.C. law enforcement and deploying the National Guard makes sense. But the deeper rot isn’t a lack of police presence. It’s the collapse of deterrence through weak sentencing and a revolving door for repeat offenders, especially juveniles.

If Trump truly wants to make Washington safe — and follow El Salvador’s tough-on-crime model — he must break from the “criminal justice reform” movement he once embraced. Those same policies have turned D.C. into a carjacker’s paradise.

The bipartisan experiment with leniency has failed. The bipartisan demand for safety is loud and clear.

No cherry-picked statistics can hide the reality: Lawmakers, staffers, and high-ranking officials fear walking around parts of the city, including Capitol Hill, even during the day. The recent attack on DOGE official Edward Coristine by a pack of 10 juveniles attempting to steal a woman’s car says everything. In 2023, D.C.’s carjacking rate hit 142.8 per 100,000 people, up 565% since 2019. Juveniles committed 63% of those crimes, with guns involved in more than three-quarters of cases.

The crime wave wasn’t random. In 2018, the D.C. Council passed the Youth Rehabilitation Act Amendment, allowing most offenders under 25 to get reduced sentences and sealed records. Repeat armed carjackers face little risk of long-term prison time. Even FBI agents have been victims. Mayor Muriel Bowser admitted some juvenile carjackers have six or seven priors — and still walk free.

Other “reform” laws stacked the deck. The Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act allowed resentencing for crimes committed before age 18. The Second Look Amendment of 2020 expanded that leniency to criminals sentenced before the age of 25 — prime time for violent crime. These measures all but erased the deterrent effect of sentencing.

And this isn’t just a problem for left-wing dystopian cities and states. Republican lawmakers in red states have pushed softer juvenile laws, too. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had to veto several leniency bills. He remains one of the few willing to confront the bipartisan jailbreak agenda.

Over the past decade, leaders in both parties have embraced the “decarceration” canard. They’ve reduced sentences, ignored parole violations, and wiped criminal records — all in the name of shrinking prison populations.

The result? Predictable chaos.

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President Reagan’s Task Force on Victims of Crime saw it coming four decades ago: “Juveniles too often are not held accountable for their conduct, and the system perpetuates this lack of accountability.”

Trump himself backed the First Step Act, which released dangerous offenders early. One of them — Glynn Neal, with a long record of violent crime — walked free just one day before stabbing a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Troops on the street can help. But this is more than a policing problem — it’s a policy problem. Trump’s second term should reject the leniency consensus and restore deterrence, starting with nullifying D.C.’s soft-on-crime laws.

If he wants to win the public’s trust on crime, he must trade “criminal justice reform” for criminal justice enforcement. The bipartisan experiment with leniency has failed. The bipartisan demand for safety is loud and clear.

Democrats created this court monster — now it’s eating them



The Supreme Court’s recent ruling greenlighting mass layoffs at the Department of Education sends a clear message: The courts no longer belong to the Democrats.

For decades, Democrats relied on judges to impose policies they couldn’t pass through Congress. But that strategy has collapsed. With a conservative majority now on the bench, the judicial workaround has given way to constitutional limits — and the left is losing.

Every time Democrats sue to block Trump’s orders, they hand him another opportunity — and this court is more than ready to lock in conservative victories for a generation.

In the final week of its 2024-2025 term, the high court:

  • Curbed federal courts’ ability to issue sweeping nationwide injunctions.
  • Affirmed the right of parents to opt their children out of school lessons that violate their religious beliefs.
  • Allowed South Carolina to deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid funding for non-abortion services.
  • Approved mass layoffs across the government — at least temporarily.

In high-stakes emergency cases, Trump keeps winning — notching victories in nearly all 18 Supreme Court petitions. That includes greenlights to deport migrants to third countries and enforce the transgender military ban.

Short-term gains, long-term pains

Democrats thought they could run out the clock with courtroom delay tactics. Instead, they handed Trump a fast pass to the one branch he dominates.

Only one branch of government speaks with a single, constitutionally defined voice — the executive. And right now, that voice belongs to the president, no matter how loudly the deep state screams.

Unlike the executive, Congress isn’t built for speed. It’s a fractured, slow-moving body by design — hundreds of voices split by region, party, and ego. The judiciary can splinter, too, with power scattered across lower courts nationwide.

But the Supreme Court? That’s a different story.

With a 6-3 conservative majority, Trump holds a 2-to-1 advantage. Imagine if Republicans had that kind of dominance in Congress.

Trump wouldn’t be scraping by with a razor-thin 220-212 majority in the House. His agenda would cruise through. In the Senate, forget the 60-vote filibuster firewall — Trump’s bills would pass outright.

Reconciliation wouldn’t be a high-wire act. It would be routine. No more watching the Senate parliamentarian gut key provisions from his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Granted, the Supreme Court can’t launch policy offensives like Congress or the White House. It waits for cases to land.

But thanks to Democrats, those cases keep coming. Every time they sue to block Trump’s executive orders, they hand him another opportunity — and this court is more than ready to lock in conservative victories for a generation.

Dems’ Achilles’ heel

For decades, Democrats treated the courts as a shortcut to power. When they couldn’t pass laws, they let judges do the work. Roe v. Wade was the crown jewel — a sweeping federal abortion mandate they never could have gotten through Congress. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted the legal reasoning was flimsy.

They used the same playbook to expand the welfare state and rewrite social policy from the bench. Judicial activism became the norm, and both sides played the game. But Democrats played it harder — and now the rules are turning against them.

What once looked like a string of permanent victories has turned into a pipeline of defeats. Every lawsuit they file hands Trump’s Supreme Court another shot at affirming his agenda. Even when he technically loses, the rulings often leave behind a roadmap showing exactly how to win the next round.

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Democrats’ Supreme Court problem could get a lot worse. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s oldest liberal at 71, has Type 1 diabetes and a history of health problems. If she steps down during Trump’s term, he could lock in a 7-2 conservative majority.

And if either Clarence Thomas, 77, or Samuel Alito, 75, decides to retire, Trump could replace them with younger conservatives — extending the court’s rightward tilt for decades.

Securing a conservative legacy

Trump has every incentive to issue bold executive orders. Each lawsuit the left files creates another opening for the Court to back him — and turn temporary wins into permanent precedent.

By chasing headlines and placating the base with short-term court fights, Democrats are handing Trump the long game. Their decades of judicial overreach have backfired. The courts they once controlled now serve as Trump’s most powerful weapon.

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When bureaucrats rule, even red states go woke



If it’s happening in Georgia, you can bet it’s happening all over the country. Embedded bureaucrats are quietly rewriting the policies voters put in place.

Georgia’s Medicaid program exists to serve the state’s most vulnerable — low-income children and foster youth, pregnant women, and disabled adults. It was never meant to be a vehicle for radical politics. But recent revelations about how the state awarded multibillion-dollar Medicaid contracts show exactly how far left-wing ideologues inside government agencies will go to push their agenda.

When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately.

Internal documents reveal that senior staff at Georgia’s Department of Community Health inserted ideological land mines into the bidding process for companies seeking to serve more than 1 million Medicaid recipients — most of them children. This included a scenario question focused on how insurers would treat a hypothetical “fourteen (14) year-old, transgender White female (assigned male sex at birth but identifies as a female).”

Responses that didn’t align with leftist orthodoxy were penalized. In other words, companies lost points unless they promised to steer kids toward hormone therapy — despite state laws banning gender reassignment procedures for minors. That isn’t just dishonest. It’s a direct subversion of the law.

Just this year, Georgia’s legislature passed bills barring men from girls’ sports and locker rooms. But inside the state’s Medicaid agency, officials rewarded insurers for endorsing gender transitions for minors. One winning bidder justified its position by claiming such treatments “could come up in the future.” Never mind that they’re illegal in Georgia.

One losing insurer offered to connect the hypothetical child with a range of community resources, including faith-based organizations. That response was met with scorn. A state official actually complained that faith-based groups shouldn’t have been included — because they weren’t mentioned in the scenario.

Never mind that faith-based organizations have served Medicaid populations for decades. They often provide the only consistent care in struggling communities. But for these bureaucrats, churches and people of faith pose a bigger danger to kids than radical gender ideology.

This is no small issue. Georgia expects to spend $4.5 billion next year on Medicaid and PeachCare, the program for uninsured kids. That makes this one of the largest contracts in state history — and leftist staffers nearly hijacked the entire process.

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Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Lawmakers have a duty to step in now. During the last session, they considered a bill that would have barred ideologically charged questions from state procurements. It didn’t pass. That needs to change.

There’s still time. The Medicaid contracts haven’t been finalized. Legislators must act. They should demand a full rebid, remove these radical questions, and ensure that reviewers score responses based on biology, patient welfare, and fiscal responsibility — not on whether companies genuflect to left-wing doctrine.

Georgia’s leadership has worked hard to uphold conservative values and protect taxpayer dollars. But as we’ve seen in Washington, unelected bureaucrats can — and will — undermine that progress if no one stops them.

When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately. We must call it out, correct course, and pass the kind of reforms that ensure this never happens again.

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