White liberal denial meets black reality
I know what it’s like to live in the neighborhoods white liberals only mention when it suits them. I’ve lived on the South Side of Chicago. I’ve lived in Southeast D.C. I’ve seen crime with my own eyes, and I’ve experienced the fear that comes with it.
I’ve walked streets where parents teach their kids to drop at the sound of gunfire. I’ve seen drug corners where police barely bother to show up because they know the system won’t back them. And I’ve watched Democrats — who run these cities decade after decade — pretend nothing is wrong until an election season or a TV crew arrives.
The truth is out. Democrats have failed — in DC, in Chicago, in New York, and across the country.
Every four years, they roll in with cameras and promises. They shake hands, hug babies, stand in front of boarded-up storefronts, and pledge “change.” Then they disappear back to their safe neighborhoods, leaving residents with the same violence, the same fear, and the same hopelessness.
That isn’t leadership. It’s exploitation. I know because I’m a black man who worked as a Democratic staffer not so long ago. I’ve been in the rooms where campaign strategy is written. I’ve heard the cynical playbook: “Do a barbershop tour.” “Visit a black church on Sunday.” Deliver a few lines about “taking back the community” — then roll right back out. When the cameras leave, so do they.
Now, when President Trump does what Democrats refuse to do — when he sends in federal law enforcement and the National Guard to cities that won’t protect their own people — those same white liberals suddenly find their voice. They shriek about “authoritarianism.” They cry about “militarization.” They insist crime is “under control.”
It’s dishonest. It’s insulting. And it proves how little they care about the lives being lost. What they really care about is their four minutes on MSNBC.
Take Washington, D.C. Liberals wave charts claiming violent crime is down. But the city got caught manipulating the numbers. A police commander was placed on leave for allegedly altering stats to make the streets look safer. Whistleblowers confirmed what residents already knew: Violent crimes were downgraded or mislabeled so politicians could maintain the illusion of control. That’s no conspiracy theory. It’s now a federal investigation.
Yet, Democrats still claim Trump’s intervention wasn’t necessary. They say crime is “exaggerated.” They say the city is “safe.” Tell that to families who won’t let their kids walk home after dark. Tell it to small-business owners robbed so often they don’t bother reporting anymore. Tell it to mothers in Anacostia burying their sons while city officials massage the data for press conferences.
Chicago tells the same story. Democrats have ruled the city for generations, but whole neighborhoods on the South and West Sides remain plagued by violence and poverty. I lived there. I saw it. And here’s the truth: Polite white liberals from gentrified districts or leafy suburbs don’t want to see it. They want to protect the illusion that Democrats defend the poor, even as they use these communities as political props.
Chicagoans plead for help at City Council meetings every week, and Democratic aldermen ignore them. No wonder grassroots groups like Chicago Flips Red are gaining ground.
New York is no different. In Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, major crime has spiked 70% since she took office in 2019 — more than double the citywide average. Residents there say what residents in every Democrat-run city say: Our leaders don’t care. They show up for headlines, then vanish when the bullets start flying.
Donald Trump saw that reality. He campaigned on it. He walked into those neighborhoods and spoke plainly to people who had been ignored for decades. That’s why millions more black voters supported him in 2024 — a political earthquake. It’s a warning to Democrats: Their monopoly on minority voters is collapsing.
White liberals screaming on cable news about Trump’s law-and-order strategy don’t live in the neighborhoods where gunfire is commonplace. They don’t send their kids to the schools where gangs recruit. They don’t shop at the corner stores hit by weekly robberies. They don’t ride the buses or walk the sidewalks ordinary people in D.C., Chicago, and the Bronx walk every day.
They can afford to believe crime is “under control.” They can afford to believe more gun control will fix things, ignoring the obvious truth: Criminals don’t care about your new laws. They can afford denial because they can afford to live somewhere else.
But crime is not under control. It never has been. And until leaders — real leaders — admit it and act, people in these communities will keep suffering. Trump understands that. Democrats never have.
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So when white liberals lecture that Trump is wrong to send federal law enforcement into cities that can’t protect their residents, I have one question: Where were you? Where were you when crime stole futures and destroyed families? Where were you when Democrats cooked the books to protect their power? Where were you when Biden was in charge or when AOC’s district saw crime explode?
You weren’t there. You didn’t care. And that’s why the Democratic Party is collapsing.
The truth is out. Democrats have failed — in D.C., in Chicago, in New York, and across the country. They’ve failed black voters. They’ve failed working-class Americans. That’s why support for their party sits at record lows. That’s why more voters are walking away.
The future doesn’t belong to the party of denial and decay. It belongs to the people who demand safety, security, and accountability. It belongs to those ready for real change.
Donald Trump is delivering that change. Democrats never will.
The DC nobody talks about — and Trump finally did
President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration — placing the D.C. police under federal control — cited a now-famous stat: Washington, D.C., has higher violent crime, murder, and robbery rates than all 50 states.
Yes, even higher than my home city of Los Angeles.
DC is bigger than the Mall, and outside the quaint Capitol Hill and Eastern Market townhouses, the city sings a much different tune.
The order also noted that the city’s homicide rate — 27.54 per 100,000 residents — surpasses that of Havana, Cuba, and Islamabad, Pakistan.
Left-wing media immediately scoffed. They downplayed the numbers, pointing to D.C.’s “declining violent crime” stats — conveniently reported right after city leaders reclassified crimes like felony assault and carjacking as non-violent offenses.
It’s a neat trick to save face at the expense of victims.
In Georgetown, Woodley Park, and Chevy Chase, the chaos hides well. But walk through Columbia Heights or Dupont Circle and men strung out on drugs sprawl across the sidewalks. At Union Station, homeless people bathe in the historic site’s iconic fountains, just a few blocks from the Capitol.
“All cities have a homeless problem,” they say. Sure. But not all cities are the capital of the free world.
D.C. is bigger than the Mall, and outside the quaint Capitol Hill and Eastern Market townhouses, the city sings a much different tune.
A tale of two DCs
Take Anacostia.
This historically black neighborhood in Southeast D.C. has been ravaged by decades of violent crime and neglect in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Today, it holds an “F” public safety grade and ranks in the seventh percentile for safety nationwide. The neighborhood sees 12.3 violent crimes per 1,000 residents annually, with assault topping the list, followed by robbery, rape, and murder.
As D.C.'s cost of living explodes, many young residents — like my friends — are pushed into cheaper, more dangerous areas. They often choose Anacostia.
I’ve stayed with them several times. It’s the kind of place where you don’t stop at a red light. Homeless men stagger toward your car. Groups of young men tail you from stop sign to stop sign. If you're catching an early flight, you’ll see prostitutes walking home from the night before.
Residents of this once-vibrant neighborhood mourn what it has become. Times were never easy, but now crime has made it unlivable.
One neighborhood, a larger pattern
Anacostia isn’t an outlier. It’s the blueprint.
It’s the story of every community that doesn’t fit the left’s narrative and so gets ignored. As more staffers and young professionals move into these neighborhoods, perhaps they’ll finally draw some media coverage. But reform shouldn’t wait until political aides feel unsafe.
D.C. was meant to be the crown jewel of American cities. In many ways, it still is. But beauty doesn’t excuse such damning crime statistics.
Unchecked crime in forgotten neighborhoods is spilling into tourist hot spots and government grounds. Elites can’t ignore it any more.
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President Trump’s order is delivering what Anacostia residents — and so many others — should have received years ago: law, order, and the simple freedom to walk outside without fear.
That’s not too much to ask. That’s the bare minimum.
It’s a promise every American deserves.
So thank you, President Trump, for doing what should have been done long ago. I hope D.C. is just the beginning. Do L.A. next.
Trump’s DC take-back will end the BLM fantasy for good
When President Trump asserts federal control over Washington, D.C., half measures won’t do. To succeed, he needs to go all the way — and his plan to extend the federal presence in the district is a good start.
The 1973 Home Rule Act allows a president to reassert control over the Metropolitan Police Department for 30 days. Extending beyond that would likely require a congressional resolution or invoking emergency powers, either of which would trigger a Capitol Hill fight. Democrats’ push for D.C. statehood — and two guaranteed Senate seats — depends on convincing Americans that the district can govern itself. It can’t. The city’s experiment in representative democracy has failed as spectacularly as many regimes in the Middle East.
Federal control must apply the broken-windows model: Enforce the full criminal code to prevent larger crimes before they happen.
The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 gives Congress exclusive legislative authority over the nation’s capital. Home rule was the deviation, not the norm, from decades of relatively peaceful federal stewardship. This isn’t a “takeover” so much as a “take-back” — like taking away the car keys from a teenager who used the family sedan to run drugs and commit drive-by shootings.
Home rule should have ended long ago. One obvious moment came in 1990, when Mayor Marion Barry (D) was caught smoking crack cocaine in an FBI sting. He infamously blamed his ex-girlfriend, Rasheeda Moore — an FBI informant — muttering to the cameras, “The bitch set me up.” That episode still looms large in the public memory, an emblem of the city’s dysfunction.
Decades of unchecked crime have made Washington, D.C., a national embarrassment. If it were a state, it would have the nation’s highest homicide rate. Carjackings — nearly 200 reported so far this year — are a prime example. More than half are committed by juveniles. A review of the D.C. Police Department’s own X feed shows that suspects overwhelmingly are black. This pattern holds across most violent crime categories, though officials avoid publishing full racial breakdowns in the name of political correctness.
That’s the racial dynamic at the heart of the Black Lives Matter policing debate, a fight the left has framed on two assumptions: first, that police and “systemic racism” are solely responsible for urban crime; second, that the solution is to stop enforcing the law in minority communities. These ideas drove policy after the 2020 riots, and the results have been disastrous.
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Trump now has the chance to prove the opposite — that law enforcement can restore baseline safety and quality-of-life standards in urban America. A show of force alone won’t cut it. Federal control must apply the broken-windows model: Enforce the full criminal code, from violent felonies down to quality-of-life offenses, to prevent larger crimes before they happen.
The early signs are promising. Federal and MPD officers have set up vehicle checkpoints targeting illegal aliens, cleared homeless encampments, and increased patrols citywide. These actions should expand to cover the everyday infractions that feed D.C.’s climate of lawlessness — disorderly conduct, curfew violations, truancy, turnstile-jumping, littering, jaywalking, reckless driving, loitering. Residents know that these “small” crimes erode public order and stoke constant tension.
Once the federal government flips that culture, the tone of the city will change. Crime will fall. Visitors will return. And President Trump will have an unassailable case that restoring law and order in America’s cities is possible, desirable, and effective — with Washington, D.C., as the model for generations to come.
Trump to DC: Crime is a choice
President Trump announced Monday that he will federalize control of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. The move follows his threat to act after a brutal attack on a DOGE staffer who tried to defend a woman during a carjacking. National Guard troops will supplement D.C. Metro Police in an effort to quell violent crime. Americans are tired of excuses for why their cities feel dirty and unsafe when we already know how to fix them. Crime is a policy choice, and Trump has taken decisive action with a promise to restore law and order to the nation’s capital.
The United States is the most powerful nation on earth, and Washington is its imperial capital. History shows the state of the capital often mirrors the health of the civilization. The comparison is not flattering. In Japan or Singapore, a woman can walk alone at night without fear. In Washington, ordinary people are routinely harassed, assaulted, and robbed. Everyone knows why this disparity exists and how to solve it, but political correctness has made the truth unspeakable.
To succeed, Trump must ignore the inevitable accusations of racism and authoritarianism and focus on results.
Ideally, crime declines when a virtuous population maintains strong cultural norms and self-control. When virtue isn’t enough, the state must deliver swift and certain justice. If laws go unenforced, honest people quickly learn they are fools for obeying them, while marginal characters drift toward crime. Arrests must be followed by real penalties. As Rudy Giuliani proved in New York with broken-windows policing, consistent enforcement of even minor laws dismantles a culture of permissibility and encourages respect for the rules.
If we know regular enforcement and strong penalties work, why do Democrats choose the opposite in the cities they run?
Their answer always returns to racism. Crime data shows black Americans commit a disproportionate share of crime. Enforcing the law honestly will result in more black arrests and incarcerations. Neither Democrats nor most Republicans will discuss this fact or ask the black community to confront it. Instead, they declare the system racist by design.
Once the system is branded racist, “criminal justice reform” becomes the only solution. Because the underlying causes go unaddressed, disparities persist. To make the system look less racist, enforcement is scaled back. Heather Mac Donald calls this the “Ferguson effect”: Police who fear becoming national pariahs simply stop policing black neighborhoods. Law enforcement retreats from the areas where crime is highest. Officers are told to overlook minor crimes to lower minority arrest rates. Prosecutors cut deals, and early release programs proliferate to improve incarceration statistics. This is exactly the formula for more crime and less safety.
As a former crime reporter, I’ve had candid conversations with officers about this. Police know where most crime happens and who commits it, but politics make addressing it a nightmare. Officers say they sometimes ignore domestic violence or burglary calls in certain neighborhoods. They want to go home to their families, not become nationally infamous for answering the “wrong” call. The number of incarcerated black Americans may fall, but deaths from traffic accidents to homicides rise. Policies enacted “for” the black community make life more dangerous for them — and for everyone else.
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When asked about the chain of command under Trump’s initiative, D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith, a black woman, replied, “What does that mean?” Not reassuring. It suggests that in many cities, police chiefs are chosen less for competence than for their DEI value to activists. If the officials charged with maintaining public order under the dictates of gay race communism cannot grasp basic law enforcement concepts, they will fail.
Trump has taken on a complicated challenge. Restoring order may be straightforward in theory, but the politics are treacherous. To succeed, he must ignore the inevitable accusations of racism and authoritarianism and focus on results. In an era when most politicians flee responsibility, Trump is embracing it. If he succeeds, he will restore safety and dignity to the capital and create a model that could shame other cities into action.
Some compare Trump’s move to Nayib Bukele’s crackdown in El Salvador. The most important lesson from that comparison is that success speaks for itself. If Trump’s takeover produces a radically safer capital, Americans will demand the same in their own cities.
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The squalor that those living and working in the city are forced to endure is unbecoming of the nation's capital.Trump to DC: Public safety isn’t optional
Washington, D.C., the capital meant to project American power, order, and pride, has instead become a showcase for failure.
For decades, Democrats have run this city. They’ve had the budget, the manpower, and the authority to make it safe. Yet today, open-air drug markets operate within sight of the Capitol. Carjackings happen in broad daylight. Businesses flee, joined by residents who refuse to live as prisoners in their own neighborhoods. The District of Columbia is now more dangerous than Colombia — the country Americans were once warned not to visit. That’s how far the city’s leadership has let it slide.
This is the Democrats’ signature failure: mistaking ‘less bad’ for success.
President Donald Trump on Monday called an end to the decline. Invoking Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, he took control of the Metropolitan Police Department and deployed 800 National Guard troops to the capital. He called it “Liberation Day.” It’s long overdue.
The left calls it “overreach” and “authoritarianism.” Nonsense. What’s truly authoritarian is forcing law-abiding citizens to live under constant threat while political leaders hide behind press conferences and meaningless task forces.
Yes, official crime stats show improvement. Homicides are down. Carjackings have eased. But ask the people who live here: They still avoid certain streets, they still walk with their heads on a swivel, and they still don’t feel safe. If residents can’t walk home at night without fear, nothing has been solved — the numbers have just been padded.
This is the Democrats’ signature failure: mistaking “less bad” for success. Shaving a few percentage points off violent crime is not a victory. A city is either safe or it isn’t. And D.C. isn’t.
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Here’s the truth they don’t want to face: If you can’t control crime in your own backyard, you have no business running a state — and you sure don’t belong running the country.
Trump’s move sends a message to every failing blue city: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles — if you won’t protect your people, I will. Most Americans will applaud that, because they’re tired of leaders who obsess over optics while their cities collapse into chaos.
Leadership is measured by results, not excuses. If you can’t deliver safety, you’ve failed at the most basic job of governing.
Liberation Day isn’t political theater. It’s proof that decisive action still exists in a political culture addicted to talk. It’s a reminder that law and order are not dirty words. And it tells the American people they don’t have to accept leaders who shrug at decline.
D.C. hasn’t seen leadership like that in years. That’s why Trump had to show up with the cavalry.
Voters loved the socialist slogans. Now comes the fine print.
Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory over Andrew Cuomo in last week’s New York City Democratic mayoral primary catapulted a full-bodied Democratic Socialist program onto the national marquee. In his midnight speech, he claimed, “A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few.” His win marks Gotham’s sharpest left turn in a generation — and that’s saying something.
The recipients of his promise are slated to receive an economic makeover that treats prices as political failures. His platform freezes rents on more than 1 million apartments, builds 200,000 publicly financed “social housing” units, rolls out city-owned grocery stores, makes buses fare-free, and lifts the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, all bankrolled by roughly $10 billion in new corporate and millionaire taxes.
If Mamdani’s program collapses under its own weight, the case for limited government will write itself in boarded-up windows and outbound moving vans.
A week later, reality is beginning to set in.
Mamdani means what he says. On his watch, public safety would become a piggy bank. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Mamdani posted, “No, we want to defund the police.” He wasn’t being metaphorical. His current blueprint would shift billions from the NYPD into a new “Department of Community Safety” — even as felony assaults on seniors have doubled since 2019.
Mamdani’s program may feel aspirational to affluent progressives, yet to many New Yorkers it lands like an ultimatum.
Forty-two percent of renter households already spend more than 30% of their income on shelter; now they are told higher business taxes and a slimmer police presence are the price of utopia, which helps explain why tens of thousands of households making between $32,000 and $65,000 — the city’s economic backbone — have left for other states in just the past few years.
Picture a deli cashier in the Bronx. She’s not reading City Hall memos, but she feels the squeeze when rent rises and her boss mutters about new taxes. She doesn’t frame her frustration as a debate about “big government” — but she knows when it’s harder to get by and when it’s less safe walking home. The politics of the city aren’t abstract to her. They’re personal.
Adding insult to injury, the job Mamdani wants comes with a salary of roughly $258,750 a year — more than three times the median city household income — plus the chauffeurs, security details, and gilt-edged benefits package that accompany the office. Telling overtaxed commuters that their groceries will now be “public options” while banking a quarter-million dollars in guaranteed pay is the policy equivalent of riding past them in a limousine and rolling down the window just long enough to raise their rent.
Layer onto that record a set of statements many Jewish New Yorkers regard as outright hostility. Mamdani is one of the loudest champions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement; last year he pushed a bill to bar certain New York charities from sending money to Israeli causes and defended the chant “globalize the intifada,” drawing sharp rebukes from city rabbis. The day after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, he blamed the bloodshed on “apartheid” and “occupation.”
All this lands in a metropolis with the world’s largest Jewish community outside Israel — about 1.4 million residents — whose synagogues, schools, and small businesses have weathered a steady rise in hate crimes. For them, a would-be mayor who treats Israel as a pariah and shrugs at chants of intifada isn’t dabbling in foreign policy; he’s telegraphing contempt for their safety and identity at home.
Republicans see an inadvertent gift. Mamdani’s New York will soon be measured against the lower-tax, police-friendly model many red states — especially my home, Florida — have advertised for years.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Law Enforcement Recruitment Bonus Program has mailed more than 7,800 after-tax checks of $5,000 to officers relocating from 49 states, including hundreds from New York precincts, while Florida touts a 50-year low in index-crime reports and unemployment below the national average. IRS data shows Florida netted 33,019 New York households in the latest year, with average adjusted gross income near $185,000.
Project those trend lines a few years and Mamdani’s New York grows grim: a shrunken police force responding to more 911 calls; fare-free buses draining MTA dollars and stranding riders; municipal groceries undercutting bodegas until subsidies vanish; office-tower vacancies sapping property tax receipts just as social housing bills come due. The skyline still gleams, but plywood fronts and “For Lease” placards scar street level. Meanwhile states that fund cops, respect paychecks, and let entrepreneurs stock the shelves siphon away residents and revenue.
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Republicans running in 2026 scarcely need to draft the attack ads, yet they must pair fiscal sobriety with moral urgency — protecting the vulnerable, rewarding work, and defending faith. Mamdani’s primary victory shows romantic egalitarianism still electrifies young voters; statistics alone won’t counter a pledge of universal child care and rent freezes. This indeed won’t be a case of “promises made, promises kept.”
If his program collapses under its own weight, the case for limited government will write itself in boarded-up windows and outbound moving vans.
Should the city somehow thrive — safer streets, balanced books, real wage gains — progressives will demand that Congress replicate Mamdani’s policies nationwide. That is federalism at its most honest: two competing philosophies running side by side under the same national sky, with citizens free to relocate from one laboratory to the other.
For now, the lab results favor the model that backs the blue, protects the paycheck, and keeps the ladder of opportunity in good repair. Voters — and U-Hauls — are already keeping score. By decade’s end, the scoreboard will show which vision truly loved New York’s working families and which merely loved the sound of its own ideals.
If we can’t speak civilly, we’ll fight brutally
Last weekend in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, protesters gathered for a No Kings rally, holding signs that compared federal immigration officers to Nazis — one reading, “Nazis used trains. ICE uses planes.” These kinds of messages aren’t just offensive, they’re dangerous. And they’re becoming far too common in politics.
The same weekend, halfway across the country, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (DFL) was shot and killed in a politically motivated attack. While the investigation is ongoing, the timing is chilling — and it reminds us that words and rhetoric can have consequences far beyond the floor of a legislative chamber.
Most people don’t want politics to be a blood sport. They want real solutions.
When public servants are threatened, harassed, or even harmed for doing their jobs, something has gone deeply wrong in our democracy.
It’s time to turn down the temperature — not just in our political speeches, but on our main streets, in school board meetings, and even our protest signs.
Cool the rhetoric
Public service is about problem-solving, not posturing. I’ve always believed in working with my neighbors — even when we disagree — to make our community safer and stronger. But that’s becoming harder when disagreement is met with dehumanization and history is twisted into political theater.
We’ve seen it right here in my community. At a recent public hearing on how to protect children from online predators, a woman disrupted the meeting to shout that our Jewish sheriff, Fred Harran, was a “Nazi.” A week later, during a Bucks County Commissioners meeting about a law enforcement partnership with ICE, Commissioner Bob Harvie warned of “parallels” between modern politics and pre-war Nazi Germany.
I’ve worked hard in the state House to expand Holocaust education in Pennsylvania schools, because I believe history must be remembered — not weaponized. As the daughter of educators, I was raised to know that using Nazi references as political attacks not only dishonors the memory of those who suffered, it poisons the possibility of honest, civil debate.
Civil discourse is critical
None of this is to say we shouldn’t debate serious issues — immigration, public safety, fiscal priorities, and the future of our communities. Or that we shouldn’t take part in peaceful protest rooted in our First Amendment rights. We must. But we must also remember that democracy isn’t about shouting each other down — it’s about listening, questioning, and finding common ground.
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The truth is, most people don’t want politics to be a blood sport. They want real solutions. They want their kids to be safe, their neighborhoods to be strong, and their elected officials to focus on solving problems — not scoring points.
Let’s be better than the signs. Let’s be better than the sound bites. Let’s choose to be neighbors first and partisans second.
Because if we don’t change the tone now, we risk losing more than just elections — we risk losing one another.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.
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