'Beautiful, clean, and safe': Trump assembling A-team to crack down on DC crime, beautify city



Evidently keen on a sterling capital for his proposed golden age, President Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday establishing a task force of top federal agency members to crack down on crime and restore beauty in Washington, D.C.

"It is the policy of the United States to make the District of Columbia safe, beautiful, and prosperous by preventing crime, punishing criminals, preserving order, protecting our revered American monuments, and promoting beautification and the preservation of our history and heritage," said the order.

The District is in dire need of such help.

According to Neighborhood Scout's crime index where 100 is safest, D.C. scores a 2.

'Americans are smart enough to notice.'

In 2023, the city, which then had a population of just under 679,000, suffered a 39% increase in violent crime — the biggest violent crime spike in the country — and recorded more murders than in any year since 1997. The Washington Post noted that the victims ranged from babies to octogenarians.

While there was a drop in crime in D.C. last year, police data indicates the city still saw 3,469 violent crimes, including at least 187 murders and 25,879 property crimes.

The White House's fact sheet pertaining to Trump's order noted that "the left is touting modest decreases in D.C. crime in 2024, but they still represent a massive increase from earlier rates."

"This mirrors the spin they tried to put on 'decreases' in the rate of inflation in recent years," continued the White House fact sheet. "Inflation is still up — and so is crime. And Americans are smart enough to notice."

The White House attributed the city's problems with crime to failed Democratic policies, including drug decriminalization and the abandonment of "traditional" pre-trial detention, as well as to Biden prosecutors' declination in recent years to prosecute alleged criminals and to the lack of accreditation for the D.C. crime lab.

The aptly named D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force is charged with boosting the presence of law enforcement officers in public areas; clearing the streets of unlawful protests; tackling vandalism and public drug use; and "maximiz[ing] enforcement of Federal immigration law and redirecting available Federal, State, or local law enforcement resources to apprehend and deport illegal aliens."

In addition to keeping addicts, goons, and illegal aliens off the sidewalks and clear of public parks, Trump has directed this novel task force to reinforce the D.C. Police Department's recruitment and retention efforts, as well as boost its overall capabilities; strengthen pre-trial detention policies in the District; crack down on crime on the D.C. Metro system; get the crime lab accredited; and help law-abiding citizens defend themselves by expediting concealed carry licenses.

Trump's executive order also sets the stage for a city beautification project, which the fact sheet noted "includes restoring and beautifying federal buildings, monuments, statues, memorials, parks, and roadways, removing graffiti from commonly visited areas, and ensuring the cleanliness of public spaces and parks."

'It's a very sad thing to see it.'

This initiative would apparently mean the return of statues "inappropriately removed or changed" during the iconoclastic sweep that accompanied the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement.

The rehabilitation of Washington's beauty has long been a priority for Trump.

In August 2023, he told reporters that it was "very sad driving through Washington, D.C., and seeing the filth and the decay and all of the broken buildings and walls and the graffiti."

"This is not the place that I left. It's a very sad thing to see it," added the president.

Last month, Trump suggested the federal government should govern the District, stating, "I think that we should run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely, flawlessly beautiful, and I think we should take over Washington, D.C., make it safe," reported WRC-TV.

"I like the mayor. I get along great with the mayor. But they're not doing the job," continued the president. "Too much crime. Too much graffiti. Too many tents on the lawns — these magnificent lawns, and there's tents. And, you know, it’s a sad thing."

Earlier this month, Trump indicated that he notified Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser "that she must clean up all of the unsightly homeless encampments in the City, specifically the ones outside of the State Department, and near the White House."

"If she is not capable of doing so, we will be forced to do it for her!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Washington, D.C. must become CLEAN and SAFE! We want to be proud of our Great Capital again."

Bowser has since taken some actions to oblige the president, removing the Black Lives Matter mural from 16th Street NW and clearing out various homeless encampments.

"As the capital city of the greatest Nation in the history of the world, it should showcase beautiful, clean, and safe public spaces," Trump noted in his executive order.

The task force will include representatives from the Departments of Transportation, Homeland Security and the Interior, along with the FBI, the Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Representatives from the U.S. attorneys' offices in D.C., Maryland, and the Eastern District of Virginia will also be involved.

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Sick of oppressive and ugly architecture, Trump starts ball rolling on beautifying federal buildings



President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in office directing the heads of government departments to provide recommendations on how to advance the cause of an architectural renaissance in America that would see the federal government prioritize beauty over the anti-traditionalist hang-ups and egos of radicals.

Toward the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order mandating that new federal buildings should not only be designed to serve the American people but should be designed to "uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, command respect from the general public, and, as appropriate, respect the architectural heritage of a region."

Former President Joe Biden evidently did not feel as strongly about the aesthetic blight of modernist architecture. Rather than ditch the concrete-heavy and block-like Brutalist style first popularized in apparently beauty-averse socialist nations then applied in the design of various federal buildings, including the J. Edgar Hoover Building and the similarly prison-like Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., he rescinded Trump's order.

Biden's revocation only survived his presidency by a few hours.

On Monday, Trump directed the administrator of the General Services Administration — whom he has yet to name and whose responsibilities are currently being shouldered by Stephen Ehikian — to consult with the assistant to the president for domestic policy and the heads of federal agencies and departments and submit by March 21 recommendations to advance his beautification policy.

'They sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity.'

Trump, who previously declared that the "Golden Age of America is upon us," noted further in his memo that recommendations "shall consider appropriate revisions to the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture and procedures for incorporating community input into Federal building design selections."

In his 2020 beautification order, Trump suggested that since America's founding, leaders worth remembering have sought to erect buildings that inspire, encourage civic virtue, and draw visible connections with the past.

"President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson consciously modeled the most important buildings in Washington, D.C., on the classical architecture of ancient Athens and Rome," wrote the president. "They sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions."

Whereas the Founding Fathers and subsequent generations of beauty-attuned leaders recognized the enduring value and civic role of classical buildings, Trump noted that in the 1950s, the federal government — apparently overcome with the zeitgeist — began "replacing traditional designs for new construction with modernist ones. This practice became official policy after the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space proposed what became known as the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture (Guiding Principles) in 1962," which formally rejected official classicalism in favor of modernism.

In the years that followed, cities across the country were visually punished with some of the nation's "ugliest structures," in some cases intended not for the American people but merely for "architects to appreciate."

The guiding principles listed on the General Services Administration site at the time of publication still carried the leftist presumption that newer was necessarily better and stated that "major emphasis should be placed on the choice of designs that embody the finest contemporary American architectural thought."

The guiding principles also suggested that the design of federal buildings must "flow" from the architects of the day rather than the American people's government.

Months before Biden rescinded Trump's order, a Harris Insights and Analytics poll conducted on behalf of the National Civic Art Society found that 72% of Americans preferred traditional architecture for federal buildings. There was vast consensus across political lines and age groups.

The poll found that 70% of Democrats, 73% of Republicans, and 73% of independents supported traditional architecture. Of those individuals aged 18-34 who were surveyed, 68% indicated a preference for traditional architecture, just a few points down from Baby Boomers, 77% of whom preferred the old ways.

Attempting to make good on Trump's initiative by alternate means, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a similar proposal in the Senate while Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) did likewise in the House in 2023, rehashing commentary from the president's executive order and calling for the establishment of a presidential council on improving federal civic architecture. The bill does not appear to have gotten any traction.

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