WaPo editorial board says Trump is being “tough on crime” in D.C., and that already makes him a winner. WaPo editorial board is already behind the power curve:
“Politically, Trump’s opening gambit has paid off, and he should be on defensible legal ground at least for three more weeks, even though this question has never been litigated,” the editorial board wrote.Actually, Trump’s stunt has already crashed and burned.
“But if he cannot show results – and instead pivots to another stunt – this will become a political albatross. More important, D.C. residents will be as vulnerable as ever to crime.”The first two nights of the Capitol takeover saw just 66 arrests made, and 45 arrests made the following day on Wednesday, numbers, considering the multi-million dollar cost of the operation, that appear unlikely to have any substantive impact on D.C.’s crime rate.
“In fact, 1,450 officers participated in Tuesday night’s operation to arrest 43 people; this comes to 34 officers per alleged offender,” wrote Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker earlier this week. “It took a military occupation to pull this off?”Which is why Judge Reyes declined to hear arguments on that issue yesterday, and instead focused on Bondi’s order regarding control of the MPD. An order Bondi rescinded and rewrote to conform with the judge’s suggestions (it was never an order) from the bench before midnight yesterday. The DOJ knows they are out on a limb Trump is assiduously sawing off.
Local officials have challenged Trump on his D.C. takeover, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb had filed a lawsuit challenging the president’s authority to take over the local police department, and the case was assigned to a judge known for sparring with the Trump administration. And, as The Washington Post editorial board wrote, the political battle could fare well for Trump, it hinges entirely on whether crime in D.C. is meaningfully addressed.
“Trump will probably prevail on the merits of being able to declare an emergency if the case goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit or the Supreme Court,” the editorial board wrote.
“The law provides leeway to decide what services he wants from the police, and there is a clear federal interest in keeping the nation’s capital safe. But it becomes a more difficult legal question on Sept. 10.”That question ended yesterday, and the answer is: “No.” The Home Rule Act doesn’t give Trump broad powers to scream “national emergency!” and declare martial law. Especially when there is strong evidence his statutorily allowed efforts didn’t work. The facts on the ground don’t back up his claims. Bondi’s retreat shows the DOJ doesn’t have confidence in the legal basis for this nonsense. And while the Sinister Six may want to give Trump whatever he wants, overruling Congress (who has the first vote on the question) may be a bridge too far, even for them.
Congress does hold the whip hand. And signs point to it changing pretty damned soon. Sooner still, after any ruling the Court could make.
While my social media feed is full of memes and links to articles from my friends on the DC take over, focused on the drop in crime, soldiers patrolling and someone throwing sandwiches, the posts from my ordained friends are different. Their posts are about the homeless being rounded up, pictures of the homeless havi g the tents and possessions scooped up by machines and pitched into dumpsters. As someone who has worked with the unhoused pointed out, people hold on to the most important and personal items until the end. Family photos and family bibles, birth certificates and more. The homeless were arrested and those possessions treated as trash, we would never do this to the better off, only the poor.
ReplyDeleteI too laugh at a good sandwich pun, and I am upset with the destruction of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Voice of America, but as a culture we still by a large extent ignore the poor. The homeless in DC, and Medicaid cuts are more pitched at the middle class suddenly having their grandparents kicked out of nursing homes rather than poor mothers being denied prenatal care and a poor person being denied care for cancer or diabetes. For all the angst being leveled at DOGE and this administration, we still too often fall back into our cultural framing where the poor are an afterthought.