My city is dangerous and Democrat, but Trump won’t be taking it over | Opinion
The federal takeover of the police in D.C., where I lived for 20 years, has nothing to do with crime that I can see, though that one felon from Queens who is ripping our country apart is certainly a menace.
But why look on the gloomy side? Donald Trump won’t be sending the troops into this heavily Democratic city, even though Kansas City is by the numbers one of the more dangerous places in the country.
How can I be so sure? Because despite our many gun deaths and Black mayor — but at least not a woman, as in L.A. and D.C., where Trump couldn’t wait to intrude — we already have no control over our own police department. Unfun fact: All members of the board of police commissioners except the mayor are named by our GOP governor. So there can’t be any problem here, right?
If the president really wanted to help my former hometown on the Potomac, as others have pointed out, then his chaos-forward Congress would not have prevented Washington from spending $1.1 billion of its own money — not federal, but local dollars — on local services, including police.
So is D.C. the airless hellscape that Trump describes? Absolutely, say his absolutists. You must be joking, say those who aren’t laughing.
Naturally, after Trump decided to send in the National Guard to make sure that no more of his former DOGE favorites become the 3 a.m. victim of an attempted carjacking interrupted by police already doing their job in our nation’s capital, Americans ran to their cozy corners.
Before we go there, though, I want to stay here for a minute: Based on every news account about the crime that was only the excuse for this encroachment, the president should have praised the Metropolitan Police Department instead of sending in the troops.
According to ABC News, “A police cruiser arrived as the assault was in progress” — emphasis mine — “prompting the suspects to flee on foot, authorities said. Officers on the scene were able to quickly catch two of them, a boy and a girl.”
It’s the middle of the night in Logan Circle, a neighborhood that used to be a lot less safe (and also less pricey) than it is now. The cops are so on top of it that they see what’s happening, stop what’s happening, and arrest the unarmed suspects. Yet the situation is so out of control that we need to call in the military?
Yes, say Trump’s supporters, who declare themselves terrified in D.C. and other cities that desperately need taking over. While liberals, you won’t be surprised to learn, feel in these same places like mama just tucked them in after they wore themselves out catching fireflies.
I won’t reprise their arguments about whether crime is down or not, because even this now seems to depend on how we feel about these statistics, and who else agrees with them.
Team sports are thrilling, aren’t they? But is how we feel how things really are?
I mean, I lived in New York City at the height of the crack epidemic and felt safe every day of my life. But by the numbers and also based on what I was sometimes doing as a reporter, you could argue that this was not necessarily because I was safe.
Guns stockpiled, empathy worn away
In every city, town and rural area, too, we are at some risk, especially because of the constant stockpiling of guns and wearing away of empathy. Only, that’s not what the National Guard is being sent in to fix. It couldn’t, but could make things worse, especially since Trump says that the police will now be able to do “whatever the hell they want.” In this at least he is a role model.
So no, I do not see Trump sending in the troops to protect a citizenry just waiting to be liberated. From our guns? The withering of our humanity?
Trump is sending the Guard into D.C. and L.A. and who knows where next for the same reason that he’s sending masked ICE agents through the country arresting a Utah college student and a Maryland pastor and a grandmother on her Marine son and daughter-in-law’s Arizona military base. The goal behind those detentions isn’t public safety, either. It’s not even what he has to do to deport millions, which Obama somehow accomplished without all of this terror, because terror wasn’t the point of the exercise.
Just about everything that is happening domestically — from an aggressive new review of all Smithsonian exhibits to make sure they are “unifying,” “constructive,” and in sync with Trumpian values, to the determination to defund even community libraries — goes back to his goal of complete control.
The president just pushed former Republican Missouri Rep. Billy Long out of his brand new post running the IRS after the agency declined to provide some, though not all, private information about taxpaying immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security.
My daughter and I watched a Harry Potter movie the other night and seeing those Snatchers, I thought oh, take away the spells and this is current events now.
Trump is going to break this republic if we let him, and that’s the crime I worry about most.
Melinda Henneberger is a Pulitzer Prize winning opinion writer for McClatchy and the Kansas City Star.
This story was originally published August 13, 2025 at 6:57 AM with the headline "My city is dangerous and Democrat, but Trump won’t be taking it over | Opinion."
