OPINION — More than a week into a city crime emergency and after five months of being invaded by Venezuela, life in Washington, D.C., is remarkably normal. Except for the rhetoric from the White House and hundreds of federal troops and agents on the streets, I’m not sure my four kids would know they apparently live in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

Because I focus on House and Senate races, I’m typically covering elections with some geographic and emotional distance. But as a D.C. resident for the past 25 years, the most recent news hits home.

President Donald Trump has painted a grim picture of the nation’s capital. “I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse. This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re gonna take our capital back. We’re taking it back,” he said last week from the briefing room. “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”

There is crime in D.C., but the city being described by Republicans is unrecognizable to many of the people who live here. Most D.C. residents don’t live in a perpetual state of fear.

To paint a picture for people who reside in a state, last week, our teenage daughter drove herself to and from soccer practice by herself. Our teenage son rode his bike alone each day to a camp in one of the tougher neighborhoods of the city. Our two younger boys walked to a museum with a college student friend. On Saturday night, the family walked to get dinner and ice cream. Basically, we did the same things we’ve always done.

The president’s focus on crime in D.C. is nothing new, and it’s been misguided. “We will restore and renovate our nation’s once-great cities, making them safe, clean, and beautiful again,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last summer. “And that includes our nation’s capital, which is a horrible killing field. So many things. They leave from Wisconsin. They go to look at the Washington Monument. They end up getting stabbed, killed or shot.” I admit that I started laughing, as did the young Republican National Committee volunteer standing next to me on the floor, because most D.C. residents can tell you that the Washington Monument is one of the least likely places for something bad to happen.

Earlier this spring, I dropped our teenagers and friends off at the Lincoln Memorial at midnight, where they stayed overnight setting up chairs for an Easter sunrise church service. And nothing bad happened. They even walked down to the Washington Monument without incident.

Definitions

As with most political discussions, the argument surrounding crime in D.C. has a lot to do with definitions. 

Republicans regularly describe D.C. as unsafe, but safety can be more of a subjective feeling rather than an objective list of statistics. I’d bet most city slickers have a higher tolerance for crime, sketchy individuals, or even people experiencing homelessness. Situations that might scare someone from the rural Midwest might not even faze someone in the district.

But it’s also clear that some Republicans aren’t afraid of being in the city either. If D.C. is really worse than Baghdad, then why did the president welcome his supporters to come celebrate his inauguration in January? Or why did Trump invite the country to come to the most dangerous city in the world for the Army parade on his birthday just a couple months ago? That travel guidance was either dangerous and irresponsible, or the current rhetoric is overheated. 

There also appears to be a disagreement on the definition of emergency.

Trump has complained about crime in D.C. for years, so why take action now? Why not make this move right when he took office, or three months ago? Last week, the president said D.C. was “becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness,” so it’s possible that the early August attack on a former Department of Government Efficiency employee was the impetus for action. But that’s some selective inspiration. When a Democratic staffer was murdered in 2016, it became part of a conspiracy theory.

Some important context is usually missing from the conversation about the more recent incident. It occurred at 3 a.m. That’s not a justification, but it’s relevant. I’m not sure what cities in the world can ensure the safety of all of its citizens at all times of the day and night.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for 40 years. I won’t transit D.C. without a gun,” warned border czar Tom Homan. “And any of these reporters that said the crime rate is way down and it’s safer than they say, I dare any of them: Walk the streets of D.C. after dark. If it’s that safe, go ahead and do it. See how that works out for you.” 

Using terms like “after dark,” makes it sound like the city turns into The Purge each nightfall. But living in the city requires some common sense. The later you’re out, the more likely you are to end up in a bad situation.

The White House is developing a pattern of declaring emergencies in order to expand the power of the executive branch. It declared a crime emergency in order to take over D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and previously claimed the country is being invaded by gangs at the direction of the Venezuelan government to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Beyond the new constitutional questions, this a classic argument over whether the ends justify the means. Right now, Republicans agree with anything Trump does while Democrats generally disagree.

Statistics

The use of numbers in the D.C. debate has been frustrating.

“Look at these. Baghdad is — we doubled up on Baghdad, Panama City, Brasilia, San Jose, Costa Rica, Bogota, Colombia, heavy drugs, Mexico City I mentioned, Lima, Peru, all double and triple what they are,” Trump said while holding up a rudimentary bar chart.

“The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on earth, much higher,” he added later.

The typical Democratic response includes evidence that crime in D.C. has been getting better. But the validity of those numbers is in question and it’s hard to cite them when crime is still a serious problem. 

Scrutiny of the district’s crime stats is healthy and good data is important, but the blind acceptance of crime statistics from Peru, Iraq, Cuba and other foreign countries isn’t great either. Some of those numbers don’t pass the smell test. Do people really believe they’d be safer in Baghdad than Washington, D.C.? And yet that’s the point the White House is trying to make.

But while we’re comparing world capitals, how many other countries don’t allow the citizens in their capitals to participate in their government? That’s an important piece of the power struggle over D.C. 

Republicans elevate the Founding Fathers to almost deity status. Setting aside the fact that they didn’t envision women or people of color being allowed to vote, it would have been hard for them to imagine 700,000 people not having representation in Congress when the population of D.C. was approximately 15,000 when it was established by The Residence Act of 1790. Utah had a population of 277,000 when it became a state in 1896.

There’s wisdom in a federal district not under the control of a state’s governor, but that can be drawn to a much smaller land area and doesn’t mean all residents of D.C. should be without representation and subject to the whims of lawmakers who don’t live among them.

D.C. residents are well aware of the city’s faults, including crime. We’ve got a pockmark in the side of our house from a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting almost five years ago. I don’t know anyone who would disagree with Trump’s call for a safe, clean and beautiful city. But there’s a deep skepticism that the White House is interested in understanding and solving the deeper problems that contribute to crime rates and homelessness, rather than just covering them with a coat of asphalt.

“Crime in D.C. is ending and it’s ending today,” Attorney General Pam Bondi declared at the introductory press conference. It’s a hyperbolic answer that doesn’t demonstrate the seriousness that the issues require.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt boasted about 465 arrests since the federal takeover began. According to records from the district’s Metropolitan Police Department, 454 adult arrests were made on the same days (Aug. 11-18) in 2024. 

Politics

From a D.C. perspective, there’s a general sense that this is an intentional spectacle. If the city was literally a war zone, do we really think Republican governors would send their National Guard into harm’s way to defend residents who voted 90 percent for Kamala Harris? If Republicans really cared about D.C., then why did they take nearly a billion dollars of the city’s tax revenue earlier this year?

Democrats should tread carefully in opposing anti-crime measures. “[D]emocrats also need to hear this: Voters really, really care about controlling immigration and crime. They just do,” said GOP consultant Sarah Longwell, who is no fan of the president. 

But Trump might be overplaying his hand. While Republicans have interpreted the 2024 election results as a blank check and feel confident that the president is consistently on the right side of “80/20” issues, Trump’s job approval rating has fallen to mediocre at best. Even though Republicans believe Trump is simply fulfilling a mandate and keeping campaign promises on issues including crime and immigration, 54 percent disapprove of the job he’s doing compared to 42 percent who approve, according to G. Elliott Morris’s average. 

For now, the situation in D.C. is the confluence of a district that can’t defend itself and the consistent dismissal and degradation of people who live in cities as something other than real Americans.