From Simon Rosenberg, writing from D.C.:
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Yes, somehow, we are now going to get National Guard from Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia to add to the enormous mix of Federal officials already here. Just lovely. All this for a city that already has more police per capita and spends more on its police per capita than any city in the country. Again, contrary to Trump’s insane rants, crime has plummeted in DC and is not rising. Crime is a fraction of what it was thirty years ago. As journalist Philip Bump wrote this morning about OH, SC, WV:
The FBI reported that fully 43 cities in those three states had higher rates of violent crime in 2024 than did D.C. More than 1.2 million people live in those cities, including more than 900,000 in Ohio alone. Yet that state’s National Guard is being deployed to D.C. to protect the capital’s 700,000-odd residents. Half a million Ohioans live in cities with higher homicide rates than D.C. Unfortunately for them, they won’t get to see National Guard troops on their streets — just on their TVs, standing around outside the Lincoln Memorial.
Or maybe the lesson here is that this isn’t really about crime at all.