President James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was opposed to the creation of a standing army.
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” he argued. “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home…”
Well, we have an overgrown Executive. And now, with troops assembled on the streets of Washington DC, we’re inching closer to a tyranny at home.
And that, apparently, is okay with Rep. James Comer, R-TheFrankfortLoop, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, who has seemingly taken the lead in the GOP’s defense of President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops willy-nilly to wherever his malignant muse might send them.
The latest hotspot being the place where he currently resides, Washington DC, declaring a crime emergency in the nation’s capital, scattering about 2,000 National Guard personnel, some from as far away as Louisiana, throughout the city and placing the DC police department under federal control.
“I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, DC, and they’re going to be allowed to do their job properly,” Trump said, calling his action “Liberation Day’’ in DC, vowing to “take our capital back.’’
The National Guard can remain in DC for 30 days unless the operation is extended by Congress, unlikely in the face of Democratic opposition. The troops are in the capital under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, usually reserved for state-level operations, which means the deployment doesn’t fall under the auspices of the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the federal government’s authority to employ the military to enforce domestic policies.
Trump sprang into action when one of the former researchers in his bogus Department of Government Efficiency was victimized in a carjacking, asserting in an Executive Order that the “rising violence in the capital now urgently endangers public servants, citizens, and tourists, disrupts safe and secure transportation and the proper functioning of the Federal Government.’’
Now, just what these troops might accomplish with their presence is open to speculation. Most are, to this point, prohibited from carrying arms or making arrests, which seems to provide them with the sort of authority invested in do-wop groups standing around a flaming barrel on the street corners of old Philadelphia.
Apparently hanging around is the president’s idea of a law enforcement strategy.
And our boy Jamie is right behind him. Appearing on Newsmax, Comer said, with any luck at all, the president just might send troops to your neighborhood. Not exactly what Mr. Rogers had in mind but it allows our child-like leader to continue playing with the National Guard as if its members were toy soldiers.
“We’re going to support doing this in other cities if it works out in Washington DC,’’ Comer said. “And, again, it’s unfortunate but we spend a lot on our military. Our military has been in many countries around the world for the past few decades, walking the street trying to reduce crime in other countries. We need to focus on the big cities in America now and that’s what the president’s doing.’’
In other words, following Comer’s logic, if that’s what you want to call it, members of the nation’s military don’t have enough to keep them occupied, so let’s let them stand out on the street along with those unescorted young women in bizarre dresses who line the byways when dark settles in.
Comer hopes the DC experience will attract public support, leading residents to ask their lawmakers, “why don’t you vote to allow President Trump to come into Chicago or New York City or Philadelphia and try to combat the criminal activity in their city? I think this is an experiment that’s probably needed in a lot of the Democrat run cities in America and hopefully there’ll be some support, there’ll be some Democratic support that’ll cross the line ‘’
Jamie, apparently, isn’t the only person representing the commonwealth who thinks establishing an occupational military force in select American cities, like something you’d find in a banana republic, isn’t such a bad idea. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, Mr. Wanna-Be-Senator who wouldn’t sneeze without first asking Trump’s permission, exclaimed on the X social media site, “POTUS has my full support.’’
“Just like he cleaned up the border, Trump will clean up DC,’’ Barr wrote. “Our capital is overrun with crime, corruption, and homelessness.’’
And talking head Scott Jennings, the shame of Dawson Springs and a perennial embarrassment on CNN, said of Democrats opposed to the deployment, “I think they’re acting like idiots here. The city is crime ridden.’’
“I don’t know what’s authoritarian about putting some extra eyes and ears on the street,’’ Jennings said. “Getting criminals off the street to keep people from being murdered and carjacked. Nobody in their right mind believes Washington DC is safe.’’
Somehow, Scott doesn’t understand that there’s a difference between placing extra eyes and ears on the street and having it done by an occupying military force. More cops? Sure. But this is United States and you can’t have uniformed members of the National Guard or any other branch roaming the streets of the nation’s capital like it’s postwar Berlin.
And Trump, as usual, is full of it. At a press conference, he asserted that violent crime in DC “is getting worse, not getting better.,” further claiming that “crime is out of control in the District of Columbia.”
Writing on his blog Jeff-alytics, Jeff Asher, founder of AH Datalytics and a renowned expert on crime data, offered a different conclusion.
“The bottom line is that violent crime in DC is currently declining and the city’s reported violent crime rate is more or less as low now as it has been since the 1960s. (Standard disclaimer that not all crimes are reported to police.),’’ Asher wrote. “The city’s official violent crime rate in 2024 was the second lowest that has been reported since 1966.”
Understand, parts of Washington DC can be dangerous and unsafe, owing to, among other things, drugs and the insane proliferation of guns. In announcing the federal takeover, Trump said the capital’s murder rate was 41 per 100,000 individuals, more “than we can find anywhere in the world.’’ Actually, the murder rate in 2023 was an outrageous 39.4 per 100,000. But that dropped distinctly to 27.3 per 100,000 in 2024, fourth highest in the nation. The rate has dropped further to this point in 2025. NPR reported that in 2023, at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
Meanwhile, violent crime in general has dropped over the past two years.
In other words, despite Trump’s usual battle with the truth, Washington DC is not Mogadishu.
But, let’s emphasize, that doesn’t mean steps shouldn’t be taken to make it a safer place. It does mean Trump, and by association Comer and Barr and the usual gang of idiots, are going about it all wrong.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia is horribly understaffed. The city currently employs about 3,200 police officers. The city budget calls for 4,000, meaning the department is short about 800 cops. The understaffing has resulted in officers working around two million hours in overtime.
Gregg Pemberton, chair of the Fraternal Order of Police, DC Police Union, Lodge #2, recently told Fox 5 television in DC, “I don’t know why there aren’t more people up in arms about the situation that we have crime at these kind of levels and the police department is being treated in such a deplorable fashion.
“I’ve been on the Metropolitan Police Department for 20 years now and what I can tell you is the condition of this police department is the worst that I have ever seen it,” Pemberton told Fox 5.
Instead of sending in the military, a costly endeavor with a questionable outcome, why doesn’t Trump, instead of bullying, name calling and condemning the city he now calls home, work with DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to get the police department in tip-top shape and increase personnel to appropriately face the never-ending demands of protecting a modern American city? Perhaps he can find law enforcement experts within the federal government to provide the department with some advice.
There’s no reason to believe an already improving situation will get any better with the National Guard in the streets of Washington DC. WRC-TV, channel 4 in Washington, reported on Wednesday that, according to police, in the week before the takeover, 39% of all arrests in D.C. were for violent crimes in the week before the federal takeover. Since then that number has fallen to 36% of all arrests.
That total, News4 said, would involve more than 200 people.
A third of arrests since the takeover are for three misdemeanors: simple assault, driving without a license and trespassing. Arrests in high crime areas, the station reported, remain about the same.
Regardless, despite all the rationalizations, using the military for law enforcement is unseemly and is really only successful in inducing widespread fear among not only the criminal element but those in the everyday crowd going about their business. Intimidating the citizens the members of the National Guard are sworn to protect goes against all the country stands for.
This is not the Soviet Union.
On Thursday, Trump announced he intended to go out that evening in DC on patrol with the police and National Guard troops.
That places him right where he belongs – out with the other street walkers.