Carte Blanche: Trump’s DC Is just window dressing

So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” - George Orwell

On March 28th, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14252, Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful. The order directed federal law enforcement and the D.C. National Guard to crack down on crime, enforce public order, and reinvigorate the capital by restoring and cleaning the city's monuments, architecture, and public spaces. Over the course of just over a year, the Trump Administration touts its perceived accomplishments. Over 13,000 arrests, 1,400 guns seized, and a 90% prosecution rate compared to roughly 30% before President Trump signed the executive order. Approximately 2,800 National Guard members are deployed to the nation's capital in a push to increase law enforcement and deterrence across the city. The effect has led to a noticeable decline in crime, although not across the board, and enough to be noticed. In short, the President's policies have had the effects, at least initially, that he intended. Washington, D.C., is measurably safer and cleaner. However, it was done with iron-fisted tactics that violate the liberties of citizens, especially if they’re homeless or if they're breaking laws, such as firearm laws, that are blatantly unconstitutional. If arrests and incarceration were the solution to the nation's ills, America would’ve arrested its way to safety and prosperity decades ago. There are many costs associated with the policies and tactics the current administration is employing to “clean up” the capital. No cost is higher than the lives of those they are sacrificing by pushing aside or rounding up for an old-fashioned sense of safety through violence enacted and approved by the same government that is supposed to guarantee the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the very citizens it is prosecuting without ever asking why they are breaking laws, whether those laws are just or convenient, and why so many have so little or no home at all.

Crime is nothing new to any city or country, but what has become prevalent is the willingness of elected officials to ignore it, especially in major metropolitan cities that are governed almost entirely by the Democratic Party. A recent poll found that 81% of Americans believe crime is a major issue in larger cities, and 66% nationwide. 53% approve of the current administration's actions in the capital. After it was uncovered that senior police officials in D.C. had attempted to alter crime statistics to present the city as safer and with less crime during a Senate investigation, it spurred the President into action, which his critics say he was already eager to take. What followed was the federal takeover of the city and the deployment of nearly 3,000 National Guard members, at a cost of around $1.5 million a day. While the takeover will ultimately be a costly affair that proves things can be made to look and feel better, it will not address the problems that led to the dangerous, dilapidated conditions that preceded the executive order. The fact that it was common knowledge that those in positions of authority not only ignored, but also selectively enforced and worked behind the scenes to suppress and lie about it, makes the situation even more tragic. To make matters worse, if the policies achieve sufficient approval or the President convinces governors and mayors of their efficacy, it will lead to the adoption of more failed policies that subject Americans to an ever-growing loss of civil liberties for the sake of the appearance of law and order. The great danger of modern times is the idea that more government intervention, greater surveillance, and even endless spending will make the country a safer and more stable place. Such practices ignore human dignity and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. All while never solving a single problem nor trying to better understand why people suffer in the first place.

The President has proven his willingness to take simple, direct actions regardless of legal precedent or public opinion. What is more dangerous than either his actions or rhetoric is that of those who oppose him in and out of public office. Crime is an issue regardless of political preferences. So too are homelessness, unemployment, the cost of living, and widespread collapse of social institutions. Making behaviors or actions illegal effectively solves next to nothing and ignores wholesale human suffering because it is uncomfortable to admit to, let alone address. Governments only know how to use ham-fisted tactics that sweep up vast swaths of citizens into industrial incarceration machines that launder the wealth of the American people into a self-perpetuating cycle that only creates more problems so politicians can stay in office. At the same time, ignoring the problem or refusing to protect taxpayers from violence and theft while the cities' infrastructure collapses around everyone but a select and entitled few is far from the right answer. President Trump is spending vast sums of taxpayer money on making the city look and feel safer, rather than finding out why it has fallen into such disarray. Moreover, people who have lived their whole lives in the capital have come to accept their fate and let the standard of living rise and fall with the winds of political ideology. It should not be the responsibility of elected or appointed leaders to decide how communities should be governed or what laws should be enforced or enacted. That right belongs to the people and no one else. If and when the American people accept that and put forth the energy to see it done, then there will no longer be a need for task forces to spend money that isn’t theirs like a drunken sailor or to act like the parent to people who have the right to live as they please.

In a few short years, President Trump will leave office, leaving behind a legacy of division and government overreach. When he is gone, things are much more likely to return to the way they were than to stay as he wishes. Neither is the correct answer to improving the country nor protecting the most vulnerable in society. If the people just want window dressing, to cover up what is inconvenient, then he has made the path clear. But if Americans want a country in which all can prosper and live without fear, they cannot ignore the problems the country faces because they don’t have to see them or experience them every day. A new path must be charted that tries something besides violence and ignorance, and the tools of the past that have so often failed. Instead, the nation must seek something new and better.