The National Guard is unnecessary, but Trump should flood Chicago streets with federal agents
When President Trump announced on August 11 the White House had temporarily assumed control over the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the political Left lost its collective mind. Though Trump’s action is wholly legal under Section 740 of D.C.’s Home Rule Act, across the country, Left-wing lawmakers and pundits assailed the president as an authoritarian threatening the nation’s capital’s self-governance.
Absurd charges, though crime rates have fallen nationwide, violent crime in D.C. and in cities throughout the country remain a stubborn problem. As Trump announced his action to briefly bring MPD under the direct control of the federal government, he took a question inquiring over whether large metropolitan areas could expect the White House to take similar action. Trump replied inner-city mayors were watching the measures he had taken in the nation’s capital, Mayor Johnson was an incompetent, and expressed his desire to see Democrat leaders in Blue cities voluntarily address communities torn apart by crime.
While the political Left attempted to portray Trump as unhinged, the resonant message the president sought to deliver on August 11th is he will no longer tolerate the flippant manner in which Democrat-run cities are governed, in particular the enforcement of the law. Since taking office in January, Trump has solved the border crisis, withheld federal aid to elite higher education over civil rights violations and admissions policies, and taken steps to rein in federal spending and cut the bloated federal bureaucracy. Now, Trump is leveling both barrels at Democrat-run urban centers. A long-ignored crisis, our inner-cities are falling into ruin, and we have become inured to it.
Just as we once accepted borders should be ignored, illegal immigration, the hyper-ideologized climate on college campuses, careless federal spending as an inevitable reality, we have come to presume cities were settings in which urban dwellers are simply expected to cope with widespread violence as a part of daily life.
For far too long, Chicago residents have been forced to live with an unpleasant fear they too will eventually become victims of a crime. By any objective measure, Chicago neighborhoods are not safe. Today, in Chicago, one can walk the Loop and witness its decline: Open-air drug markets are as prolific as the use of illicit narcotics in scabrous neighborhoods. These offenders face no penalty. Along with marijuana aroma wafting through the air, outdoor defecation, public masturbation, litter and loitering on downtown streets are fairly common.
For those who ride a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train, conditions have gone from passable to wretched in the last decade: It is not unusual to see a topless woman at the Chicago and State stop, a homeless man mumbling outloud, a busker or a vagrant with a beggars bowl. CTA stations and trains have become dormitories for the homeless and “L” platforms have become increasingly dangerous with riders routinely harassed, robbed or assaulted.
Just as conditions on the streets and the CTA have declined, so too have our parks. A walk through some parks throughout the Windy City can have you opposite homeless encampments resembling a Third-World shantytown. Areas filled with debris, cardboard, and a variety of refuse can be seen piled up in tent cities, with rolled-up carpets, soiled mattresses, and other materials strewn across the landscape.
Outside of the downtown area, neighborhoods once considered safe have become vulnerable to crime, with homes burgled or cars jacked more frequently than in the past. Lamentably, some neighborhoods which were once middle-class with streets lined with desirable residences have fallen from respectability to impoverishment. Neighborhoods elsewhere, in particular Chicago’s West and South Sides have become blighted cesspits. A maze of misery, in these quarters of the city the living conditions remain appalling, police presence is sparse, and residents are often at the mercy of gangs.
After years of greyness and deprivation, Trump's action in Washington, D.C. is a powerful refutation of the progressives’ exegesis “addressing root causes” — affordable housing, police reform or blindly throwing money at failed public schools — are remedies to bring safety to Chicago.
Anxious to do something about crime — stabbings, mass shootings, robberies, rapes, and the whole hideous menu of criminality which blights modern life in Chicago — Trump’s effort in our nation’s capital is an implicit statement he believes residents in our largest cities should not be forced to endure neighborhoods enveloped in crime. Moreover, Trump’s actions are also a signal he will no longer tolerate Democrat reform measures which hamstring local law enforcement, legislative half measures which fail to address the plague of urban violence, or Democrat mayors who simply ignore violent crime.
To Trump, Chicago residents have suffered interminably under abysmal Democrat governance. Therefore, Trump’s measures in Washington, D.C. and pronouncement he is weighing similar federal action in Chicago should be understood as alternatives exist to the damage Democrats and progressives have inflicted on Chicago. In Trump’s frame of mind, there are options to decades of Democrat negligence, and a raft of prescriptions which can solve Chicago’s deepest problems, allow the city to rise from the ashes, and return Chicago to greatness. The White House believes aggressively confronting crime is the prerequisite for urban renewal in Chicago.
How Trump intends to turn around Chicago is not entirely clear yet, but his starting point has been made plain: He intends to bring peace to Chicago’s streets by doing battle with criminals. While deploying the National Guard is not needed, there are several steps Trump can take to help Chicago. When White House Border Czar arrived in Chicago in late January, federal agents serving under him ensnared six sex offenders, three Tren de Aragua gang members, and two illegal immigrants convicted of murder. The presence of federal agents in Chicago was successful.
For Trump to best serve Chicago, the White House should carry out a larger-scale version of the exercise carried out by the Department of Homeland Security in January. This undertaking should be sweeping, for an indefinite period, and include agents from an assortment of federal agencies, namely the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. Marshals Service, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Collectively, officials from these agencies — some 2,500 — would engage in law enforcement activities of broad scope and depth, including the apprehension of wanted fugitives, protecting witnesses, investigating financial crimes, weapons violations, and drug trafficking. Those arrested would face a federal judge.
Chicago residents should not have to live in a shattered city. While Trump’s public statements over mobilizing the National Guard is his attempt to chum the waters, his vow to replicate his actions in Washington, D.C. in Chicago is serious and symbolizes a better, brighter future for the Windy City.
The first step in solving a problem is to acknowledge a problem exists, and Trump concentrating on Chicago and its crime problem is admitting to another problem. When former president Joe Biden falsely claimed he was powerless to control the southern border, Trump proved Biden wrong. Trump also defied the odds and intervened on college campuses and both cut federal spending and bureaucratic bloat. What Trump is demonstrating is the political will necessary to solve problems.
Since Trump's order federalizing MPD went into effect in Washington, D.C., crime in the nation’s capital has dropped 17 percent and the District experienced a 12-day period without a murder. 12 consecutive days without a murder in Chicago would be a miracle. An effort to tidy up Chicago is long overdue, and if Chicago’s progressive leaders refuse to confront the squalor and crime scattered across the cityscape, Trump intends to do as much, and Chicago will be better off.
