President Trump’s effort to lessen crime in Washington, D.C., and launch a “beautification” effort is clashing with a long tradition of Republicans criticizing and outright writing off the nation’s cities.

Republicans and conservatives for years — decades, even — had amplified the failures in cities as being the result of Democratic policies and flaunted migration from blue urban centers to red states. And as those on the right have slammed the nation’s metropolises, only a tiny fraction of the biggest cities have Republican mayors, and there’s scant discussion in right-wing circles and institutions about urban policy.

Trump’s new fixation on D.C. and takeover of police could give conservatives an opportunity to increase their foothold in urban policy and in cities.

A big challenge, though, is getting the conservative base to care about the hubs of Democratic and progressive power at all.

Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk last month made a lengthy post on the social platform X arguing why conservatives should care about the New York City mayoral race:

“All of America looks toward New York. … Plenty of people wanted us to abandon college campuses as lost cause communist no-go zones, but we learned last year that if we bothered to fight back, we could turn the tide. New York can be the same way,” Kirk said.

And in a monologue on his radio show on Monday, Kirk argued that Republicans face a question of political will when it comes to addressing policies and outcomes that they don't like in cities. “You need to dive deep and dig deep, to have the fortitude, the wherewithal, the spine, the cojones, the chutzpah to achieve what you want to achieve,” Kirk said. “We just put up with crime for the last 40 years because we're afraid of being called racist.”

Some on the right, though, are content to let the progressive left take their policies in cities as far as they want in order to maintain a foil. Columnist George Will put it succinctly when he told HBO host Bill Maher this month that he wants Zohran Mamdani to win the New York City electoral race: “Every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again.”

Aaron Renn, a writer who has explored city policy, noted it has not always been that way, pointing to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani once being hailed as a great Republican mayor. And Renn said a result of Republicans ceding those fights in cities means there are far fewer Republicans with city-level experience: “There are simply fewer people in sort of Republican political world who have an urban perspective, because there's just fewer of them."

Despite the challenges, there has been a ripple of movement on the right in favor of more active urban involvement

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly talked on his podcast about the cleanliness of cities being a reflection of a successful or unsuccessful society.

And after Dallas Mayor Eric L. Johnson switched parties to become a Republican in 2023, he founded the Republican Mayors Association — the first GOP group focused solely on GOP mayors.

“For a long time, you had, I think everybody took some of the cities for granted. The Democrats took them for granted,........

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