Members of the National Guard stand outside Union Station in Washington, D.C., on August 14, 2025.

President Donald J. Trump announced early last week that he was declaring a public safety emergency in Washington, D.C., activating the National Guard and taking over the city police department. The move is legal — at least for up to 30 days — because of the unique relationship between the federal government and its home city. Mr. Trump justifies it by saying that local crime is out of control.

That’s a typically Trumpian distortion of reality. And, typically, it's being done in service of his own accretion of power.

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Washington has had a crime problem, yes. And it appears, by some measures, to be disproportionate: The city, for example, has in some years rivaled New York City in the total number of carjackings, even though it has less than a tenth the population. It had a third as many homicides, too, far too many for its size.

But many cities (Albany among them) saw such crime spikes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear. And by most accounts, Washington is bringing those numbers down on its own. In fact, in April, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the........

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