I’ll do a roundup of the effect that the occupation had on D.C. crime rates, but I want to return to something that circulated a few weeks ago. Former Washington Post columnist Philip Bump compared 2024 urban violent crime rates in states that sent guardsmen to occupy the mainland colony to D.C.’s own violent crime rate. Needless to say, in each of these Republican controlled, if not dominated, states, which also have stricter criminal codes, there were cities that had worse violent crime rates:

…there are now 64 cities that had higher rates of violent crime in 2024 than did D.C. in states whose governors are sending the National Guard to Washington to “combat crime.” Those governors are more worried about the 700,000 residents of D.C., theoretically, than the 1.7 million people in those 64 cities they actually represent.

While many people argued that the National Guard should be sent into those states’ cities, the hypocrisy isn’t the story here. The story is, in these states with Republican anti-crime policies, they have massive failures (Ohio, Louisiana, and South Carolina). Republican anti-crime policy doesn’t seem to work any better than D.C.’s own anti-crime laws, though that’s not stopping Republicans from forcing these policies on the residents of the mainland colony.

Like most Republican policy, it is not effective, even though it is portrayed as such in most reports.

Same as it ever was.