Show Patrol

A glorified photo op: About a dozen National Guard members took a stroll around Washington D.C.’s National Mall yesterday as the sun set. Other troops deployed around monuments elsewhere, and some could be found at a U.S. Park Police facility in Anacostia.

“We just did a presence patrol to be amongst the people, to be seen,” Master Sgt. Cory Boroff told The New York Times. 

But it wasn’t just showmanship. Federal agents—including those with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI—working in conjunction with Metropolitan Police Department officers (who have been temporarily placed under federal control) made 23 arrests on Monday night. That total, per Director Kash Patel, included “one arrest on a search warrant for a prior murder charge” and “multiple outstanding warrants for DUI.” It’s not totally clear how many arrests were made yesterday or if these figures are in addition to standard arrests made by D.C. cops, which have been averaging 68 arrests per day. (Also, arrests are different than convictions; these folks must still wend their way through the court system.)

By day yesterday, Mayor Muriel Bowser met with Attorney General Pam Bondi and other administration officials, seemingly focused on how to best partner and use the federal support. By night, Bowser was back to her critical tone, calling the president’s actions an “authoritarian push” and saying in a town hall that Trump seeing homeless encampments “triggers something in him that has him believing that our very beautiful city is dirty, which it is not.”

“I worry about this, because we spend a lot of time and resources trying to get the people who are in encampments into shelter, and they present with a lot of issues that make them not want to go into shelter,” she continued; but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has been clear that homeless people may either access such services or else be “susceptible to fines or to jail time.”

“We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks,” Bowser said. “We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story, who we are and what we want for our city.” Bowser took to X to emphasize how “violent crime in DC is at its lowest level in 30 years.”

Violent crime in DC is at its lowest level in 30 years.

We had an unacceptable spike in 2023, so we changed our laws and strategies. Now, crime levels are not only down from 2023, but from before the pandemic.

Our tactics are working, and we aren’t taking our foot off the gas. pic.twitter.com/UHpCT8RDPG

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) August 12, 2025

But just two days ago, Bowser was trying to split the difference:

While Mayor Bowser calls Trump’s takeover of DC police “unsettling and unprecedented,” she says “the fact that we have more law enforcement and presence in neighborhoods…that may be positive.”

— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) August 11, 2025

And this is all a bit of a departure from Bowser’s messaging, which for the last year up until a few days ago had been…a bit tougher on crime than much of the City Council’s (which isn’t saying all that much). But now, it’s showmanship all the way down: She appears to be trying to publicly position herself as a #Resistance figure while also accepting federal help.

“But DC’s crime is falling!” is a terrible response to Trump’s takeover. DC’s homicide rate was five times New York’s last year, and we’re optimistic that this year, it will fall to merely 3x. As a matter of political strategy and moral correctness, it is better to acknowledge…

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) August 12, 2025

To some degree, Bowser and Leavitt—as well as the president himself—are conflating crime and quality-of-life issues. Is the intention, with the deployment of federal force, to get the specific carjacking crime wave under control? Or is it to curb crime more broadly? Or is it to clean up homeless encampments and make the city less dirty?

It all reminds me of the cleanup of San Francisco in advance of Xi Jinping coming to town. Prior to hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in 2023 (and a meeting between then–President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping), state and city leaders took it upon themselves to clear homeless encampments, power-wash the sidewalks, and ramp-up law enforcement, leading many San Francisco residents to wonder why Xi deserves such special treatment but they must be subjected to living in perpetual dereliction. It was all for show, but it also made the issue politically salient for a moment and proved to San Franciscans that a cleaner, better-functioning city was possible. Of course, the effects didn’t really last—dealing with homelessness long-term is a lot harder than moving the homeless people temporarily out of sight—but it’s possible it had a lasting political effect.

But the situation in D.C. is, in many ways, different: The real issue here is whether this is an appropriate use of executive power, and whether it will be an effective means of getting the problems under control. But it’s an interesting moment because it’s forcing Democratic politicians to decide whether they’re going to become crime denialists or not and how exactly they want to position themselves going forward.

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Scenes from New York: This is kind of a funny read (from May) because—despite being a young person in New York—I don’t really know many of these names dropped who are allegedly part of the “it” crowd that endorsed Zohran Mamdani. Ella Emhoff (Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter)? That’s the best you can do? If this is the youthmentum, I’m not buying that it’s very strong (especially without the Dimes Square set, which is more inclined to talk Curtis Yarvin than Frantz Fanon).

Relatedly: I don’t have an issue with these people’s ages, but I do have an issue with them coming from the Democratic Socialists of America.

Mamdani’s policies were written by 28/34 yo DSAs. Few in his inner circle ever worked in government. And the person he charged to hire his city hall team is a California native.

This is who we’re getting to run the top financial capital in the world and the largest school… pic.twitter.com/q3yC0fsXUj

— Yiatin Chu (@ycinnewyork) August 12, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• “Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States Tuesday in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks smuggling drugs across the border,” reports the Associated Press.
• Really good Just Asking Questions episode (if I may say so myself) with Rob Henderson, the guy who popularized the phrase luxury beliefs:

• “China Evergrande Group‘s delisting marks a bleak milestone for the nation’s property sector, now in a fourth year of paralysis that continues to weigh down the world’s second-largest economy,” reports Bloomberg. “The company, once China’s biggest developer by sales, will be removed from the Hong Kong stock exchange on Aug. 25, a year and a half after the shares were suspended and almost 16 years after the Guangzhou-based firm was listed.”
• “The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary,” reports The Wall Street Journal. White House officials said they’ll expect exhibits to emphasize “unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story” and will audit accordingly.
• What would we do without the state?

I can’t imagine the horrors happening inside a private home school that violated Palo Alto city code. God forbid they were learning calculus.

Pray for these children. pic.twitter.com/Z8SkoQwmP6

— Katherine Boyle (@KTmBoyle) August 11, 2025

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Source: https://reason.com/2025/08/13/show-patrol/