For Americans who’ve been outraged both by the decline in public safety since the summer of 2020 and the radical ideas that inspired the chaos, this has been a good week. The forces of destruction were delivered a sharp one-two punch.
The left jab: On Tuesday, Lori Lightfoot, the progressive Chicago mayor who three years ago proposed an $80 million cut to the city’s police department, was voted out of office. In the time that passed between her push to shrink police funding (Lightfoot avoids the term “defund”) and her ouster, Chicago saw homicides hit a 25-year high. And while shootings and murders have dropped slightly in recent months, crimes such as theft, car-jackings, robberies, and burglaries continue to spike. The anti-crime Democrat Paul Vallas, who’s heading into the mayoral runoff as the clear favorite, has said, “Voters want a mayor who’s going to get the city back on track and who’s going to address its most pressing issues, and obviously, the issue of public safety is front and center.”
The right hook: President Joe Biden told Democratic senators on Thursday that he will not veto recently drafted Republican-led legislation that kills a social-justice-driven D.C. crime bill. The D.C. law would end most mandatory sentencing; reduce penalties for violent offenses, such as robberies and carjackings; and expand the requirement for jury trials in cases of misdemeanor. This in a district that in December marked two back-to-back years with more than 200 homicides for the first time in two decades. And homicides are already up 36 percent in D.C. from this point last year.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member