President Donald Trump announced he’s working with Republicans to create a “comprehensive crime bill” as part of his nationwide crime crackdown – but few details have been released.
Weeks after declaring a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital, the president said on Wednesday that he’s working on the bill with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and others in his party. He didn’t elaborate on what the legislation contained. However, he didn’t provide any details on what it entails or what could be part of the bill.
“It’s what our Country need, and NOW! More to follow,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump campaigned on a promise to reduce crime across the country.
In his first eight months back in the White House, the president has already deployed National Guard members to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to combat crime and has laid out plans to send troops to other major U.S. cities. Democrats and even Fox News pundits have questioned the nationwide crime statistics Trump has cited. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called his latest tactics “authoritarian” while Maryland Governor Wes Moore labeled them “performative”; the president has threatened to send troops to both of their states.
The president has also spent weeks criticizing the crime rate in places such as Washington. D.C., and brought in the National Guard and federal agents to help D.C. police in their efforts to reduce crime.
Despite the 30-year low in violent crime in Washington, D.C., Trump declared on August 11 a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital, placing local police under federal control and deploying 800 National Guard members — a number that has since increased to the thousands.
The troops started carrying firearms over the weekend, a move that some civil rights groups have argued will make the city less safe.
On Monday, the president signed an executive order that tasked the defense secretary to ensure that each state’s National Guard troops are trained to assist federal law enforcement “in quelling civil disturbances” across the country. The order also empowered the attorney general to hire additional prosecutors to “focus on prosecuting violent and property crimes.”
This week, a federal judge criticized the president’s federal takeover after what he called an “illegal search” of a Black man in a Trader Joe’s, saying he was targeted because of the color of his skin. The man was carrying two guns but the case has since been dismissed.
“Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” the judge slammed. “We’re pushing the boundaries here. We’re beyond the boundaries and something is going to have to break.”
On Tuesday, the president further escalated his federal takeover, unveiling another aspect of his crackdown on crime in Washington: the death penalty for anyone who kills someone in the city.
“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment,” the president told reporters during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, there have been more than 1,000 arrests in D.C. since the federal takeover began, with 115 illegal guns seized, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
A new poll suggests Trump’s decision to put the nation’s capital under federal control is unpopular. The survey, from The Economist and YouGov, found that only 38 percent of Americans support the federal takeover. That number is even higher among persons of color: 59 percent of Black Americans and 54 percent of Hispanic Americans oppose it.
