Welcome back.

I'm your host, Charles Van Lehmann, a senior editor at City Journal.

Joining me on the panel today are Il Shapiro, responsible for all things, Constitution and Law at the Manhattan Institute.

Carolyn Gorman, responsible for all things, mental health and mental illness at the Manhattan

Institute, and perennial attendee at guest, you've been on a lot recently, John. John Kacham,

responsible for all things, cities at the Manhattan Institute. Thank you all for joining me.

Are we releasing a book called the Manhattan Institute? You mentioned it so often. That's, you know, something that publicists tell you to do with your new book. But people who are aware of our institution. But anyway. You know, I got to, it's, it's somewhere. There's, there's a close connection between City Journal of Manhattan Institute. They're related to each other.

I want to take us into the news. We were off on Thursday, so we haven't done follow-up on this. We were off on Thursday for an event that we'll talk about in a little bit, but I want

to talk about a little bit more about Trump's takeover of the police in D.C., the collective meltdown that has occasioned, whether or not it's actually working.

Listen to me remember from last Monday, we recorded just as Trump announced his plan.

So John was, John saw into the present that was happening in parallel to us, expecting the takeover of MPD.

Trump administration has federalized D.C.'s police department. They've also deployed a variety of

national guardsmen, other federal law enforcement officers to patrol the district. Most

recently, Stephen Miller said

they're going to start clearing out all of the graffiti in D.C. There's been some homeless

encampment clearance. I think there's a lot of debate over, A, is there a real crime problem?

Every generation needs to rediscover broken windows policing, apparently. Apparently.

No, so yeah. So let me ask, A, what do we think? I want to talk the reaction first because I think there's been a great deal of Sturman Drong from the press about this. A, the claim is that there isn't crime, crime is not, you know, an issue in D.C. B, crime is an issue, but they're doing it wrong. C, this is a, this is a fascist coup. What do we, what do we make of these arguments?

At least ensuing the fascist coup camp.

Look, I'm across the river here in Virginia. I go into D.C. every now and again. It's a different

city than when I lived there from 04 to 14, which I think is it's the real golden era, Anthony Williams and his successor, Adrian Fenty.

It's gone downhill in a whole host of ways. Social services, policing, what have you.

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