When President Trump announced the federal government was taking over law enforcement in the nation’s capital, I applauded.

The District of Columbia is a federal district. It was created by the Founding Fathers to be the neutral site for governing the country without being vulnerable to pressure from Virginia, Maryland, or other states. 

By definition, the federal government is the ultimate guarantor of public safety in Washington. When I was speaker of the House, we inherited a bankrupt, out-of-control, crime-ridden, and functionally incompetent city government. 

We took dramatic steps to fight crime, improve education, and create tax breaks that attracted businesses and home buyers back into the city. 

When Mayor Anthony Williams was elected in 1998, we also had a common-sense, business-oriented partner with whom we could work to rebuild the city. 

That improved system lasted about 20 years until corruption, incompetence, and anti-police and anti-business attitudes once again led the city toward decay.

Congress and the Department of Justice are now investigating the Metropolitan Police Department. Under pressure from liberal D.C. politicians, at least two officers reportedly manipulated crime data to make the city seem safer than it is.

Given this background, I am deeply supportive of Mr. Trump’s actions at the District.

Now he is talking about extending federal crime fighting to a lot of dangerous cities. That is a big jump. It is a sweeping expansion of federal power into local communities and the states in which they reside. It should not be considered lightly.

At the same time, something must be done. Several American cities have become totally corrupted. They are dominated by government employee unions, distorted by radical politics, and weakened by radical anti-police, pro-criminal ideologies. 

Their citizens’ lives are at risk. Their children’s futures are being damaged or even destroyed through bad education systems. Self-serving, incompetent teachers unions dominate the systems — despite their failure to provide students with meaningful educations.

For several generations, citizen reform movements have been crushed by the enormous power of left-wing unions and machine politics. This has led to corruption on an amazing scale.

We should not be surprised. Lord Acton warned that “power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Consider these destructive and often criminal behaviors in a variety of cities.

At New Orleans, the former mayor, Mitch Landrieu, cut the police force to 900 officers from 1,500. Police morale dropped, and crime soared. Mr. Landrieu’s attitude was totally anti-police. His successor, Mayor Latoya Cantrell, was indicted this month on charges of fraud and obstruction of justice.

At New York City, Mayor Eric Adams was indicted for bribery, fraud, conspiracy, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions, though the charges were later dismissed. Mr. Adams’s former chief of staff, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was also indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges. 

In 2024, two New York City Fire Department chiefs were arrested for accepting about $190,000 in bribes. That year, 70 New York City Housing Authority employees were also charged with bribery and extortion. 

They were allegedly soliciting bribes of up to $2,000 from vendors in exchange for no-bid building maintenance contracts. Some at the housing authority had been reportedly taking bribes for more than a decade — totaling at least $2 million.

At North Charleston, South Carolina, eight people have been charged in federal court for a series of bribery, kickback, extortion, and money laundering schemes. These were uncovered after a public corruption investigation. Three of the people charged are elected members of the city council. 

At North Boston, Massachusetts, a city councilor, Tania Fernandes Anderson, pleaded guilty to accepting a kickback from a city program that was federally funded.

At Jackson, Mississippi, the mayor, district attorney, a city council member, and a former city council member were indicted for taking bribes.

City corruption goes from coast to coast. At Oakland, California, a former mayor, Sheng Thao, was indicted for bribery in city contracts.

The list goes on.

The next time you hear Governor Jay Robert “JB” Pritzker of Illinois complain about Mr. Trump’s anti-crime effort, take a look at the 2023 University of Illinois at Chicago report on city corruption. 

The report, based on justice department data from between 1976 and 2020, found that “Illinois remains the third most corrupt state in the nation,” and that the state’s federal Northern District, which includes Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, “is still the most corrupt metropolitan area in the country on a per capita basis.”

Endemic corruption, disastrous schools, and anti-police policies are destroying children’s futures and endangering every citizen. This complex trend toward corruption in our cities is what is leading Mr. Trump to take bold innovative policies.