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The Liberation of DC Begins

Yes!

As we have continuously advocated for several times now, the Trump Administration is beginning its takeover of DC.

It is taking two legal forms: the first is to place the DC police under direct federal control, which the Home Rule Act allows, and second to deploy the National Guard to the streets of DC.

The Washington Post is already rolling around on the floor and screaming, posting about the declining crime numbers. There are very good, non-conspiratorial reason to believe those crime numbers are fake, though. Numerous surveys show perceptions of crime rising, not dropping. Oh, and a DC Metro Police commander was just caught fabricating crime stats.

As Reason's Robby Soave pointed out helpfully, there are basically three kinds of crime problems in DC: gang crime in bad neighborhoods, homeless camps and tents, and "large groups of teenagers rampaging through otherwise fairly nice and affluent areas, assaulting people and stealing cars, and also getting into fights with each other. Seems to be driven by a mix of post-pandemic societal collapse, trends in youth behavior, and insufficient action by authorities."

All three of those seem perfectly well-suited to a militarized police response.

Eliminating gang activity will require longer investigations, but getting the activity off the streets, and using a "stop and frisk"-type approach to catch as many people carrying drugs and/or illegal guns would already put a significant dent in it.

A vigorous police response is also needed to stop the homelessness problem. America's chronic homelessness problem is a disgrace, and homeless people need to be taken care of, hopefully in specialized facilities, if not in jail, rather than be allowed to be a menace to public health and safety. What happened to Union Station, in particular, is a disgrace.

And finally, the last one, should probably be deterred with a significant and visible police and National Guard presence.

This is all very good news indeed.

Policy News You Need To Know

#GPUs — You may have seen a lot of panic on social media about a deal struck whereby nVidia will be allowed to export its H20 chip to China in exchange for a 15% fee. Some people seem to be terrified that this is endangering national security and giving China an edge in the AI arms race. They are misinformed. The H20 is not one of nVidia's top-of-the-line chips, in fact it is a chip that was already explicitly designed for the Chinese market with reduced performance (and, according to the China Cybersecurity Authority, backdoors). The chips are comparable to Huawei's Ascend 920 and Ascend 910C models, which they produce domestically in China. Allowing exports of the H20 chip to China therefore will not give them any sort of edge in the AI race, and might even be good for the US by allowing nVidia to make more money, bringing in more money to the Treasury, and perhaps even increasing Chinese dependence on American technology.

#AI — Dean Ball, a visionary AI thinker and one of the principal authors of the AI Action Plan, has resigned. He joins the Foundation for American Innovation as a Senior Fellow.

#Pot — There is a big lobbying push underway to reclassify marijuana. A little birdie told us that a lot of conservative influencers are being paid to flog that message right now, as well as former Republican officeholders. It is, of course, very bad public policy, and walk downtown a large American city should be enough to convince one. As is the link between cannabis legalization and rising violent crime observed in every jurisdiction that tries this, as are the alarming recent numbers in the rise of cannabis-related schizophrenia and psychosis cases. We've tried the experiment. It's failed. Let's go full Singapore on this.

#AI #Doom — A new report from the Economic Innovation Group suggests that the recent rise in unemployment among recent college graduates is not caused by AI—in fact, according to their data, the more a job is linked to AI, the lower the unemployment rate.

#Politics #Realignment — Very interesting: Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien has made $62,000 in contributions to nearly two-dozen GOP congressional candidates, and $5,000 to the NRCC. Well well.

#Life — Very interesting report from EPPC's legal eagle eye Ed Whelan: "Pro-life superlawyer Jonathan Mitchell has filed a complaint in federal district court (Southern District of Texas) on behalf of a woman, Liana Davis, who alleges that the father of her unborn child murdered that child by secretly dissolving abortion pills into a hot beverage that he had prepared and tricking Davis into drinking it. Defendants include Aid Access, the Austrian company that shipped the pills to the father, and its director." The case includes voluminous (and depressing) text message chain evidence that the father tried to coerce his girlfriend into having an abortion then purchased abortion pills. But there's a policy angle as well: the mail-order abortion pill industry is largely unregulated, even though these pills are unsafe and, as we can see, can be used to illegal purposes.

#Inflation #Tariffs — From Douglas Holz-Eakin at the American Action Forum: "Certain goods are beginning to display inflationary pressures, including beef, frankfurters, fresh fruits, coffee, linens, cookware, and certain clothing, many of which have experienced a monthly price jump of between 2 and 5 percent."