Video: The movement to ban congressional stock trading

President Trump announced the activation of hundreds of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., along with the deployment of federal agents—including more than 100 from the FBI. This comes despite Justice Department data showing that violent crime in D.C. fell 35% from 2023 to 2024, reaching its lowest point in over three decades. These aren’t abstract numbers—they paint a picture of a city safer than it has been in a generation, with fewer homicides, assaults, and robberies than at any point since the early 1990s.

The contradiction could not be more glaring: the same president who, on January 6, 2021, stalled for hours as a violent uprising engulfed the Capitol is now rushing to “liberate” a city that—based on federal data—hasn’t been this safe in more than thirty years. Then, when democracy itself was under siege, urgency gave way to dithering; today, with no comparable emergency—only vague claims of lawlessness—he mobilizes troops for a mission that looks less like public safety and more like political theater. The disparity between those two moments is more than irony; it is a blueprint for how power can be selectively applied, depending on whose power is threatened.