Making D.C. Streets Safe Again

President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was deploying the National Guard and temporarily federalizing the D.C. police department to restore order to the streets of the nation’s capital. The announcement came on the heels of a long-running debate among Republicans, reignited by a recent assault on a former DOGE employee, about whether to revoke the district’s decades-long right of “home rule.”

John Ketcham and Charles Fain Lehman argue that while fully revoking home rule would be “unlikely and probably imprudent,” the White House and Congress have several tools at their disposal to correct the destructive policies of the District’s local government. “From hiring more police officers to appointing a ‘control board’ to run the criminal justice system,” they write, “history and law present several levers that the Trump administration should consider pulling to improve residents’ lives.”

Jonathan Alpert is a professional psychotherapist. In his two decades of practice, he has watched the field abandon evidence-based techniques and embrace progressive ideology, often to the detriment of patients. Alpert argues that identity politics undermine both the therapeutic profession and the clients that its practitioners purport to help. 

“Patients don’t come to therapy to be sorted into identity boxes,” he writes. “They come to heal and move forward. Right now, therapy is failing them.” Read the rest of his argument here.

Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, delves deeply into the life of the man who shaped modern American conservatism. But as William Voegeli writes, the book fails to capture Buckley’s lasting influence on the conservative movement, especially in the context of Donald Trump’s rise. Though Tanenhaus attempts to provide a balanced account, the biography ultimately leaves readers uncertain about Buckley’s true legacy—and his connection to what would become Trump’s political vision. Read Voegeli’s review .

Wesley LePatner, a Blackstone real-estate executive, was among the victims of the senseless murders at New York’s 345 Park Avenue last month. Some radicals claim that LePatner’s killing was justified as retribution for her work with Blackstone’s Real Estate Income Trust. As Judge Glock writes, these arguments are not only immoral—they also misunderstand private equity’s role in the housing market. 

Blackstone and other private-equity firms helped to stabilize a collapsing housing market in the wake of the financial crisis and purchased foreclosed properties that otherwise would have deteriorated, hurting entire neighborhoods. “The investments of Blackstone and people like Wesley LePatner in America’s still-undersupplied housing stock should be welcomed,” Glock argues, “not excoriated and attacked.”

Illinois recently became the first state to require universal mental-health screening for public school students. The plan could backfire, writes Carolyn Gorman, leading to overdiagnosis and fostering mental-health problems where none previously existed.  

“For some young people, medical diagnoses, including mental-health diagnoses, can shape their identity and expectations, lead to long-term medication use, affect job prospects, and diminish their sense of control over their future,” she writes. 

Read the rest of her piece here.

Washington, D.C. is in crisis. Crime is surging, and the federal government has now stepped in. , , , and  explain why Congress moved to rein in local control and what it means for public safety nationwide. Plus: Trump’s push to shake up college admissions, and AI-induced delusions. 

Photo credit: Emma McIntyre / Staff / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images