A group of legal scholars and advisers attempted to revise Washington, D.C.,’s century-old criminal code. Their effort was “upended by the toxic mythmaking that has come to characterize national politics,” newsbysamuels writes.
Shouldn’t the Party endorse the District’s right to make its own laws, Raskin argued, whether or not outsiders agreed with them? The answer was no. When the House voted on the disapproval resolution, in February, thirty-one Democrats supported it.
. Following the vote, Bowser did send a letter—on her own—insisting that “Congress should not overturn laws duly enacted by the District of Columbia.” But she could not halt the momentum. In the Senate, thirty-one Democrats and two Independents joined the Republican minority in support of the resolution, with many citing the mayor’s veto as justification. The council’s last hope was Biden. But, when the bill came to his desk, he signed it. On Twitter, he wrote, “I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule—but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings.” Local Democrats were furious. The whole episode came to symbolize how national narratives could swallow local lawmakers. “I can call a press conference and get a couple of cameras, probably,” Allen said. “Kevin McCarthy can stand on the steps of the Capitol, and there will be a hundred cameras there, and national news. It is asymmetric warfare.”, the House Speaker, did call a press conference. After the Senate passed the disapproval resolution, he gathered his caucus in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where he declared that “no longer will Washington be soft on crime. No longer will we be defunding police. No longer will we be softening sentences.” The caucus applauded a staffer who described the incessant fear that he and his girlfriend experienced after recently being robbed at gunpoint. McCarthy noted that a local activist group had recently held an opposing rally at the nearby Union Station. During the rally, McCarthy said, another carjacking occurred in the parking lot behind them. For decades, Republicans have held up the District—a historically majority-Black city—as a place to be feared. Today, that dynamic has spread, in what Richard Schragger, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, calls a “war on cities.” Smaller governments, particularly those of liberal cities and counties in conservative states, have become more aggressive about protecting their bubbles, prompting a response from bigger governments, which warn that they are going too far. It is hard to ignore the identity politics embedded in these battles. This year, the Black mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, duelled with the state’s legislature, which was seeking to take control of the city’s water supply and parts of the justice system. A transgender lawmaker in Montana was barred from a debate about gender-affirming care. There have been tussles between local and state governments regarding, gun control, bathrooms. “Hot-button issues are now being sparked at all levels,” Schragger said. “When a North Carolina school opens up a bathroom to all sexes, the state comes in and says you can’t do that. States come in to try and override increases in living wages, plastic-bag bans, anti-discrimination laws, a number of employment protections.” All of this was a sign, Schragger told me, that local debates have been warped by our national preoccupation with the culture wars. It takes only one spicy tweet or provocative cable-news segment for the nuances of a local issue to get obscured in the glare of the national spotlight. “The hyper-politicization and nationalization of these things—it is going to mean that good people who just want to put their hand up and take their turn serving their neighborhood don’t want to do it,” Allen said. “Politics is a contact sport. No one should kid themselves about that. But, at local levels, school-board seats, you kind of expect that you’re really just focussed on ‘Can somebody make good decisions?’ ” In hindsight, Allen wishes that he had framed the narrative about code reform for a national audience. He could have emphasized the parts of the code in which sentences would have become harsher, such as for assaulting a police officer, possessing a firearm, or committing sexual abuse. “We really argued around the fairness,” Allen said. “Nationally, and to the members of Congress, they didn’t care. That’s not what worked. Give the Republicans credit—they’ve convinced you a quarter of a century of your life in a prison cell is light, it’s soft on crime.” Park watched helplessly as the primary work of his adult life was swept away by political bluster. Not a single Republican in Congress reached out to him or anyone else on the commission to discuss the code revisions. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. transformed D.C.’s criminal code into a national campaign issue. The National Republican Congressional Committee has already spent tens of thousands of dollars buying ads to malign fifteen Democrats in swing districts who supported the reform. In Albuquerque, more than eighteen hundred miles away from D.C., a billboard in Gabe Vasquez’s district had him standing in front of a foreboding black background bisected by yellow police tape. It read “Voted for reduced sentences for violent crimes. Meanwhile, Albuquerque carjackings rose 11% in 2022.” “There is a real opportunity from a political perspective,” Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the N.R.C.C., said. “In a political environment where voters already believe Democrats have permissive views on crime, these House Democrats are outside the mainstream even within the Democratic Party. It shows they are extreme.” Vasquez told me, “New Mexicans aren’t worried about D.C. politics.” Summer Lee, a freshman congresswoman from the Pittsburgh area who was pummelled with soft-on-crime ads during her campaign, understood how labor-intensive it could be to defend against such lines of attack. Still, Lee, who became one of the most ardent supporters of the District on the Oversight Committee, felt that the debate over D.C.’s autonomy exposed her party’s inconsistent willingness to stand up for communities of color. It also reflected its short-term memory for some of the discussions that happened in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death—that investments in education, health care, and jobs are the best ways to lower crime. All that energy seemed to have faded. “This isn’t new, right?” Lee said. “We’ve seen it, in the ’94 crime bill, in the eighties, and we saw it last year play out in elections all over the country. We have to choose whether or not we are going to play this game with Republicans, or whether we’re going to be honest and organize and put resources into telling the truth that more police and locking more people up won’t help us be safe. But it’s tough. It’s a tough thing to counter.” A group of D.C. community organizers, whose interests ranged from victims’ rights to prison abolition, began to visit Capitol Hill to try to exert some influence. When James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky who leads the House Oversight Committee, convened a series of hearings about the District, more than two hundred activists marched around the Hill, wearing “Hands Off D.C.” T-shirts. Some community members attended the hearings. One of them, Anthony Davis, who was forty-eight, had been released from prison after being convicted in connection with a murder that he claims he didn’t commit. Davis had grown up in D.C., but he had never been to the Capitol before. He marvelled at the beauty of the Rayburn building’s exterior, but was surprised by how run-down things looked when he got inside. Comer banged his gavel. “D.C. officials have not carried out the responsibility to serve its citizens,” he said. Other representatives spoke about how their constituents were afraid to come to the city. The proceedings quickly went off the rails, though. Gary Palmer, from Alabama, called the District’s schools “inmate factories.” Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat, who represents a district that includes, Florida, got into a vicious volley with Marjorie Taylor Greene that, in a span of two minutes, covered assault weapons, school violence, transgender identity, hormone therapy, mental health, and book bans. Later, Anna Paulina Luna, of Florida, displayed large photos of aborted fetuses in jars. She asked why the criminal code didn’t do more to save them. Davis was shocked. Before him were some of the country’s most influential leaders, yelling at one another and talking about issues that seemed tangential at best. “It made me realize why the people of this nation are the way we are,” he said. “All the anger and vitriol—I think it starts with leadership.” During these meetings, which lasted hours, the “Hands Off D.C.” organizers would try to buttonhole members of Congress as they walked in and out. They approached Nancy Mace, of South Carolina, who stuck her fingers in her ears. They asked Byron Donalds, of Florida, to come to their neighborhoods to understand their needs; he replied that he already did, because he had grown up in New York City. When two female organizers tried to stop Tim Burchett, of Tennessee, he complimented them on their jewelry. Makia Green, one of the “Hands Off D.C.” community leaders, took video of some of these interactions on her cell phone. On the Hill, Green had learned the importance that lawmakers placed on going viral. Now her hope was to catch a viral moment of her own. When it came to national politics, Green told me, “There’s a lot more performance to this than I thought.” In April, Congress passed another disapproval resolution, of a D.C. bill that banned choke holds and mandated the use of de-escalation tactics. In June, Comer held a meeting aimed at upending a District plan to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. And, in July, the House went even further, pushing legislation that would prevent the District from collecting revenue on tickets for some minor traffic infractions. Privately, some Republicans admitted that they had not expected to concentrate so much on D.C.’s government. But they felt they had little choice, owing to, as Nick Langworthy, of New York, put it, D.C.’s “asinine policies.” Bowser began to work harder with lawmakers to defend those policies. She and Mendelson, the council chairman, sent letters “respectfully” asking Congress to reconsider its actions. For the first time, the council chairman hired a staffer to work with federal lawmakers. Since the pandemic, Park has been working from home. After Congress’s disapproval, Bowser proposed stripping away the commission’s funding. The council decided to keep it, though; this gave Park hope that they might be able to pass a version of the reform, eventually, that could withstand national scrutiny. He told me, “It’s really frustrating to have members of Congress make these votes and pronouncements on a piece of legislation they probably haven’t read.” Crime in the District has only got worse. This summer, the council voted 12–1 in favor of a bill that would actually put more people in jail while they awaited trial for certain crimes. The D.C. Police Union applauded the move. The bill’s author, Brooke Pinto, told me it was important for the criminal-code revisions to pass, someday. But, for now, the District was in a “state of emergency.” Debates over language and the law, again, would have to wait. ♦
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