Is Trump's D.C. Policing Doing Anything?

Plus: Core inflation rises, booze falls out of favor, the FDA won't let us have nice things, and more...

D.C.'s stepped-up law enforcement continues: Last night, a somewhat predictable scene broke out between Homeland Security officers doing a traffic checkpoint at 14th and W streets NW and protesters, who shouted "Go home, fascists."

The checkpoint, which sprang up around 8 p.m. and was mostly conducting seatbelt and broken taillight checks, also appeared to be looking for illegal immigrants, with some agents reportedly there from Enforcement and Removal Operations, a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It does not appear to have done all that much, detaining a grand total of two people. (Nor did the protesters do all that much: Routinely calling law enforcement "bastards" and "fascists" means the words kinda lose their luster after enough years, and it's not clear that D.C.'s protesters would actually like it if law enforcement stopped doing their jobs.)

Per a Washington Post report: "When a ride-share vehicle was stopped, the passengers seated in the back of the car rolled down the windows and shouted to the crowd the questions law enforcement was asking their driver, which they said included questions about immigration status." A group of enraged Washingtonians, upon seeing the ICE checkpoint, made homemade signs to warn people that a checkpoint was up ahead.

As with federal law enforcement patrolling Georgetown's M St and the National Mall, these areas seem rather stupid to target. "They're not needed. There's nothing going on," one Georgetown resident told the local news. "Georgetown is kind of a strange place for them to be," said another. This is not the same as saying there are no rich areas in D.C. that crime is infecting: President Donald Trump's attention was turned onto the issue of carjacking and assault when Department of Government Efficiency engineer Edward Coristine, known as "Big Balls," was attacked near Dupont Circle. The recent wave of carjackings, mostly done by teenagers, has taken place primarily in Navy Yard.

People who are deeply concerned about crime should hold the newly-bolstered police force to a high standard, which to my mind means expecting them to be targeted and strategic in their enforcement and to show real results that justify the massive investment. What's happened so far does not rise to meet that.

On Tuesday night, for example, 1,450 law enforcement officers from various branches of the federal government and the Metropolitan Police Department patrolled the city. "The increased police presence in the nation's capital this week has yielded more than 100 arrests," wrote Reason's Robby Soave yesterday. (We do not yet have a full breakdown of arrests that took place last night.) "The most significant category of arrests on Tuesday was for firearms violations, with 33 arrested on such charges and 24 guns confiscated by police." The firearms violations can be a good proxy—a means of nabbing individuals who commit violent crimes—but it is not always, and presents a certain thorniness for the people who advocate for Second Amendment rights being far less restricted. (More details on the other arrests: 23 illegal immigrants, seven drug offenders, and one homicide suspect nabbed.) But these numbers are still not especially impressive (and don't target the carjacking issue at all), and there's still a long way to go before arrested individuals can actually be convicted and gotten off the streets: Actually doing so would require a criminal justice system that works swiftly and properly, not plagued by dysfunction like D.C.'s.

A White House official says last night's operations in D.C. led to a total of 43 arrests, nearly 2x the arrests of the previous night. 7 illegal firearms were seized.

More than 1,450 authorities participated in last night's operations, including about 750 MPD. About 30 National…

— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) August 13, 2025

"A lot of the problems with criminal justice in Washington lie in the federal courts where the city's major prosecutions happen," writes Josh Barro on Substack, imploring his fellow Democrats to be less dismissive about crime and to offer workable alternatives to Trump's show-of-force plan. "There are too many judicial vacancies, and the U.S. Attorney's office has been declining too many prosecutions, meaning too many criminals go free and too many miscreants believe they will get away with crime. Fixing those prosecutorial problems is a federal responsibility—Democrats should say that if Trump wants to be tough on crime, he can start by making sure prosecutors are bringing enough cases and there are enough judges to hear them."

Right now, Trump has only authorized this deployment of federal law enforcement for 30 days, but he reportedly intends to ask Congress to authorize a longer-term extension. This might possibly be a good thing: Trump is paying attention to the proper mechanism by which he must act, and he's indicating intent to invest in more substantial policing on a slightly longer time horizon (which is more likely to yield results than the sort of pageantry we've seen so far). If the issue really has been related to police staffing—the Metropolitan Police Department says it has been hemorrhaging officers and is now at a 50-year low—then this helps to temporarily solve that (though it's not like all law-enforcement skillsets are totally transferable). But more must be done, in terms of how/which crime is targeted and how prosecutions happen.

If all this sounds a little law-and-ordery for a libertarian publication, I apologize. Your mileage may vary, and I'm skeptical that this use of manpower has done much so far, but as a New York City resident, I really want both crime and disorder—two related, but not totally overlapping, issues—to be curbed. D.C. residents probably feel similarly, and disturbed by the fact that crime is creeping into neighborhoods formerly considered pretty safe. The post-pandemic spike in disorder has been poorly captured by crime data, yet it majorly affects quality of life in our big cities. I think libertarians can reasonably advocate for laws to be enforced, for bad laws to be changed, and for police resources to be used well. I at least want the ability to call the police when I'm the victim of a crime, and I want a speedy and competent response that takes threats to my person and property seriously.

New CPI report released: The Consumer Price Index report for July was released Tuesday, and showed inflation rising 0.2 percent from June, on a monthly basis. But the "core" inflation measurement, which takes out food and energy prices, showed warning signs, jumping 0.3 percent over the course of the month—or 3.1 percent on a year-over-year basis.

Businesses stockpiling inventory in advance of the imposition of Trump's tariffs have meant that earlier reports show prices remaining fairly insulated from the ongoing trade war. The stockpiling advantage is running out, and it looks like the cost of tariffs is being passed on to consumers. "The biggest impact has so far been concentrated in categories such as furniture, appliances and other household wares, as well as recreation goods and footwear," reports The New York Times. 

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Scenes from New York: "Reading test scores climbed seven points for New York City public school students who took state exams in the spring, a substantial increase over previous years that comes after efforts to change the way students learn to read," reports The New York Times. "About 56 percent of students in grades three through eight showed proficiency on the reading tests, the school system announced on Monday. Mayor Eric Adams framed the results as a prime accomplishment in educating the city's children as he runs for re-election. The improvement in the nation's largest school system comes two years after Mr. Adams's administration overhauled how elementary students are taught to read."

The word this Times piece oddly won't mention is phonics: instruction that teaches wannabe readers the relationship between letters and sounds, which allows them to decode and encode words. Phonics instruction fell out of favor roughly two decades ago in a lot of the country's school districts, and falling literacy rates show rather clearly that its replacement—promoted by Lucy Calkins—did not work nearly as well. Adams, to his credit, mandated back in 2022 that New York City elementary schools switch back to phonics instruction. Results have predictably improved.

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QUICK HITS

• "The percentage of U.S. adults who say they consume alcohol has fallen to 54%, the lowest by one percentage point in Gallup's nearly 90-year trend." Link here. More evidence in favor of the "zoomers need to get out more" hypothesis: "Young adults had already become less likely to report drinking alcohol a decade ago, but that trend has only accelerated, with the rate falling from 59% in 2023 to 50% today. This puts their drinking rate below that of middle-aged and older adults, although fewer in those groups are also claiming to drink than did so two years ago." As a 1996 baby, and thus on the cusp of Gen Z, I want to be very clear: I have consumed more shots of Malört than any sane person should, and I will continue to do so until the day I die, dammit. It's medicinal, for the soul. The kids these days might be a bit less anxious if they went out and treated themselves to a nice dirty gin martini or a jungle bird or a vieux carré or a penicillin.
• Many Democrats, including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, have responded to Trump's mobilization of federal forces to curb crime in D.C. by arguing that violent crime is at a 30-year low there. I also cited this in Monday's Roundup, writing that "Currently in D.C., both homicides and violent crime overall are down compared to this time last year." I wish I'd caveated more, and been more skeptical: "The 30-year-low claim is dubious," writes Josh Barro, "based on statistics that show a sharp decline in assaults with dangerous weapons and robberies in 2024. But crimes like these don't always get reported, and there is an ongoing internal investigation into whether leaders in D.C.'s police department have been systematically downgrading reported assaults and robberies in order to show falling crime in those categories. A commander in the department has been placed on leave pending that investigation. Homicides, which are more reliably reported than assaults and robberies, are down significantly from their recent peak in 2023 but are nowhere near 30-year lows. In fact, there have already been more homicides in D.C. this year (99) than there were in the entirety of 2012 (88)."
• A good way of thinking about crime and risk:

This is a good and important point. Statically I (Iike all Americans) am far more likely to die of an opioid overdose than be killed by a car or murdered. And yet as slim of the chances of me being murdered on the subway tonight may be, my odds of overdosing are literally zero. https://t.co/413UFw0Fwe

— Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) August 13, 2025

• Related: Did you know that D.C.'s current chief of police is Pamela Smith, who joined the department in 2022…as the chief equity officer? "She led the department's efforts on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), made an immediate impact at the MPD and ensured that DEI issues remained a priority in the department," notes her bio. I have questions: Why is someone so green serving as police chief? Why did the police department—a pretty diverse organization—need a DEI bureaucracy?
• They got us again:

what's your exact second to second blood oxygen percentage? oh you just know your day to day average because FDA regulation? you didn't buy a Wellue-S straight from Shenzhen? pic.twitter.com/rws8zLavdb

— gabriel (@GabrielPeterss4) August 13, 2025