Blue cities are cesspits of crime.
Blue politicians don’t want to do anything about it.
At least some blue-city citizens seem to disagree with this approach.
Will President Donald Trump capitalize on the split?
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last week called for Trump to send the National Guard to clean up San Francisco, where his company is based.
“We don’t have enough cops,” Benioff told The New York Times.
“So if they can be cops, I’m all for it.”
Democrats responded with fury.
“This is a slap in the face to San Francisco,” huffed Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey.
Well, maybe to its leadership, but San Franciscans themselves seem to feel a bit differently.
In June, a citywide survey found that 80% of residents support “federal help and resources to deport undocumented fentanyl dealers.”
“Even in a city renowned for its bleeding heart, there is a breaking point,” Liz Le wrote in The Voice of San Francisco — “a collective exasperation with those who weaponize our compassion to fuel a crisis.”
But just like Dorsey, California Gov. Gavin Newsom hates the thought of Trump activating the Guard in the Golden State.
Newsom has already filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping Trump from using federal forces to support ICE deportation efforts, even as his leftist constituents keep harassing immigration agents.
TV shill John Oliver has even encouraged these people to slash the tires of ICE vehicles: “If ICE can bother some guys at a roofing job,” he said this month on “Last Week Tonight,” “bystanders can bother ICE at their state-sanctioned kidnapping job.”
That’s not how it’s supposed to work, John.
In Chicago this month, local cops were ordered to stand down when anti-ICE activists deliberately rammed an official ICE vehicle. At least one of the activists was armed, and shots were exchanged.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson confirmed the stand-down order and said his priority was protecting the “right to protest.”
But ramming government vehicles and threatening government agents with weapons is not “protest.”
It’s something more like a word that was a favorite among Democrats until about five minutes ago: “insurrection.”
It’s even more like an insurrection when it’s openly supported by local authorities — like Johnson, who has told his citizens to “push back fiercely against this tyrant.”
Johnson, let it be noted, is one of the least popular mayors in America, with approval numbers often hitting the single digits this year.
He’s recovered somewhat in recent weeks, possibly on the strength of home-team sentiment stirred up by picking a fight with Trump.
And Trump got results anyway.
To fend off the National Guard’s arrival, Illinois politicos authorized the State Police to start arresting Antifa types who interfere with ICE raids and threaten federal buildings.
Better that than face more scrutiny.
As Chicago investor Jeffrey Carter explained on Substack, “Chicago is a center for drug trafficking in the US. The local machine politicians have made nice with the gangs and let them run wild as long as they get the vote out for them.”
(He’s hardly the first to say so: Over a decade ago, Chicago magazine published an exposé on Chicago politicians’ coziness with local gangs.)
“Career politicians favor anarchy,” Carter concludes.
Well, it certainly seems that way.
Blue states and cities around the country are pursuing policies that promote crime, rather than those that actually reduce crime: Arresting and imprisoning criminals.
This can’t be an accident. Like John Milton’s Chaos Umpire, they “more embroil the fray” by which they reign.
However, America is a federal system.
By design, state and local governments have the primary role in promoting local order — but the US Constitution guarantees that all Americans shall live under the blessings of liberty, and enjoy domestic tranquility.
Where state and local governments fail — or refuse — to protect their citizens’ legal and constitutional rights, the federal government has the power to step in.
As Betsy McCaughey has observed in these pages, the federal Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping power to use the National Guard — or active-duty federal troops — to protect citizens whenever he considers that local conditions are infringing on those citizens’ statutory and constitutional rights, or obstructing federal law enforcement.
The application of the act is left to the president’s discretion (“whenever he considers”), as is the means of its employment (“as he considers necessary”).
Perhaps San Francisco is a blue-city outlier, and residents of Chicago or Portland would oppose such federal intervention.
But even if it’s unpopular there, much of the rest of the country is appalled by this urban lawlessness.
By fighting ICE, and blocking federal action generally, local politicians risk placing themselves at war with the nation as a whole.
They won’t like how that turns out.
Just ask Jefferson Davis.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
