Washington Wednesday: Crime, quorums, and Cuomo

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 13th of August.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Joining us now … political scientist and WORLD Opinions Commentator Hunter Baker.

Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Hunter, on Monday, President Trump declared a public safety emergency in the District of Columbia over violent crime in Washington. This comes after a DOGE staffer was attacked during an attempted carjacking. The President is mobilizing the National Guard of D.C. to clean up the streets.

Let’s talk first about crime in D.C. There is some dispute over how to read the crime statistics, and whether they show violent crime going up or down. It seems like it would help to define some terms…What factors should we consider when seeing numbers and trends thrown around to support various arguments about crime?

BAKER: Well, there are going to be periods where you can point to a higher crime rate, for example, when we were at the peak use of crack cocaine or something like that, maybe in the 90s, that’s going to be worse than right now. But I think that if you were to look comparatively across cities, my understanding is, is that crime in D.C., maybe homicides, is significantly worse than New York City, and New York City is not known to be the most peaceful place in the world. So if you’re much worse than New York City, then that is not good. So I think that you cannot have the seat of government threatened by crime and chaos.

So generally speaking, it makes a certain amount of sense for Congress and or the president to exert some of this authority to try to settle things down.

EICHER: Hunter, 20 years ago … the D.C. metro police department had a homicide reduction plan with federal agents working alongside D.C. police … and there’s some evidence of success. So maybe it could work … and the D.C. Police Union said it welcomes the help. Here’s the union leader Gregg Pemberton. This audio is from News Nation:

PEMBERTON: I think the concern that we have from the rank and file is that we know is temporary. This, this authority that Trump invoked, is only valid for 30 days, and at the end of that 30 days, as you mentioned in the intro, has has to be established by Congress if it wants to go any further than that. So you know, we don't want to be left holding the bag when 1000 National Guardsmen and 500 Federal officers move on, and now we're here…

So Hunter, I’m curious about the politics of this. Are the politics such that Trump's action will create sufficient public pressure that Congress will have to go along and extend that authority? Or do you think that Pemberton has a point and has something really to be concerned about, that the 30 days come and go and then they’re back to this unacceptable status quo? What do you say?

BAKER: D.C. was governed by a special board up until, I guess maybe the beginning of the 1970s, and the history since then has not been great from any number of angles. It’s within relatively recent memory that the federal government had to take control of D.C.’s finances because of problems in the city’s fiscal management, and now we have this move to intercede because of crime.

I would argue that it might be worth thinking about going back to a higher level of supervision. I actually think that that would make sense, given the stakes of the business that has to be conducted in D.C.

MAST: Well Hunter, if the Texas Democrats quorum break was a Netflix show, I’d be binge watching to see what happens next…dozens of lawmakers are still refusing to return to their posts, and Texas governor Greg Abbott has asked the State Supreme Court to find the lawmakers’ seats vacated. President Trump got in on the action suggesting he’ll send out the FBI to track down the missing members.

Hunter, what do you expect to see in the finale of this situation? And is there more to the series, say a spin-off in California?

BAKER: Well, so this kind of thing has happened before. I think this is the third time in Texas within the past 20 years or so, and that comes with Republican domination of the state where Democrats really have no chance of gaining power in the legislature. And so when you’re deeply, deeply in the minority, walking out and busting the quorum is just about all you can do. Now, on the one hand, it’s understandable, maybe as a way to draw attention to their situation, maybe to punish the Republicans for doing something unusual, like redistricting in the middle of a 10-year cycle, but only—ultimately, they really don’t have a way to win this.

Ultimately, I think what history suggests is enough of them will drift back into the state, one way or the other, and the Republicans are going to prevail.

EICHER: Hunter, this has happened before with Texas Democrats, when Republicans were working on election security and redistricting. Democratic lawmakers ran away over a voting law proposed in 2021. Not only did they run away to try to stop it or at least slow it down, but there were also lawsuits, and those take a lot longer than walkouts do. So going back to 2021, the voting law that was passed in Texas—suit was filed against that, and it has wound its way through the courts over the last several years.

Finally it got to the point of just one step below the Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. We got a decision there over the last couple of days, and that law was upheld as constitutional.

BAKER: That’s right. They’re going to tighten up the mail voting requirements, and they’re also going to have stronger voter ID requirements. Now, I think that in most places, this would not be that controversial. The problem is, is that we have the civil rights history that the United States has. And so there were major abuses with regard to voting in the past, right? And so whenever we talk about doing things to shore up the voting system, the left tends to point back to that history and to sort of claim that we’re trying to bring back Jim Crow or something like that.

But actually I think that if we were to poll the American people, we would see that most people want a more secure voting system. We want to have faith in the result, and we want to reduce the opportunities to interfere with it or to game the system as much as possible. So I think that ultimately, the Republicans are going to win on this—win not only in the court of public opinion, but in the courts, as they’ve done.

EICHER: Now to New York … the Democratic nominee for mayor, Zoran Mamdani, appears to be leading the field in recent polls … with 35% in a crowded field … which is enough to be a pretty commanding lead. The old conservative commentator George Will appeared on Bill Maher’s show and had a provocative take. Let’s hear that.

WILL: I want him to win.
MAHER: You want him to win?
WILL: Yeah. I think every 20 years or so--
MAHER: Wait.
WILL: we need a-- [LAUGHTER] --every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again. Socialist slogan used to be workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. The new socialist slogan is, "Trust us, this time it won't be a mess."

Sounds like a little political vaccine … inject some of the bad stuff and build up the antibodies to resist the virus. Do you go along with George Will’s idea here that nothing generates a backlash against socialist ideas like a little socialism?

BAKER: I think that George Will is correct in terms of what would happen. I think that if Mom Donnie became mayor, he would quickly be overwhelmed by the problematic effects of those policies, and I think it would serve as a nice object lesson. On the other hand, we’re talking about a city of many millions of people, and I’m not sure I’d like to see them subjected to that. Now, of course, you know, elections have consequences, and people vote and they get what they voted for. But in my view, people need to think carefully. They need to think carefully about the idea—do we want a government-run grocery store, or are we engaging in a kind of wishing-makes-it-so public policy that to date never turns out well.

EICHER: Before we let you go … I do want to follow up on the notion of consolidating the field. The number two candidate is former Governor Andrew Cuomo. His idea is let’s have a poll mid-September and whoever is second place stays in and the others drop out and consolidate behind the number two to try to stop Mamdani. What do you think the likelihood of that is?

BAKER: It’s a good question. It really depends on whether there is an effective counter campaign. Cuomo, I think, does not have a great reputation in New York State. I don’t think that people are going to be eager to vote for Cuomo, whereas there’s going to be a fair amount of energy behind this young competitor who is leading the pack. So I think that even if you have somebody like Eric Adams dropping out and endorsing Cuomo, I’m not sure it’s going to change the result. So you could end up with sort of this strange interregnum in the history of the mayors of New York City.

MAST: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University and WORLD Opinions Contributor. Thanks so much!

BAKER: Thank you.

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