A.G. Gancarski
Safety first! That’s the argument a Florida candidate for Governor is making, suggesting that National Guard details on the streets of the nation’s capital should set trends in other cities where crime is deemed to be out of control.
“When you use commonsense policies, the American people say, ‘Well, why can’t we do the same thing where we live?’ Whether that’s Chicago, Los Angeles, Little Rock, St. Louis, New York City, you got to have people on the streets who are going to uphold the law,” U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds said on Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow.”
Donalds is a Republican from Naples, where a deployment of Guard troops seems less likely than the cities he outlines here. He gives President Donald Trump “full credit” for calling them into Washington, D.C., saying Democrats “lost their minds” over the proposal.
Donalds also tore into Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for not endorsing Trump’s plan, noting a decline in the Windy City’s police force.
“I would tell the people of Chicago: Your Mayor doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Donalds advised.
Donalds acknowledged that deployments in Chicago and other cities could be “tricky,” given “these Governors and these Mayors in part do have to request National Guard troops to come in to support law enforcement.”
He said “Governors have to step up and do the right thing” in these states and “not play politics” just to “try to get the Democratic nomination for President in 2028.”
A new Emerson College poll, meanwhile, says people see a National Guard patrol in Washington, D.C., more favorably than in other cities. While the Washington deployment is above water (48% support to 45% opposed), less than 45% of people support troops walking the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or Boston.
4 comments
just sayin
August 29, 2025 at 9:50 am
Does this man have a single policy idea of his own?
LawLib
August 29, 2025 at 10:01 am
Donald’s, just who is playing politics with National Guard deployments in Democratic led cities in our nation?? Most of the polls I’ve seen decry this federal intrusion into local/state law enforcement. Authoritarian Republicans showing their anti-democratic tendencies.
Maggie C
August 29, 2025 at 10:09 am
Uncle Tom here has indeed not had a single original idea — or thought, for that matter — since he entered the political stage. He definitely has no clue what Americans want, and I doubt he even knows what Floridians want.
Chuck Anziulewicz
August 29, 2025 at 10:28 am
The National Guard troops are being used as political props. First of all, the troops are all being shipped to DC by six REPUBLICAN goverors who are doing whatever it takes to curry favor with Donald Trump. Second, these troops are NOT being sent into high-crime areas. They are NOT intervening in gang warfare. Instead they are going onto the Washington Mall and mixed commercial-residential are where they are there to be simply SEEN.
And business is suffering as a result. According to WUSA, Washington DC’s CBS affiliate station, “D.C. restaurants saw a more than 25% drop in diners in the days following President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s police department, according to a WUSA9 analysis of reservation numbers.”On Monday, the day Trump announced he would invoke the D.C. Home Rule Act and federalize the city’s police department for the first time in history, online reservations in the District dropped by 16% compared to the same date in 2024, according to data from OpenTable. On Tuesday, as the National Guard began being mobilized in the District, reservations were 27% below their 2024 levels. On Wednesday they were down 31%.”