Fort Worth suffered four separate homicides last weekend — time for the White House to send in the National Guard.
The president has sent federal troops into other cities for much less. It started in the summer, when he called in soldiers to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Both Democratic-leaning metropolises were (and still are) experiencing major drops in violent crime. Los Angeles shows a 17% decrease in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period the year before and is on track for a 60-year low in homicides, according to a report by Major Cities Chiefs and local news organizations.
In Washington, crime has been dropping since a peak in 2023, with numbers going down long before the federal takeover in August. In 2024, homicides had dropped by 31% compared to the year before, and overall violent crime fell by about 35%, according to police data, with violent crime decreasing throughout the first half of the year.
The National Guard is now harassing law-abiding Americans and probably sleeping on (and sweeping) floors in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. Both Democrat-leaning cities are also experiencing big drops in violent crime. In the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, violent crime in Portland, local police say, is down “significantly,” with homicides dropping by 51%, the largest decrease of its kind in any major city.
There also have been historic drops in volent crime in Chicago. Homicides are down by 32.3% and overall violent crime by 21.6% compared to the previous years. If you’re looking for lawless cities, the ones the president is attacking aren’t them.
The courts have pushed back on his incursions, calling his tactics unlawful and unconstitutional. In states with Republican governors, the situation is a little different. They’re asking for the president to go after their blue cities (only), which means there’s less legal recourse because the governors requested the assistance.
Anyone with a brain knows it’s all nonsense, just an effort by a low-polling autocrat in the making to create enough turmoil to cancel the midterms (that his side will most assuredly lose) and to keep the world from talking about his name appearing in the files of one of his best friends, a “terrific guy,” and history’s most notorious pedophile. (If “Donald Trump” or some version thereof is not in the Epstein files, they would have appeared on your iPhone U2-style on Day 1. The entire reason Republican legislators just shut down the government is to avoid a vote to release all those sordid names.)
After the attacks in Fort Worth, Fort Worth Police Chief Eddie Garcia held a press conference in which he asserted that the city is still “a very safe city.”
He continued, “What often gets forgotten is the overall crime stats of the city that our violent crime continues to go down.”
Overall crime — violent crime — is down in all the cities to which the president has sent federal troops (who most certainly would rather be at home with their feet up). If this level of governmental intimidation and intrusion does not concern you, then I’m afraid you belong to a cult and the Founding Fathers are shaking their heads in shame at you. — Anthony Mariani
Correction
In our annual Best Of issue, a critic incorrectly identified Cancun Mexican Restaurant as a new establishment when it’s actually 25 years old. We regret the error. — A.M.
This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
