The president says he's facing an emergency situation. Citing a handful of anecdotes and some flimsy statistics, he claims unprecedented powers, daring Congress and the courts to challenge him. If he gets away with it, he goes further.
This week, the emergency was a "wave" of juvenile crime in Washington, D.C., and the supposed remedy was ordering 800 National Guard troops into the city and placing the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control. It's too soon to tell how this will end. But we know that it won't stop here.
Since taking office again in January, Trump has claimed broad new powers after making exaggerated claims of emergencies on everything from the economy to immigration. In each case, the handful of facts that he cites are not nearly persuasive enough to justify the powers he claims.
This one is personal for me. I've lived in D.C. for a decade. My husband runs the restaurant association of the region and once served as the city's first "night mayor" — a liaison between the mayor's office and the businesses that are the backbone of its nightlife.
We own a home in the district and have made a conscious decision to raise our family here. Public safety isn't an abstraction, it's personal. So let me be clear: D.C. is not the war zone Trump describes. His own Justice Department reports violent crime is at a 30-year low.
Sound familiar?
This is a preview of Symone D. Sanders Townsend's latest column. Read the full column here. For more thought-provoking insights from Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, watch "The Weeknight" every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
