* Washington Letter: Fear and Loathing in DC- David Stringer, Publisher

[Editor’s Note:  Our Publisher, David Stringer, Reports from Washington]

The barricades are going up on Pennsylvania Avenue along with a heated grandstand tricked out with  bulletproof  glass for the VIP’s.  As an army of Trumpers prepares to descend on Washington, DC, a sullen fatalism has settled on the local elites. Cops are everywhere. One of  Washington’s best kept  secrets is that the ‘Capitol of The Free World’  as it likes to be known is  the most  heavily policed city in the  world.  Along with the four thousand strong DC police force, the elite of federal law enforcement–the FBI, DEA, ATF,  ICE,  Secret Service, Capitol Police, Park Police, and Uniformed White House police are all here with boots, badges and military style  weapons. It has been that way for decades without any noticeable effect on crime.

Assaults, robberies  and  carjackings are everyday occurrences on the streets of Washington. It’s an unusual week when there aren’t  several  murders. Most of the killings are Black on Black shootings that go unsolved. The DC Police only make arrests in half the cases. Among those formally charged, half escape conviction.  I used to  jokingly tell my  clients  “If you need to kill someone,  do it in DC.   You’ve got a 75%  chance of  getting  away with it.”

With  the ‘second coming’ of  Donald Trump,  change is in the air. DC elites are nervous. And well they should be.  Anti-Washington rhetoric is a staple of Republican politics. But this time it may be different. D.C. is on the new President’s radar as never before. He’s put Elon Musk in charge of DOGE—a guy with a reputation for getting things done.  For the Washington SWAMP, it’s a time of fear and loathing.

Our Capitol City and surrounding suburbs are among the most oppositional regions of the country to Republicans generally and Donald Trump in particular.  As Old Guard Republicans are busy inventing a narrative of Trump inroads with non-traditional demographics, it’s useful to keep  things in perspective.

In the District of Columbia where Blacks are the largest demographic and White liberals a close second, Kamala Harris received 92.5% of the vote  to Donald Trump’s 6.6%. In the suburbs surrounding DC, among the country’s most racially diverse and home to five of the country’s ten most affluent counties, every single one of them went for Harris. Here are the stats:

In Loudon  County, Virginia, our country’s Number One most affluent county,  Harris got 57% of the vote to  Trump’s 40%. It’s all downhill from there. Fairfax County, Virginia went for Harris by a margin  of over 2 to 1. Arlington County, Virginia  gave Harris 77.5% of the vote to just under 20% for  Trump.  Montgomery County, Maryland  voters went for Harris by 74.5% to 21.7% for Trump. And Prince Georges County, Maryland, where the demographics are 63% Black, 22%  Hispanic, and 11%  White,  voters gave 86% of their vote to Harris to just over 11% to Donald Trump.   So much for making inroads with non-traditional demographics.

Compare these numbers to Trump’s national popular vote victory of  49.9 % to 48.3 for Harris, and an electoral college margin of 312 for Trump and 240 for Harris.  Among the mid-Atlantic states surrounding Washington DC,  only West Virginia, which is 92%  White, went for Trump.  Our new President has returned the favor  with unsparing frankness about the crime, squalor, and  ‘woke’  culture  of  the Washington metro area. There’s every reason to think he’s serious about reforming not  just the federal government but the federal city itself.

He made the same promise in 2016. But Trump’s first administration was thwarted  by endless investigations, court challenges and impeachment hearings. No other President has been sabotaged so effectively. But this time Trump is better prepared. And so are the people around  him.  Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, at least while they last,  may keep the wolves at bay.  There is a real chance of a ‘first hundred days’ that reverses the worst of the Biden policies and forges ahead with an  America First agenda. The idea of a smaller federal government strikes fear in the heart of  The Swamp  in exactly the same way a plant closing strikes fear in the heart of unionized workers. We can expect a scorched earth war of resistance every step of the way. But even if Trump  accomplishes just  10% of what he attempts,  it will  be  the first time in memory any President has reduced the size and reach  of the federal  government.

As I write this first Letter From Washington for Prescott eNews  I am again back on the front lines in DC. where I spent my career as an attorney. It was sixty years ago this month that I moved with my family from Anchorage, Alaska, to Washington DC. In  January 1965 Lyndon Johnson was being  inaugurated after a landslide victory over Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.  My Dad snagged VIP tickets  and insisted I bear witness to this historic event. We sat in bleachers directly across from the President’s grandstand on Pennsylvania Avenue. I was in my Holden  Caufield stage and could spot a phony a mile away.  I watched in disgust as LBJ and Lady Bird preened and mugged for the cameras.  I had read Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. At the age of 17,  I already knew which side I was  on.

In retrospect, LBJ’s Great Society was a decisive turning point in the destiny of our country. A few months after the Inauguration, I would bear witness to the birth of the Great Society as a Senate Intern. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which LBJ pushed thru following the assassination of President Kennedy – which Senator  Goldwater courageously opposed – fundamentally changed the balance of power between the states and federal  government.  But it was the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 which fundamentally changed our country’s Immigration policy and put the United States on a  path to the Great Replacement.

Bad laws can be fixed.  But demographic change, once it takes root, can never be undone.  For the United States, the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was the proverbial stake in the heart.  It presaged demographic change unprecedented in the history of nations. For anyone interested in the background,  Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation is still the best treatment of the subject.  Brimelow is a visionary who understood the legislation and saw the future.  His unflinching honesty on the immigration issue cost him  his editorship at National Review.

My decision to re-establish a foothold in Washington and write a Letter From Washington for eNews is driven by a sense that the second Trump administration is our country’s last chance. My prayer is that  President Trump’s America First policies will be as transformative in undoing decades of political and cultural rot as LBJ, Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden were in creating it. I’m encouraged in this view by  Arizona’s six Republican Congressman who are pledged to support President Trump and his promise  to Make America Great Again. Future Letters from Washington will follow Arizona’s Congressional Delegation and their efforts to save our people and the cause of freedom. Let it begin.