A seemingly throwaway line in a now viral interview by Tucker Carlson of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) put Maine Senator Susan Collins briefly in the spotlight as the staunch ally of Israel and one-time presidential candidate suggested his colleague from the Pine Tree State is partially to blame for Washington D.C. effectively becoming a pile of “garbage.”
“When am I going to see a Republican senator say: ‘I just walked to work this morning over people dying of drug overdoses, and we’re going to shut this place down unless they fix it’ … why don’t Republicans assert their constitutional authority over the city, don’t they control the Congress … who’s against that?” Carlson asked Sen. Cruz.
“Susan Collins is really vocally against it,” Cruz shot back after the briefest of pauses. During the COVID pandemic period, Cruz explained, the District was going to throw the 40 percent of public school students who were not vaccinated on the streets and when he put a measure on the Senate floor to block the city’s vaccinate or no school ultimatum, it was Sen. Collins who argued that would violate DC’s “home rule.”
Few would disagree that the nation’s capital city is a violent and dangerous place. In 2023, the city ranked fourth most deadly in America after New Orleans, St. Louis and Detroit. While its mayor touted a relative improvement in 2024, DC has consistently been considered one of the least safe urban centers in America for decades.
While the murder of two Israeli diplomats in front of a Jewish museum in DC last month appears to have been a politically-motivated event, less public are the 3,469 violent crimes that occurred on its streets in 2024, which was actually celebrated as a 30-year low compared to the standard fare Washington residents have come to expect.
“As if that’s not frustrating enough, only 2,218 cases (39.9%) of the 5,558 arrests resulted in a conviction for any criminal offense, although 279 cases (7.5%) are still pending. Of those 2,218 convictions, 654 (29.5%) were for misdemeanors and 1,564 (70.5%) for felonies. Out of the 1,564 felony convictions, 85 defendants have yet to be sentenced,” Charles Stimson of the Heritage Foundation wrote in The Washington Times earlier this year, referencing 2023 statistics.
Because DC is a federal district, its criminal prosecution unit sits inside the U.S. Attorney’s office which, in recent years, has busied itself largely with politically-motivated prosecutions and given relatively short shrift to the killers, robbers and rapists who routinely prowl Washington streets.
Is “home rule” really working for Washington? President Donald Trump doesn’t think so, and neither do some Republicans in Congress. In February, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the BOWSER Act, named after current DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, to end home rule. Last week, a companion bill was debated on the House floor.
Meanwhile, Democrats have for years been pushing DC statehood because the overwhelming blue city would give them two more seats in the Senate. Little focus has been paid in this debate to surging violent crime and a failing city government.
“There is a mix of governing authorities that have jurisdiction of District of Columbia. I am strongly opposed to DC statehood, but there are many functions that the DC government engages in that are best handled at the local level. The notion that Congress should serve in the role of Governor, legislature, city council, and school board for the District of Columbia would lead to inefficiencies and confusion, and is something that I have consistently opposed,” Collins told The Maine Wire in response to a question about Cruz’s statement on the Carlson show.
“I also opposed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidance on school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic and repeatedly underscored the need to reopen schools at hearings with leadership from the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services,” she added.
Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press-time.
