Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Shocking Collapse of Washington, D.C.

Under the watch of far-left Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser, the nation’s capital has become rife with violence, criminality, and street mayhem—and there’s no end in sight.

First elected in 2015, Bowser has overseen several key turning points in Washington’s decay—perhaps the most notable of which is the District’s rampant crime problem.

Since Bowser took office, D.C. crime has catapulted to unprecedented highs: violent crime is up nearly 40 percent from 2022—with robberies up 68 percent, motor vehicle theft up 100 percent, and arson up a shocking 200 percent.

The city is also set to surpass 200 homicides for the third consecutive year, and the homicide rate is up nearly 30 percent from last year. In 2014, the year before Bowser took office, the city saw 15.9 murders per 100,000 residents. In 2015, Bowser’s first year in office, that number shot up to 24.1. Last year it was 28.5 – the highest in two decades.

According to D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee, “the average homicide suspect has been arrested eleven times prior to them committing a homicide.” His seemingly simple solution to the problem is one that Bowser has apparently been unwilling to implement: “keep violent people in jail.”

Carjackings are also on the upswing in the nation’s capital. Prior to the COVID pandemic, the District averaged one carjacking every three days—but from 2020 through 2023, there has been an average of one carjacking every day.

Of particular concern is the fact that many carjackings are committed by teenagers. Back in 2021, a 13 and 15-year-old girl were arrested after an attempted carjacking left the owner of the vehicle dead.

The soaring crime rates have come largely in the months and years since the George Floyd riots of 2020, during which Bowser effectively turned the streets of Washington over to activists who set the city ablaze amid night after night of relentless rioting.

In addition to showing “solidarity” with the rioters by marching in the street herself, Bowser used the occasion to permanently rename a section of road just north of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” in a clear attempted snub of former President Donald Trump. She then commissioned a local “artist” to emblazon “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in large, yellow letters across the street.

Along with her greenlighting the District’s out-of-control crime, Bowser has also been a paragon of left-wing hypocrisy. When Texas Governor Greg Abbott started sending buses full of illegal aliens to Democrat-run cities like Washington, Bowser—a known open borders fanatic who up to that point had remained completely silent on the Biden border crisis—complained about illegal aliens being transported up to her home turf. “This is a very significant issue,” Bowser said in the summer of 2022. “Local taxpayers are not picking up the tab. They should not pick up the tab. We really need a coordinated federal response.”

Yet, during the Trump administration, Bowser insisted Trump’s immigration policies contradicted “our D.C. values.”

“Regardless of immigration status, immigrants in D.C. are our neighbors, coworkers, family members, and valued members of our community,” she wrote in a statement. “Washington, D.C., remains a proud sanctuary city, and we are committed to protecting the rights of all our immigrant families” in the face of deportation threats.

“We will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with our immigrant neighbors this week and every week,” she continued, But in typical progressive fashion, three years later, Bowser proceeded to declare a public emergency upon the arrival of more migrants, apparently deciding that she had had enough of her “immigrant neighbors”—and that her so-called “D.C. values” no longer applied.

Bowser also demonstrated an extraordinary lack of self-awareness when she—just days after imposing a citywide mask mandate—was caught maskless at an indoor event. And when Trump was in office, she repeatedly used the pulpit of her mayorship of the nation’s capital to clash with the former president and other conservatives—repeatedly calling Trump a “bully” and accusing him of mimicking dictators.

Ultimately, Mayor Bowser’s leadership of Washington is a case study in the perils of lopsided Democrat government and the far-left leadership of our nation’s cities. Though the tide of crime, corruption, and chaos inflicting Washington’s streets is unlikely to turn anytime soon, Bowser’s disastrous leadership serves as a major warning to voters throughout the country of the failures of liberal governance.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.