The Return of the Teen Crime Panic

In the early hours of Sunday, August 3, 2025, Edward Coristine, a nineteen-year-old computer programmer who had achieved notoriety as an employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, was walking a friend back to her car near U Street in Washington, D.C., when they crossed paths with a group of teenagers. According to prosecutors, only one approached at first, demanding the keys to the car. More joined, and some of them punched Coristine, he later told the police, causing him to suffer abrasions, a bloody nose, and head swelling. (He refused medical attention on the scene but subsequently told Fox News’s Jesse Watters that he had a broken nose and a concussion.) Police quickly arrived, and the group fled with Coristine’s iPhone.By Tuesday President Donald Trump had posted a photo of a blood-streaked Coristine on Truth Social along with a warning that crime in the District was “out of control.” Within days he announced a federal takeover of D.C., using the threat of teenage “thugs” attacking “innocent Citizens” as a pretext for sending in the National Guard—part of a playbook he would subsequently deploy in other Democrat-controlled cities. (A person close to the case ...