As President Donald Trump continues to name out city cities led by Black mayors amid his proclaimed “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., Wes Moore, the governor of neighboring Maryland, has invited the president to go to his state for a strolling tour of Baltimore.
The invitation, which was included in a letter addressed to Trump on Thursday, is meant to showcase Baltimore’s progress in lowering crime charges lately.
“Within the first six months of 2025, the Baltimore Police Division continued to see double-digit reductions in gun violence, together with a 22% lower in homicides and a 19% lower in non-fatal shootings from the 12 months earlier than,” Moore informed the president. He added, “We’re at present on monitor to have the bottom variety of homicides in Baltimore Metropolis since we started formally holding crime statistics.”
Moore, Maryland’s first Black governor, highlighted that homicides in Maryland have additionally been down 20% statewide since he took workplace two and a half years in the past.
The Maryland governor, a former U.S. Military captain who was deployed in Afghanistan, has been a vocal critic of Trump’s deployment of the Nationwide Guard in D.C. and his threats to do the identical in cities like Baltimore, which the president has stated are “up to now gone” because it pertains to crime.
Final week, Trump personally referred to as out Moore after the Maryland chief stated that the navy shouldn’t be educated to police and that it posed a hazard to U.S. residents.
“They discuss him as a candidate. He’s obtained no probability. The governor of Maryland….they are saying perhaps he’ll be a president. He’s not presidential timber [sic] in any respect,” stated Trump.
In his letter to the president, Moore stated, “You responded to my considerations in regards to the deployment of Nationwide Guard personnel for municipal policing in Washington, D.C. by insulting me personally from the Oval Workplace. So I needed to write down as a way to make clear the foundation of my frustration and prolong an invite so that you can go to Maryland, the place we are able to talk about methods for efficient public security coverage.”
Gov. Moore touted his state’s dedication to spend money on “confirmed methods” to make neighborhoods safer. He stated that work is being achieved regardless of the Trump administration’s “hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in cuts to federal funding for violence intervention and gun violence prevention.”
The Maryland governor stated that, as a part of his state’s “broad strategy” to public security, he repeatedly joins neighborhood advocates and elected officers to “stroll via the neighborhoods most affected by violent crime.”
“I want to formally invite you to attend our subsequent public security stroll in September, at a date of your selecting,” Moore wrote to Trump, including, “In Maryland and in Baltimore, you can find individuals who share the identical dedication to public security that I’ve–and who wish to be a part of the answer, not the issue.”
Angela Angel, senior advisor at Black Lives Matter PAC, and a former Maryland state delegate, informed theGrio that President Trump ought to take Gov. Moore up on his provide.
“Come stroll the streets of Baltimore with us. See the work that’s been achieved right here in Maryland,” she stated. “As a former elected official, I problem him to do this. However we all know he gained’t. As a result of actual neighborhood engagement doesn’t make for good fascist theater.”
Angel applauded Gov. Moore and Baltimore Metropolis Mayor Brandon Scott for the efforts to “rework communities via actual management, not navy occupation” and their “dedication to public security that truly serves folks.”
Nonetheless, the BLM chief additionally had robust criticisms for Democrats.
“The place is their power for Black communities underneath siege?” she queried. “The place is the full-frontal press at each degree of presidency?”
