Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump took unprecedented steps toward federalizing Washington, D.C. on Monday, saying it’s needed to fight crime even as city leaders pointed to data showing violence is down. He took command of the police department and deployed the National Guard under laws and Constitutional powers that give the federal government more sway over the nation’s capital than other cities. Its historically majority Black population wasn’t electing its own city council and mayor until 1973, when Republican President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act. The measure still left significant power to the president and Congress, though...

Michigan drivers and taxpayers have been complaining about road and highway conditions for years. But the solutions policymakers have recently proposed ranged from the politically impossible, like raising the gas tax 45 cents per gallon, to financially-risky short-term fixes like borrowing billions in bonds to pay for teacher pension contributions so that money could be shifted to funding for roads. But it seems like Michigan lawmakers may be warming up to a long-term, sustainable, users-pay solution to achieving better roads: tolling. Lansing's interest in tolling has gone back decades but this year the state Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration...