Photo: Alamy
Florida gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., is fighting to help President Donald Trump crack down on crime waves in Washington, D.C.
Even @MSNBC knows the violence in DC needs to end.
— Congressman Byron Donalds (@RepDonaldsPress) August 12, 2025
Democrats have lost the plot and must face the fact that people who live this everyday can't be gaslit into believing their lived-experiences are false.
🇺🇸STAND WITH THE TRUMP ADMIN
🇺🇸PASS THE DC CRIMES ACT
🇺🇸MAKE DC SAFE AGAIN https://t.co/s4Z54FPpRa
He reintroduced his DC Crimes Act, also known as the Make Everyone Safe Act, to bring the youth criminal offender status back down to the age of 18. Current youth offender policies have been utilized to protect criminals up to age 24 on the premise that young adults still have underdeveloped brains and are more prone to rehabilitation.
According to a 2020 Justice Policy Institute report on Emerging Adults in Washington, DC’s Justice System, Congress passed the Federal Youth Corrections Act (FYCA) in 1950. This incorporated the understanding that adults 24 and under have different cognitive and emotional responses than older adults. But it was repealed in 1984 due to spikes in crime among this demographic. By 1985, the Youth Rehabilitation Amendment Act (YRA) was put in place to offer alternative sentences for criminal offenders between the ages of 18 and 22.
The success of young adult crime policies that offer different punishments for young offenders has yet to be determined, as the report detailed that although adults ages 18-24 make up only 10 percent of the population, they make up 23 percent of arrests, 20 percent of which involve violent crime.
In 2022, retired police Chief Joel F. Shults reported that this especially harms the black community; however, while the majority of offenders in this age group are black, so are the majority of the victims, according to the National Police Association.
.@RepJamesComer: "What we're going to talk about in our committee hearing is also a bill filed by Byron Donalds. We passed that bill. It's called the [DC] CRIMES Act. It holds criminals accountable for committing crimes and that's what has not been happening in Washington, DC."… pic.twitter.com/wkGzxp3jBE
— Congressman Byron Donalds (@RepDonaldsPress) August 12, 2025
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is supporting Donalds’ bill. He stated in an interview with Rob Finnerty on Newsmax, shared on X, “There are no consequences for bad actions, and these kids know it, these criminals know it in Washington, DC, so they continue to commit crimes, and this bill passed the House last year. The Senate didn’t take it up.”
“We’re going to pass it out of the House again this year, we have new Senate leadership, and hopefully we’ll be able to pass that bill into law that will codify and go along with what President Trump’s trying to do, which is make Washington, DC, safer,” he concluded.
On Monday, RSBN reported that President Donald Trump announced he is federalizing Washington, D.C. to clean up the streets and “take our capital back.” If passed, the DC Crimes Act is expected to support this America First initiative.