Crime is so bad that Democrats in San Francisco are voting to tighten up the Rule of Law. Crime is so bad that New York Democrats are sending in the National Guard. Crime is so bad that Joe Biden is going to tell us in tonight’s State of the Union Address how great a job he’s done reducing it.

A slight decrease from a record surge, he won’t say.

Crime is so bad that Democrats pretend we’re stuck in 1965. On March 7 that year, Alabama state troopers and police used billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas on a crowd of civil rights marchers in Selma. The moment changed history, but Democrats want to act as if nothing has changed — often speaking as if police are still the real problem.

On that note, we’ll start not in California or New York but in Washington, where State Patrol Trooper Christopher Gadd was killed by a drunk and high driver over the weekend. That driver is an illegal alien with a criminal history. Gadd was 27 and leaves behind a wife and two-year-old little girl.

Joe Biden won’t mention Gadd’s name tonight. Nor will he talk about Laken Riley or any of the other Americans killed, raped, robbed, or otherwise victimized by illegal aliens who shouldn’t be on American soil in the first place.

He will, however, blame Republicans for his border and crime crisis. The illegal alien in Washington came here prior to Biden’s watch, but he’s had numerous run-ins with law enforcement without deportation. And there have been some nine million illegal border crossings since Biden took office after telling would-be migrants to “surge” to the border. All of them are, by definition, criminals, some of them violently so.

Next up is San Francisco. Nancy Pelosi’s district has become infamous for its crime, drugs, and human feces on the streets. Even the “progressive” voters there are tired of it — the ones who haven’t fled for safer and greener pastures, anyway.

On Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly approved two law-and-order ballot measures. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that one would “loosen restrictions on the police” and another would “screen welfare recipients for drugs.” Moreover, “Voters also backed a slate of moderates to run the local Democratic County Central Committee, whose endorsements could reshape who is elected in San Francisco for years.”

The paper headlined the story, “Voters make it clear: San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city.”

We don’t buy that for a second, though we would call it progress.

Across the country in New York, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul is pretending to care about crime by dispatching the National Guard to New York City’s subway system. After a spate of sometimes brutal subway assaults, including three murders in January and February, Hochul took the surprising step, declaring, “These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated.”

Remember Daniel Penny? He’s the young Marine veteran who our Douglas Andrews said last summer “protected himself and his fellow New York City subway passengers by putting Jordan Neely, a deranged, homeless, and historically violent fellow passenger, in a carotid restraint that resulted in Neely’s death.” For his Good Samaritan heroism that didn’t go as planned, Penny faces manslaughter charges pushed by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. Yeah, that Alvin Bragg. In January, a judge refused to dismiss the charges.

But not to worry! Hochul is sending the National Guard.

New York’s subways have endured a 45% year-over-year increase in crime, which fits with the pattern above ground. New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban recently asserted, “A migrant crime wave is washing over our city.”

Predictably, that only led to dishonest “fact-checking” by the Leftmedia. “Quantifying crimes committed by migrants is nearly impossible because the police are not allowed to ask about a suspect’s immigration status,” huffed The New York Times. Just because the sanctuary state of New York doesn’t track illegal alien crime doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Either way, along with the Guard deployment, the New York Post reports that Hochul is pushing legislation that “would allow judges to ban anyone who has been convicted of an assault in transit from riding the subways or buses.”

Maybe the state could also pass a law making it a crime to enter the state after crossing the border illegally. Or to assault people in the first place.

What none of these Democrats will do is admit that their policies allowed crime to flourish. Beginning with the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 — fomented as some kind of “we’re stuck in 1965” response to George Floyd’s death — crime spiked nationwide, but especially in Democrat-run urban centers with soft-on-crime DAs and mayors.

We’re glad to see Democrats in various places respond by getting tougher. But we need real change, not political games.

Change is happening in Georgia, by the way, where the state legislature is working to follow Texas and pass legislation allowing local authorities to arrest suspected illegal aliens. Local groups are also working to unseat Deborah Gonzalez, the Democrat district attorney in Athens-Clarke County, where Riley was murdered. The Democrat mayor should be ousted, too.

Laken Riley, Christopher Gadd, and Daniel Penny are all, tragically, emblematic of Democrat policies. So are the countless other victims of crime committed by both citizens and illegals. We should remember and say their names. And until Democrats suffer at the ballot box for endangering the property, health, and lives of American citizens, they will continue to allow and even foment crime for political gain.