In a new blog post, Cato’s Ryan Bourne challenges media reports that restaurant reservations in Washington, D.C. plunged due to Donald Trump’s federalization of local policing.

OpenTable showed that dining reservations for August 11–17 2025 were down 24 percent on the equivalent week last year. Bourne argues that this doesn’t represent an effect of the President’s policy, because “August 12 through August 18th, 2024, was last year’s D.C. summer Restaurant Week,” which “likely inflated” 2024 reservation numbers and exaggerated this year’s apparent decline. Indeed, the data for the first day of this year’s Restaurant Week, August 18th 2025, shows reservations up 29 percent compared with the last day of last year’s Restaurant Week (August 18th 2024).

“There are many objections, of course, in principle and practice, with President Trump’s federalization and militarization of D.C.’s policing,” Bourne writes. “But we don’t need to exaggerate the commercial impact.”

That tendency to focus on surface-level narratives instead of the deeper data — mirrors challenges in policing itself. In a new video, Strategic Misdirection: How Distorted Policing Priorities Leave Violent Crime Unsolved, Cato Legal Fellow, Mike Fox and Reason’s Billy Binion examine why clearance rates for violent crime remain low despite heavy police presence, and how misplaced priorities keep communities less safe.

If you would like to speak with Bourne or Fox on issues surrounding policing or economic impact of federalization, please feel free to reach out to Emily Salamon at esalamon@​cato.​org