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    ‘Looming over the city like gods’: the men who changed New York for better and worse

    Jonathan Mahler didn’t plan to publish his new book about New York City from 1986 to 1990, tumultuous years culminating in a historic mayoral election, amid a similarly dramatic campaign for city hall. But he’s not unhappy to do so.The Gods of New York tells how the Democrat Ed Koch sought a fourth term as mayor but by election year, 1989, was widely seen as an “incumbent plagued by scandal, just like Eric Adams now”, Mahler said.“We had Rudy Giuliani, the tough guy from the outer boroughs – in Giuliani’s case Brooklyn, now in Andrew Cuomo’s case, Queens. And then we had the candidate of color who was saying: ‘I’m going to take the city back for the people who are getting left out.’ It was David Dinkins then and it’s Zohran Mamdani now.”Wary of generalization, as befits a veteran New York Times reporter, Mahler nonetheless said that as the city “went through a big transformation” from 1986-90, so “it’s going through another now.”The Gods of New York is a sequel of sorts to Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning, Mahler’s book about the city in crisis in the late 70s. Turning to the late 80s, Mahler presents a riot of stories from a period beset by racial tensions, the crack epidemic, soaring crime, sensational cases and an economic boom overwhelmingly boosting the rich. Keeping ordinary New Yorkers in mind, Mahler nonetheless presents extraordinary characters.“I will confess I went back and forth on the title, which was suggested by a friend,” Mahler said. “I thought: ‘That’s the perfect title.’ And then a handful of people were like: ‘You can’t possibly call it The Gods of New York. Are you saying Donald Trump is a god? And Rudy?”Forty years ago, no one foresaw the Trump of today: occupying the White House, dividing America, Giuliani a shameless sidekick.“I was like: ‘Well, not gods in that sense. This is much more like the Greek gods. They were kind of on their own tabloid Mount Olympus. Really, what I meant was that [Trump, Giuliani and others] were looming over the city like gods, not necessarily benevolent. Remember, the Greek gods were … wrathful, vengeful and petty. That was definitely what I was going for. Less literal, more figurative. So I stuck with it.”View image in fullscreenReaders could do worse than make The Gods of New York a double bill with Paper of Wreckage, an acclaimed oral history of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post published last year, a chronicle of the gutter press and the stars.“All the characters were operating from the same playbook, in a way,” Mahler said of a cast that contains others still prominent, among them Spike Lee, then shooting his remarkable first films in Brooklyn, and the Rev Al Sharpton, a Black leader through the Howard Beach racist attack, the Tawana Brawley rape hoax and other scandals once boiling, now near-forgotten.“They were all trying to get the city’s attention and use that attention. We now use the term ‘attention economy’ all the time. This was really kind of the beginning of the attention economy and all these characters kind of intuitively understood that.The gay rights campaigner Larry Kramer “was organizing these incredibly in-your-face protests against the city and the country’s handling of Aids [that were] no different, in a way, from what Trump was doing and is still doing, which is trying to get people’s attention and keep it, trying to start a story and keep it going.“I’m not sure that I would have seen that parallel if I hadn’t seen Trump do it in 2016 when … I was working on reporting the [presidential] campaign. It was kind of crazy to watch him get elected, particularly as a New Yorker.”Working on The Gods of New York, Mahler saw Trump “using the same power to its ultimate effect: the insistence that he is never wrong, that you just keep moving forward. You act bulletproof, then you are bulletproof. I don’t know that I would have understood what he was doing in the 80s and what all these guys were doing if I hadn’t seen it play out on the biggest stage in recent years.”Kramer died in 2020, after giving a last interview to Mahler. In 2024, Trump surged back to power. Amid the fire and fury of the second term, reading about Trump in the 80s can feel a little jarring. As Mahler shows, even the Times was once drawn in.View image in fullscreen“There’s a great note in the Abe Rosenthal papers,” Mahler said, referring to the long-serving editor. “A staff member wrote him a note saying: ‘No wonder Donald Trump has such a huge ego: I don’t think anyone’s ever got on the cover of so many New York Times sections in such a short period of time.’“I guess in some ways that’s a failure on the part of the Times to see who Donald Trump was, but I think also the context is important. In that moment, New York was recovering from some really dark days. The city was in a real death spiral for years. And then along comes this guy ready to invest in New York in audacious ways, really doubling down on the city.“And so you can sort of understand why, if you’re an institution like the New York Times that is very connected to New York, much more so then than today … they might feel like: ‘Well, this guy believes in New York, he’s betting on New York,’ and you can see how that might earn him some goodwill.”Mahler also documents Trump’s disastrous fixation with Atlantic City, which he utterly failed to turn into a gambling hub, to his considerable cost; his callous treatment of women; his notorious call for the Central Park Five, Black youths ultimately shown to have been falsely convicted of rape, to be sentenced to death.Crime stories run through Mahler’s book. The so-called Preppy Murder also centers on Central Park, where Jennifer Levin’s body was discovered. Prosecutor Linda Fairstein emerges as a thwarted hero, aghast at suspect Robert Chambers’ protection by the Catholic church and escape from the harshest sentence. And yet Fairstein went on to help subject the Central Park Five to a historic miscarriage of justice.“She was so demonized after the Central Park Five,” Mahler said. “I think it was interesting to see these two cases sort of as a pair, and the way in which Fairstein was so bitter about how the Chambers case played out … and then not even a couple years later, she’s confronted with the chance to sort of make amends. Not that this was a conscious decision, but you could see how maybe she was more zealous than she should have been [regarding the Central Park Five], because she felt … unsatisfied with the resolution of the Chambers case.”A man who held the stage longer than most, Koch, is perhaps Mahler’s central character. At the start, the mayor is riding high. By the end, he’s been brought low.Mahler said: “His third term was pretty clearly a disaster. But I think of him as a really sympathetic character … someone who was so flawed but also so committed to New York … he really cared about the city. I think that’s a good lens through which to see his feud with Trump [over Trump’s real-estate plays], because Trump was in it for Trump and Koch knew that was not in the best interest of New York.”Koch will also be known to history for being gay but not coming out, his mayoralty covering the worst years of the Aids epidemic, campaigners such as Kramer raging.View image in fullscreenMahler tells that story, counting himself “very fortunate that the Times did a big piece a couple years ago about Koch’s sexuality, and kind of outed him. I feel like now … we all know this is how it was.”Was Koch a good mayor?“I think you would have to say yes and no,” Mahler said. “Though I’m not sure he had any other choice, as he had to do something to save the city, he set in motion this transformation, this shift toward private business that I guess we’re now seeing the sort of reaction against, with Zohran.”We’re back to the current campaign. Thirty-six years ago, in the election that ends Mahler’s book, Dinkins beat Koch in the Democratic primary then seized the big prize. Mahler rates the city’s first Black mayor as a good one “dealt a terrible hand”, the same fate that befell Benjamin Ward, the city’s first Black police commissioner. Dinkins served one term, losing to Giuliani in 1993. The city’s transformation continued. It always will, which helps make The Gods of New York such an enthralling read. The city Mahler shows is gone, but its stories remain.

    The Gods of New York is out now More

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    The Trump-Putin summit – podcast

    Last Friday, after weeks of speculation, Ukraine’s worst fears were confirmed: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were going to meet to discuss the future of Ukraine … and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited.With the summit between the two presidents set for Alaska on Friday, the Guardian’s central and eastern European correspondent Shaun Walker reports on what we know so far.What might a ceasefire deal negotiated between Russia and the US look like, how might it ever be enforced, and what do Ukrainians think about this meeting?The former British ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow tells Lucy Hough what it is like to negotiate with Putin and whether he believes a lasting peace in Ukraine is possible. More

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    Trump news at a glance: president’s Washington DC takeover condemned

    Donald Trump has seized control of Washington DC’s police force and ordered the national guard to the capital in an extraordinary move that bypassed the city’s elected leaders.The US president claimed his actions were needed to “rescue” Washington from a wave of lawlessness – but experts say his portrayal of crime there is rooted in false and misleading claims.“We’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said, adding he would also be “getting rid of the slums”.Trump warned that other major US cities with Democratic leadership could be next, including Chicago. “Hopefully LA is watching.”As he spoke, protesters against the move gathered outside the White House, while DC officials called his actions illegal.Here are the day’s key US politics stories at a glance.Trump seizes control of Washington DC policeDonald Trump has ordered the national guard to Washington DC and seized control of the city’s police force, describing a “lawless” city in ways that are sharply at odds with official crime statistics.The US president’s move was swiftly condemned as a “disgusting, dangerous and derogatory” assault on the political independence of a racially diverse city. The federal takeover is expected to be in effect for 30 days, the White House confirmed to the Guardian.Read the full storyTrump announces 90-day pause on China tariffsThe president has again delayed implementing sweeping tariffs on China, announcing another 90-day pause just hours before the last agreement between the world’s two largest economies was due to expire.Read the full storyTrump and Putin to discuss ‘land swapping’ at Ukraine war summitDonald Trump has confirmed that he and Vladimir Putin will discuss “land swapping” when they meet on Friday in Alaska for a high-stakes summit on the Russia-Ukraine war. But the US president expressed frustration with Volodymyr Zelenskyy for putting conditions on such a potential agreement.Read the full storyTrump tips Heritage Foundation economist as labor statistics chiefThe president has announced he is nominating EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nomination comes after Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, earlier this month following the release of a weak jobs report that he claimed, without evidence, had been “rigged”.Read the full storyGavin Newsom urges Trump to abandon Texas redistricting effortTexas Democrats once again stymied a Republican effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps at Donald Trump’s behest and California governor Gavin Newsom urged the president to stand down and defuse the redistricting arms race that has spread across the country. Enough Texas Democrats remained outside of the state on Monday to deny the Republican-led state legislature the quorum necessary to proceed with Trump’s desired congressional map.Read the full storyVeterans agency lost thousands of ‘core’ medical staff under TrumpThe Department of Veterans Affairs has lost thousands of healthcare professionals deemed “core” to the system’s ability to function and “without which mission-critical work cannot be completed”, agency records show. The number of medical staff on hand to treat veterans has fallen every month since Trump took office.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    The Trump administration’s immigration policies are affecting workers and driving, in part, a decline in tourism to Las Vegas, according to workers and the largest labor union in the state of Nevada.

    A federal judge has formally rejected the US justice department’s request to release transcripts of pre-indictment, grand jury interviews with witnesses in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 August 2025. More

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    Trump nominates Heritage Foundation economist as labor statistics chief

    Donald Trump has announced he is nominating EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.The nomination comes after Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, earlier this month following the release of a weak jobs report which he claimed, without evidence, had been “rigged”.Antoni, a longtime critic of the agency, had previously voiced concerns about revisions to the BLS jobs data.“There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data – that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years,” Antoni posted on X earlier this month.The Senate will have to confirm his nomination to lead the BLS, an independent agency under the labor department. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that former White House adviser and rightwing provocateur Steve Bannon had advocated for Antoni’s nomination.In a statement on X, labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Antoni would “provide the American people with fair and accurate economic data they can rely on”.The president’s shock firing of McEntarfer alarmed economists and statisticians – as well as some senior Republican lawmakers –who feared the move would undermine the credibility of the agency’s economic data – long seen as a gold standard. More

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    Gunman in CDC attack fired over 180 shots at building and broke 150 windows

    The man who attacked the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday fired more than 180 shots into the campus and broke about 150 windows, with bullets piercing “blast-resistant” windows and spattering glass shards into numerous rooms, according to information circulated internally at the agency.It may take weeks or even months to replace windows and clean up the damage, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention personnel said.A Georgia man who had blamed the Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal opened fire late on Friday, killing a police officer. No one at CDC was injured.The shooter was stopped by CDC security guards before driving to a nearby pharmacy and opening fire late Friday afternoon, a law enforcement official has told the AP. The official wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. The 30-year-old man, Patrick Joseph White, later died, but authorities haven’t said whether he was killed by police or killed himself.The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, traveled to Atlanta and on Monday met with the agency’s director, Susan Monarez.Monarez posted a statement on social media on Friday night that said at least four CDC buildings were hit in the attack.The extent of the damage became more clear during a weekend CDC leadership meeting. Two CDC employees who were told about what was discussed at the meeting described details to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal the information. Details also were also in an agency memo seen by an AP reporter.Building 21, which houses Monarez’s office, was hit by the largest number of bullets. CDC officials did not say if her office was hit.CDC employees were advised to work from home this week.Kennedy issued a statement on Saturday that said “no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,” and that top federal health officials were “actively supporting CDC staff”.He did not speak to the media during his visit on Monday.A retired CDC official, Stephan Monroe, said he worried about the long-term impact the attack would have on young scientists’ willingness to go to work for the government.“I’m concerned that this is going to be a generational hit,” said Monroe, speaking to a reporter near the corner where a poster had been set up in honor of David Rose, the officer who was killed.Kennedy was a leader in a national anti-vaccine movement before Donald Trump selected him to oversee federal health agencies, and has made false and misleading statements about the safety and effectiveness of about Covid-19 shots and other vaccines.Years of false rhetoric about vaccines and public health was bound to “take a toll on people’s mental health”, and “leads to violence”, said Tim Young, a CDC employee who retired in April.Dr Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general during President Trump’s first administration, said on Sunday that health leaders should appreciate the weight of their words.“We have to understand people are listening,” Adams told Face the Nation on CBS. “When you make claims that have been proven false time and time again about safety and efficacy of vaccines, that can cause unintended consequences.” More

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    ‘Red meat to throw to his base’: DC residents on Trump’s police takeover

    As Donald Trump convened reporters at the White House on Monday morning to announce his plans for sending the national guard on to Washington DC streets and taking over the police department, protesters gathered a block away to denounce what they saw as his plans to put the federal district under his thumb.“Nothing Trump is doing right now is about our safety,” Keya Chatterjee, executive director of Free DC, a group advocating for the city’s autonomy, told the 200 or so people gathered on a block of 16th Street Northwest that had once been called Black Lives Matter Plaza, before the city government ordered the name stripped shortly after Trump’s inauguration this year.“What we know from history is that authoritarians always want to control the capital and the people in the capital city. It’s because it’s the fastest way to silence dissent and to accelerate their agenda. And I want to be clear, this is not about crime. This is about what Trump is trying to do to DC in order to take over DC and silence us.”Lamont Mitchell was not so sure. A lifelong Washingtonian who resides among the poorer and more crime-stricken neighborhoods east of the Anacostia river, he regarded Trump’s plans for the homeless as “inhumane”, but was open to his ideas for making the city’s streets safer. Mitchell described how he avoids certain areas on drive way home for fear of being struck by a stray bullet, no longer walks down certain blocks, had his RV stolen and plans to buy a gun.“As a senior in Washington, I need to feel safe,” said 69-year-old Mitchell, who chairs the Anacostia Coordinating Council community organization. “We gotta take drastic action when drastic action is called for.”The overwhelmingly Democratic federal district is the latest American city to which Trump has deployed troops since taking office, after sending active-duty marines and national guard into Los Angeles in June to quell protests over immigration enforcement. This time, the foe is crime that the president argues is “out of control”, and the catalyst is the attack of a staffer from the “department of government efficiency” in a relatively safe neighborhood earlier this month.Mayor Muriel Bowser has called Trump’s intervention “unsettling and unprecedented”, as well as unwarranted. City leaders have pointed to statistics that show crimes such as robbery, homicide and assault with a deadly weapon are down, and violent crime hit a 30-year low in 2024.Yet Washington continues to struggle with rates of violent crime that are higher than cities with similar populations, according to the Real-Time Crime Index from AH Datalytics. Residents are used to hearing reports of violence, though much of it occurs in the city’s poorer, majority Black eastern third, far from the museums and monuments of the National Mall.They are also used to seeing a lot of police – about 50 law enforcement agencies are already in Washington DC, ranging from the citywide Metropolitan police department (MPD) to the obscure zoo police, FBI police and Federal Reserve police, which provide security around specific agencies.National guard troops and agents from the FBI and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) are now expected to be on the streets along those officers, but residents are unsure whether they will make much difference.“I tend to be pretty cynical about what the Trump administration is doing right now. This seems pretty clearly just like red meat to throw to his base, this announcement on a Monday,” said Brian Strege, a neighborhood commissioner in Navy Yard, where mobs of juveniles have appeared repeatedly over the summer, shooting off fireworks and harassing bystanders.“I get the sense it’s just going to be a lot of bored national guard troops wandering around the city.”Trump made mention of the disturbances in Navy Yard during his White House press conference, but Strege said the city had already taken steps to stop the disorder, including by instituting a nighttime curfew this summer for people under 18. Trump plans to take over the police department for 30 days – right around the time schools resume, and Strege said the teenagers typically stop showing up.View image in fullscreen“Thirty days from now is going to be September. Our juvenile crime is likely to decrease, because it always does. So, it sounds like they’re going to pretend that it went down because they did this big deployment,” he said. “I don’t see it helping really at all. I think our police force has actually been doing a pretty good job over the past few years.”Last Saturday night saw more teenagers flood Navy Yard, as well as a shooting. The following day, Edward Daniels, another neighborhood commissioner in the area, saw Ice agents patrolling the street, and at one point stopping some teenagers from riding bikes, which others had used in the past to harass people.Their presence, he said, didn’t make him feel safe, but rather concerned – did these agents know how to patrol a city? Were they coordinating with the police department?“It’s going to make things even more chaotic here and cause what I believe to be even more dangerous situations than what we’ve seen here on the ground,” he said.Across the Anacostia river, Sandra Seegars, a longtime anti-crime activist, welcomed Trump’s announcement. Her Congress Heights neighborhood has one of the highest homicide rates in the city, according to police data, and she was pleased to hear from a friend that federal agents had been spotted in a nearby park.“He’s going to make me feel safer,” Seegars said of Trump’s deployment. “I think he’s doing the right thing. He should have done it before now.” More

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    ‘Unsettling and unprecedented’: Washington DC mayor responds to Trump’s federal takeover of city police – live

    Bowser says that her office plans to follow the law, and cooperate with the federal government. The DC Home Rule Act requires the mayor to “provide the services” of the police department in the case of a declared emergency.Although, she notes that there is a “question about the subjectivity” of the declaration – referring to the recorded evidence of a dropping violent crime rate in DC. “While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” she adds.The mayor also says that she’s requested a meeting with attorney general Pam Bondi, who will temporarily oversee the Metropolitan police department.Bowser notes that all officers should be clearly identifiable: “a uniform, a badge, a jacket, so that people know that they are law enforcement”.The DC Council, the chief policy-making authority for the district, issued a statement calling Trump’s move to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department “unwarranted” and “a manufactured intrusion on local authority.”“Violent crime in the District is at the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years,” the statement said.“Federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department is unwarranted because there is no Federal emergency. Further, the National Guard has no public safety training or knowledge of local laws. The Guard’s role does not include investigating or solving crimes in the District. Calling out the National Guard is an unnecessary deployment with no real mission,” added the council.President Donald Trump said on Monday he met with Intel Corp’s chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, along with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and treasury secretary Scott Bessent.“The meeting was a very interesting one,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Mr. Tan and my Cabinet members are going to spend time together, and bring suggestions to me during the next week.”Trump’s remarks come just days after he called on the chief executive to resign, alleging Tan had ties to the Chinese Communist party.Trump plans to impose a 100% tariff on imported computer chips, a move experts warn could lead companies to pull back on production or raise prices, but could favor Intel as a US-based semiconductor firm.Tan had invested in hundreds of Chinese firms, some of which were linked to the Chinese military, Reuters reported in April.Over the weekend, more details emerged about the fatal attack on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that took place on Friday, killing a police officer. In case you missed it:

    We reported that the shooter had blamed a Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal. The suspect’s father contacted police and said his son was upset about the death of his dog, and had also become fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine.

    A union representing CDC employees demanded that the federal government condemn vaccine misinformation after it was known that the shooter blamed the Covid-19 vaccine. The CDC workers’ union said the deadly violence was not random and “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured”. It said vaccine misinformation had put scientists at risk.

    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation named Patrick Joseph White as the shooter. After firing shots at the CDC campus near Emory University on Friday, White was found dead on the second floor of the pharmacy building.
    Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has recently discussed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine with secretary of state Marco Rubio.On Monday, Yermak said in a post on X that Rubio was briefed “on active communications with our partners,” including a meeting with US vice-president JD Vance.“We coordinated our positions ahead of important diplomatic steps planned for this week,” Yermak said in the post. “For Ukraine, the priority is a just and lasting peace, which requires an unconditional ceasefire as a prerequisite for substantive negotiations, as well as increased pressure on Russia to take real steps in this direction.”The post comes after UK foreign secretary David Lammy and Vance held a meeting with Ukrainian and European partners in Britain over the weekend, where leaders discussed the drive for peace in Ukraine.Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are slated to meet on Friday in Alaska to discuss ways forward to end the years-long war.CNN is reporting that national guard troops in the nation’s capital deployed by the Trump administration are not expected to openly carry rifles.An army official told the news outlet that troops will most likely have weapons nearby, like inside their trucks, if they absolutely need to access them for purposes of self-defense.Still, the official said it is always a possibility that troops could be ordered to operate differently.Gavin Newsom tried to play nice with Maga. But then in June, Donald Trump sent the national guard to LA, to quell immigration protests following Ice raids on the city, and the California governor went scorched-earth on the new administration.Since then Newsom’s social media exchanges with Trump and his White House have taunted and trolled, factchecked and alarm-sounded.Following Trump’s announcement on Monday that he’s activating the National Guard in the nation’s capital and taking over Washington’s police department, Newsom’s social media team set to work.Newsom warned in one post that other cities were next (and reminded followers that he had predicted this might happen back in June.)His press office grabbed a screenshot of the Trump officials looking bewildered.The team continued its full-frontal social assault, peppering Trump with tweets on the DC takeover, tariffs and his partisan redistricting plan. They deployed a Taco tariffs meme (Trump always chickens out) in response to the news that Trump and China extended their truce for another 90 days. They questioned how Attorney General Pam Bondi, who they said “couldn’t find the Epstein files” might fare as the head of the newly installed DC police department.They even fired off a Trump-style all-caps missive warning that California would redistrict if he did not call on Texas to stand down.

    Donald Trump is launching a federal takeover of DC Metropolitan police department (MPD), and deploying 800 national guardsmen to assist local law enforcement. He declared crime in the city “public safety emergency” in a press conference earlier, invoking a section of the DC Home Rule Act which places MPD under federal control. It’s expected to last 30 days, according to the White House.

    DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser said today that her office plans to comply and cooperate with federal government, but noted there are questions about the “subjectivity” of the emergency declaration. DC has seen a notable drop in violent crime, and even saw a record 30-year low in 2024, according to the justice department.

    Beyond Washington, Trump also previewed his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, claiming he will know “probably in the first two minutes” whether a peace deal can be made. Trump confirmed that while Volodymyr Zelenskyy wouldn’t be a part of the summit, he would call him first as soon as he saw a “fair deal” for a ceasefire emerge. He also didn’t rule out the possibility of a future trading relationship with Russia.

    And while the ongoing redistricting battle across the US wasn’t the main story of the day, California governor Gavin Newsom said that he will be “forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states” in a letter to Donald Trump. Newsom said he would be left with no choice if the president can’t get governor Greg Abbott to drop his push to redraw Texas’ congressional maps mid-decade.
    In a statement, Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who serves as the House minority leader, said that the president’s plan to federalise the DC police department and deploy the National Guard had “has no basis in law and will put the safety of the people of our Nation’s capital in danger”.He added:
    The violent crime rate in Washington DC is at a 30-year low. Donald Trump doesn’t care about public safety. On his first day in office, he pardoned hundreds of violent felons – many of whom brazenly assaulted law enforcement officers on January 6. We stand with the residents of the District of Columbia and reject this unjustified power grab as illegitimate.
    On the president’s statements earlier that he would be comfortable bringing the military into DC if he deems it necessary, Muriel Bowser says that “we don’t believe it’s legal to use the American military against American citizens on American soil”.Trump did, however, bring in out-of-state, unfederalised national guard troops during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Bowser does note that she suspected that the national guard would be deployed, but had no prior knowledge of the federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department.Donald Trump has once again delayed implementing sweeping tariffs on China, announcing another 90-day pause just hours before the last agreement between the world’s two largest economies was due to expire.On Monday, Trump signed an executive order extending the deadline for higher tariffs on China until 9 November, officials confirmed to Reuters.Chinese officials said earlier in the day they hoped the United States would strive for “positive” trade outcomes on Monday, as the 90-day detente reached between the two countries in May was due to expire.“We hope that the US will work with China to follow the important consensus reached during the phone call between the two heads of state … and strive for positive outcomes on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” a foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said in a statement.Bowser says that her office plans to follow the law, and cooperate with the federal government. The DC Home Rule Act requires the mayor to “provide the services” of the police department in the case of a declared emergency.Although, she notes that there is a “question about the subjectivity” of the declaration – referring to the recorded evidence of a dropping violent crime rate in DC. “While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” she adds.The mayor also says that she’s requested a meeting with attorney general Pam Bondi, who will temporarily oversee the Metropolitan police department.Bowser notes that all officers should be clearly identifiable: “a uniform, a badge, a jacket, so that people know that they are law enforcement”.The Democratic mayor of Washington DC, Muriel Bowser, is now addressing the president’s actions today.“I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat, that I believe that the president’s view of DC is shaped by his Covid-era experience during his first term,” she says. “It is true that those were more challenging times related to some issues. It is also true that we experienced a crime spike post-Covid, but we worked quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets, and gave our police officers more tools.”In a letter to the president, California governor Gavin Newsom has asked Donald Trump to call on Texas governor Greg Abbott – and other red states who are acting under the president’s direction – to end the ongoing efforts to redraw their states’ congressional maps mid-decade.This comes as the redistricting battle in Texas enters its second week. State Democrats broke quorum again on Friday in protest of a gerrymandered GOP-drawn map – that could lead Republicans to pick up five extra seats in the US House ahead of the 2026 midterms.In his letter Newsom said that he will be “forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states”, if Trump does not stand down. “You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy, while knowing that California any gains you hope to make,” he wrote.We’re seeing a number of reactions from DC city leaders on the president’s move to deploy the National Guard to the city, and federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department (MPD).DC’s attorney general Brian Schwalb wrote in a post on X that “the administration’s actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful”. He added that “Violent crime in DC reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year”.Similarly, DC congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said that the president’s actions are “a counterproductive use of DC’s resources to use for his own purposes”.By contrast, the DC Police Union, which represents more than 3,000 officers in the MPD, said in statement that it “acknowledges and supports” Donald Trump’s decision to federalise the department. “The Union agrees that crime is spiraling out of control, and immediate action is necessary to restore public safety”. The statement did underscore that the measure should be temporary, with “the ultimate goal of empowering a fully staffed and supported MPD to protect our city effectively”.The US conference of mayors has issued a statement that pushes back against the administration’s deployment of DC national guard troops.
    Crime rates are plummeting in cities across the United States, including in Washington, D.C., as documented in the FBI’s national crime rate report released just last week…America’s mayors never see takeovers by other levels of government as a tactic that has any track record of producing results. Local control is always best.
    But the conference’s president, Republican David Holt, mayor of Oklahoma City, did add that “we do see great value in partnership between levels of government, and we can imagine value in such partnerships in our nation’s capital”, in his statement.A White House official confirms to the Guardian that the federal takeover of the DC Metropolitan police department is expected to be in effect for 30 days.The official added that this would be “subject to change” consistent with the taskforce’s operations.Section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act stipulates that this would be the maximum length for a federal takeover, before requiring a joint resolution in Congress to extend the 30-day limit.A trade truce between the US and China was set to expire on Tuesday, threatening an escalation of economic tensions between the world’s two largest economies.Chinese officials said they hoped the United States would strive for “positive” trade outcomes on Monday, as the 90-day detente reached between the two countries in May was due to expire.“We hope that the US will work with China to follow the important consensus reached during the phone call between the two heads of state … and strive for positive outcomes on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” a foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said in a statement.Chinese and US officials said they expected the pause to be extended after the most recent round of trade talks held last month in Stockholm. Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said last week the US had “the makings” of a trade deal with China and that he was optimistic about a path forward.Donald Trump has yet to confirm any extension to the pause. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters on Monday. “They’ve been dealing quite nicely — the relationship is very good with President Xi and myself.”Failure to reach a deal would have major consequences. Trump had threatened tariffs on China as high as 245% with China threatening retaliatory tariffs of 125%, setting off a trade war between the world’s largest economies.The New York Times is reporting that the federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department is intended to last for 30 days, citing a White House official.Here is the full text of Donald Trump’s presidential memorandum “Restoring Law and Order in the District of Columbia”.
    Section 1. Background. As President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the District of Columbia National Guard, it is my solemn duty to protect law-abiding citizens from the destructive forces of criminal activity. That obligation applies with special force in our Nation’s capital, where, as Commander in Chief of the District of Columbia National Guard, I must also ensure that all citizens can avail themselves of the right to interact with their elected representatives, and that the Federal Government can properly function, without fear of being subjected to violent, menacing street crime.
    The local government of the District of Columbia has lost control of public order and safety in the city, as evidenced by the two embassy staffers who were murdered in May, the Congressional intern who was fatally shot a short distance from the White House in June, and the Administration staffer who was mercilessly beaten by a violent mob days ago. Citizens, tourists, and staff alike are unable to live peacefully in the Nation’s capital, which is under siege from violent crime. It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world. It is my duty to our citizens and Federal workers to secure the safety and the peaceful functioning of our Nation, the Federal Government, and our city.
    Sec. 2. Mobilizing the District of Columbia National Guard. Pursuant to my authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States and the District of Columbia, I direct the Secretary of Defense to mobilize the District of Columbia National Guard and order members to active service, in such numbers as he deems necessary, to address the epidemic of crime in our Nation’s capital. The mobilization and duration of duty shall remain in effect until I determine that conditions of law and order have been restored in the District of Columbia. Further, I direct the Secretary of Defense to coordinate with State Governors and authorize the orders of any additional members of the National Guard to active service, as he deems necessary and appropriate, to augment this mission.
    Sec. 3. General Provisions. This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
    DONALD J. TRUMP More