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    Fulton county election board faces $10,000 a day fine for not appointing Republicans

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    The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.The county charter states that commissioners “shall” appoint two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their respective county party chairperson, for two-year terms. When commissioners rejected the nomination by Fulton county’s Republican party chair, the superior court judge David Emerson issued an order requiring the board to appoint them.In a civil contempt case that threatened jail time, Emerson found the Democratic commissioners have “been stubbornly litigious and acted in bad faith in its conduct prior to this litigation by its failure to comply with clear local legislation which forced the plaintiff to file this action,” Emerson’s ruling Wednesday states. Emerson awarded attorney’s fees to the Republican plaintiffs.The plaintiffs were seeking an order of both civil and criminal contempt for failing to comply with the order. Civil contempt has historically meant an ever-increasing series of daily fines until the board complies with the order. But a finding of criminal contempt would have meant jail time until enough Democratic commissioners agree to vote for the appointment.The Fulton county Republican party chair, Stephanie Endres, nominated Jason Frazier for a term and renominated Julie Adams to serve another term.Frazier is among the most prolific challengers of voter registrations in Georgia, and unsuccessfully sued Fulton county in federal court in 2024, attempting to force the board of registration and elections to purge nearly 2,000 Fulton county voters from the state’s rolls before the presidential election.Adams is a member of an election-denial activist network founded by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere. As a member of the Fulton county board of registration and elections, Adams refused to certify the May 2024 primary, which led to a Fulton county court case that ultimately compelled her to affirm the election.That case loomed large in court today. The court in Adams v Fulton county held that the act of certification was ministerial – a requirement, not a choice – because of the language in the law, noted Thomas L Oliver III, an attorney for the Republicans.Facing the court’s order, Adams ultimately complied, Oliver said. “Now they want to be on the other side of that argument. It’s pretty rich,” he added.In a previous ruling, Emerson said: “The court finds that the ‘shall’ as used here is mandatory, and the [board of commissioners] does not have discretion to disapprove an otherwise qualified nominee.” Emerson cited the mandatory nature of the language in the Adams case as applicable to the commissioners as well.Don Samuel, the county’s attorney, argued that the commissioners were refusing to complete the appointment because they were hoping to overturn the lower court’s order on appeal, and making the appointment would render an appeal moot. The ministerial function implicit in the language of the law of an elected official and an appointed official is a legal distinction for the appellate court, he said.“They are not defying this court out of disrespect of this court in any way,” Samuel said, acknowledging how their refusal to comply with the order looked in light of Democratic arguments about federal administration officials’ defiance of court orders. “We can’t help but read in the paper about the defiance of the judiciary,” he said. “We are not, despite the plaintiff’s overbroad argument here, we are not in defiance of the order. We’re trying to protect our rights in appeal.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFulton county has seven elected commissioners, five of whom are Democrats. The lawsuit only named those five: Dana Barrett, Mo Ivory, Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, Marvin Arrington and chair Robb Pitts. Pitts, Abdur-Rahman and Arrington did not vote on the appointment, leaving Barrett and Ivory to vote against it for a 2-2 tie.Social media messages from Ivory and Barrett were presented in court, in which the two Democrats pledged not to make the appointment.“Those who oversee elections must be fully independent and accountable,” Ivory said on Instagram.“No judge can compel any elected official to vote in any way,” said Barrett, also on Instagram. “Our elections are under attack in this country … This is just another arena where they’re trying to chip away at free and fair elections.”The law governing appointments to election boards in Georgia is an inconsistent patchwork. In neighboring Dekalb county, the chief judge of the county’s superior court is the appointment authority. Earlier this year, the judge allowed one controversial Republican nominee to be appointed while denying another. In Republican-controlled Cherokee county, an affluent northern suburb of Atlanta, county commissioners rejected the nomination of the county’s Democratic party to the election board, opting instead to find a Democrat they preferred to serve. More

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      Grand jury declines to indict alleged Washington DC sandwich thrower

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      Grand jurors have rebuffed federal prosecutors by refusing to approve a criminal indictment against a man who allegedly threw a sandwich at a law enforcement agent in protest against Donald Trump’s deployment of armed troops on the streets of Washington DC.It is the second time in recent days that a grand jury had declined to vote to indict a person accused of assaulting a federal officer and signaled strong public objection to Trump’s decision to send national guard troops and federal agents onto the streets of the US capital, purportedly to crack down on violent crime.The case of Sean Charles Dunn, who was accused of hurling the sub-style sandwich, became a cause celebre after video of the episode went viral on social media.Dunn, 37, a former justice department paralegal, was initially charged on 13 August after being accused of throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer who was patrolling an area of Washington’s north-west district known for its bars and restaurants with other agents.Footage shows a man, presumed to be Dunn, confronting an officer as he stood on the kerbside. He then threw a soft object at point-blank range, hitting the agent in the chest, before running off with the officer and several of his colleagues in pursuit.The complaint against Dunn states that he stood close to the officer and called him and his colleagues “fascists” and shouted: “I don’t want you in my city.”After the incident, the Trump administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed officers going to Dunn’s apartment, heightening the attention the case attracted. Posters depicting Dunn lofting a sandwich have since appeared around the nation’s capital.It is rare for federal prosecutors to fail to secure charges at a grand jury hearing, given that they control the information that jurors hear and defendants’ lawyers are prohibited from being in the courtroom.It is unclear if prosecutors will continue to seek to press charges against Dunn, which they could do by withdrawing the felony charge and refiling it as a misdemeanor, which does not need an indictment.But even that would amount to a symbolic climbdown for the Trump administration, which has demanded that offenses by prosecuted under the most serious federal charges, which carry heavier sentences.Dunn is due to appear before a magistrate judge on 4 September in a hearing intended to determine whether a crime was committed.The spurning of the indictment against him mirrors the case of Sidney Lori Reid, against whom federal prosecutors failed three times in 30 days to secure an indictment of a felony assault against an FBI officer, after she was arrested during an immigration protest last month.Prosecutors on Monday reduced the charges to a low-level misdemeanor, suggesting that they had inflated the accusations against her.On the same day, a judge dismissed all charges against a man who was arrested last week at a Trader Joe’s store after police alleged he had two handguns in his bag.Judge Zia M Faruqui said prosecutors had violated Torez Riley’s constitutional rights in charging him, declaring: “Lawlessness cannot come from the government.”A flurry of defendants have been charged with federal crimes over relatively minor infractions that would normally be handled by local courts, if they resulted in criminal charges at all, since Trump’s highly controversial troop deployment. Critics have condemned the deployment as an attempted military takeover of a city run by the president’s Democratic opponents and motivated by a desire to intimidate rather than to stamp out crime. More

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      Trump signs executive order to eliminate cashless bail in Washington

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      Donald Trump on Monday signed two executive orders aimed at eliminating cashless bail for people accused of crimes in Washington DC and other jurisdictions, an escalation in his efforts to take control of law enforcement in the capital city and beyond.The executive orders direct Washington and other localities to end their cashless bail programs, which allow people charged with crimes to leave jail while they await trial without paying what can be large sums of money. The order says that the federal government will reconsider funding decisions, services or approvals if Washington does not comply.One order also instructs the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to identify jurisdictions across the US that have cashless bail policies and revokes federal funds and grants that go to those jurisdictions, according to the White House.“They kill people and they get out,” Trump said about cashless bail in the Oval Office when he announced the order. “We’re ending it, but we’re starting by ending it in DC, and that we have the right to do through federalization,” he added.Data shows that crime does not increase by any significant margin in places that have implemented cashless bail programs, as Washington did in 1992, and people released from prison without posting bond are extremely unlikely to commit violent crime. Nevertheless, Trump has taken aim at the policy and claimed it has contributed to the city’s violent crime rate, which last year hit a 30 year low.Washington was one of the first jurisdictions to enact cashless bail, starting a trend of cities and states moving to a system that doesn’t lock people up for their inability to pay. In 2023, Illinois became the first state to enact cashless bail.“You don’t even have to go to court sometimes,” Trump claimed falsely about Illinois in the White House Monday.Trump has also falsely said that under cashless bail policies, “somebody murders somebody and they’re out on no cash bail before the day is out.” In Washington and other places with cashless bail, a judge can make a determination to detail someone pre-trial if they feel that the accused is a danger to the community or a flight risk, as is often the case with those accused of murder.Jeremy Cherson, the director of communications for the Bail Project said Trump’s executive order would deepen inequities and waste taxpayer dollars. The Bail Project is a national organization that pushes for bail-related policy change and provides free bail assistance to low income people.“The data is clear that bail reform has not led to increased crime,” he said. “While the president is right that the current system is broken, he is wrong about the solution.”“What we’re pursuing is a system where safety, not wealth, determines release pretrial, and if you look at a lot of the jurisdictions across the country that have minimized or eliminated the use of cash bail, that’s what their systems do.” More

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      Trump is wrong about crime – but right about the fear of it | Austin Sarat

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      In most of America’s largest cities, crime, especially violent crime, is down. But the fear of crime is increasing.Donald Trump has made a career out of ignoring the reality of crime rates and of stoking that fear. Well before he entered politics and throughout his political career, he has talked about city life as life in a proverbial jungle.In 2022, he talked frequently about the “ blood-soaked streets of our once-great cities” and said: “Cities are rotting, and they are indeed cesspools of blood.” And he never strays far from that playbook.On 11 August, the president returned to his demagogic characterizations of America’s urban areas when he deployed national guard and federal law enforcement agents to the streets of Washington DC. He said the city was awash in “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor”.He claimed that “crime is out of control in the District of Columbia”. In fact, violent crime in the District of Columbia is the lowest it has been in more than three decades.But Trump didn’t just ignore the data. He leaned into a different problem in Washington: fear of crime.Referring to Washingtonians who like to jog, the president said: “People tell me they can’t run any more. They’re just afraid.”And he was not content to target just the nation’s capital. “You look at Chicago,” he said, “how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities in a very bad – New York is a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that any more. They’re so far gone. We’re not going to let it happen.”Never mind that, like Washington, as CNN reports, Chicago, Baltimore and other cities also have had “substantial declines in 2024, 2025 or both”.So far, Democratic political leaders have repeated those statistics as if that in itself will carry the day. In so doing, they are repeating a mistake made by Joe Biden when he asked people to focus on economic statistics that showed declines in the rate of inflation rather than their lived reality.Unfortunately, the statistics matter much less than the fear of crime. That fear is a real problem, and Democrats need to acknowledge and respond to it.Let’s start with the District of Columbia. A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in mid-August found that 31% of Washingtonians said crime was an “‘extremely serious’ or a ‘very serious’” problem in the District. Last year, the same poll found that number to be 65%. Some of this decline can be attributed to the fact that residents of the city overwhelmingly oppose what the president has done and don’t want to be seen as lending it legitimacy.But however you measure it, fear of crime is not just a District of Columbia problem.In New York City, 75% of residents say that crime is a serious problem. As an essay posted on Vital City puts it: “Whatever crime statistics show, most of us are worried that it could happen to us. That feeling is nebulous and hard to overcome … We the people say crime is a serious problem, and most of us will continue, for now, to look over our shoulders and worry when someone we love leaves home.”National surveys suggest that “Americans’ fear of crime is at a 30-year high”. Other survey evidence highlights the fact that “73% say crime has ‘some’ or ‘major’ impact on how they live their lives”. Among Black and Hispanic Americans, that number is even higher.Not surprisingly, many Americans now favor long prison sentences for convicted criminals.Explanations vary for the paradox that as crime rates fall, fear of crime persists.Crime stories often dominate local news coverage, and the more gruesome the crime, the greater the coverage. That is why fear of crime is driven not by a dispassionate examination of data but by the power of individual stories of victimization.That pattern is intensified by social media. Studies have shown that social media usage stokes crime fear.Demographics also matter. Crime fears are greater among older people, and, as the population ages, those fears increase.Fear of crime is also associated with a generalized sense of disorderliness in our communities and the world. And, as the economist and criminal justice scholar John Roman argues, because “our collective tolerance for disorder is declining”, our fear of crime is increasing.Of course, it doesn’t help that Trump uses the bully pulpit and his public visibility to emphasize and exaggerate the crime problem as part of his authoritarian project. But blaming Trump for the fear of crime problem is not any more of a winning political strategy than reciting the latest data on falling crime rates.Democrats can’t and shouldn’t run away from either the crime problem or the fear of crime problem. They will have no credibility in offering responses to the former until they establish credibility on the latter.They would be well-advised to tackle the fear problem openly and to embrace responses, like investing in programs that repair public spaces and revitalize neighborhoods, while also being clear that people who fear crime have reason to want to see more police on the street.Trump knows the potency of the fear of the crime problem. That’s why he boasted that after his deployment of national guard in Washington, DC, “People are feeling safe already … They’re not afraid any more.”But we don’t need the national guard to do what local police can do when they are well-trained, responsive to the needs of all communities and well-resourced. The best long-term response to the president’s agenda for American cities is to make sure that the people who live there have more confidence in their safety and less fear of crime.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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      US immigration officials intend to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Uganda

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      US immigration officials said they intend to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Uganda, after he declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.The Costa Rica offer came late on Thursday, after it was clear that the Salvadorian national would probably be released from a Tennessee jail the following day.Ábrego declined to extend his stay in jail and was released on Friday to await trial in Maryland with his family. Later that day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified his attorneys that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.According to official documents posted online, the DHS told Ábrego’s attorneys on Friday afternoon that the “DHS may remove your client … to Uganda no earlier than 72 hours from now (absent weekends)”.Immigration and Customs Enforcement also directed Ábrego to report to its Baltimore office on Monday, according to records posted online.Ábrego entered the US without permission in about 2011 as a teenager after fleeing gang violence. He was subsequently afforded a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador.The 30-year-old was initially deported by federal immigration officials in March. Though the Trump administration admitted that Ábrego’s deportation was an “administrative error”, officials have repeatedly accused him of being affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to charge him with crimes related to human smuggling, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.Before his deportation, Ábrego had lived in Maryland for more than a decade, working in construction while being married to an American wife.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Ábrego was deemed eligible for pretrial release, he had remained in jail at the request of his attorneys, who feared the Republican administration could try to immediately deport him again if he were freed. Those fears were somewhat allayed by a recent ruling in a separate case in Maryland, which requires immigration officials to allow Ábrego time to mount a defense.Separately, in a statement earlier this week, Uganda said that it agreed to a “temporary agreement” with the US to accept some asylum seekers who are deported from the country.Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, permanent secretary of Uganda’s foreign ministry, said: “The agreement is in respect of third country nationals who may not be granted asylum in the United States but are reluctant to or may have concerns about returning to their countries of origin.”Waiswa added: “This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted. Uganda also prefers that individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda. The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented.” More

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      JD Vance booed during hamburger handout to national guard troops in DC

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      JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.Handing out burgers to troops deployed last week by Donald Trump, at the station’s Shake Shack alongside the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, Vance told soldiers “we appreciate everything you’re doing” and asserted: “We brought some law and order back.” Meanwhile, a crowd of demonstrators protested outside.The crowd shouted slogans such as “Free DC!” and “From DC to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Some also shouted expletives as the three men walked into Union Station and gathered at the restaurant, and continued as they tried to speak to reporters and eventually left.Asked why the troops were at the station instead of parts of the city where crime rates were statistically higher, Vance claimed it was being overrun with “vagrants, drug addicts, the chronically homeless and the mentally ill” and that visitors didn’t feel safe. “This should be a monument to American greatness,” he said, later adding: “We do not have to live like this.”Addressing the protests, Vance said: “It’s kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they’ve never felt danger in their entire lives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAppropriating the protesters’ chants, he added: “Let’s free Washington DC, so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free DC from.”His sentiments were echoed by Miller, who belittled those who had gathered in protest as “crazy communists”. “We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington DC,” he said.Last week, the president federalized the city’s Metropolitan police department and directed Hegseth to mobilize national guard troops, claiming he was cracking down on “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” in the nation’s “lawless” capital, despite a sharply falling crime rate with violent crime at a 30-year low.An estimated 1,900 troops are being deployed in DC. More than half are coming from Republican-led states including Louisiana and South Carolina. Besides Union Station, troops have mostly been spotted in downtown areas, including the National Mall and metro stops. More

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      Federal prosecutors launch inquiry into Washington DC police over allegedly fudged crime statistics

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      Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Washington DC police systematically manipulated crime statistics to make the city appear safer than it actually is.The probe, anonymous sources tell the Washington Post, NBC News and Fox News, being conducted by the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia under Jeanine Pirro, is the latest escalation between the Trump administration and DC officials over federal control of local policing.The justice department did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation.Trump somewhat confirmed the investigation on Monday, writing on social media that DC provided “fake crime numbers” to create a “false illusion of safety” and officials were “under serious investigation”.The federal investigation reportedly started after Cmdr Michael Pulliam was suspended in May by the Metropolitan police department for allegedly altering crime data. The local NBC station reported last month that Pulliam, the former commander of Washington DC’s 3rd district that patrols the Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights neighborhoods, faced accusations from the police union of falsifying data, including misreporting stabbings and carjackings as lesser offenses. Pulliam denies the charges.But federal prosecutors are now examining potential wrongdoing by multiple police and city officials, according to law enforcement sources.DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, has repeatedly cited police data showing violent crime down by 27% over the last year to argue against Trump’s federal takeover of local police. The department has separately reported that violent crime fell by 35% in 2024.The chief of DC’s police union, Gregg Pemberton – who supports federal control – calls both sets of statistics “preposterous”, and said officers know the reality on the streets.“We go call to call to call – robbery to carjacking to stabbing to shooting,” Pemberton told NBC News Washington last week. “Crime is ubiquitous in every quadrant of the city.”Pemberton claimed that Washington DC police have a directive to underreport violent crimes.“What we’ve heard through our members and through members of management that were willing to talk with the union is that this is a directive from the command staff … that they wanna make sure that these classifications of these reports are adjusted over time to make sure that the overall crime stats stay down,” he told NBC. “And this is deliberately done.” More

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      ‘We’re anti-federal chaos’: Democratic cities prepare for worst after Trump’s tirades against DC and LA

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      As sand-colored Humvees rolled down Washington DC streets against the wishes of local leaders, mayors around the country planned for what they would do if the Trump administration comes for them next.Donald Trump’s disdain for Democratic-run cities featured heavily in his 2024 campaign. The president vowed to take over DC – a promise he attempted to fulfill this week. Earlier this year, he sent national guard troops to Los Angeles amid protests despite California opposing the move, which led to a lawsuit from the state.City leaders say there are appropriate ways for the federal government to partner with them to address issues such as crime, but that Trump is using the pretext of crime and unrest to override their local authority, create chaos and distract from a bruising news cycle about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Many cities have worked to bring down violent crime rates – they are on the decline in most large cities, though mayors acknowledge they still have work to do to improve the lives of their residents.“President Trump constantly creates a narrative that cities like Seattle are liberal hellholes and we are lawless, and that is just not the fact,” said Bruce Harrell, the mayor of Seattle. “We are the home of great communities and great businesses. So his view of our city is not aligned with reality. It’s to distract the American people from his failures as a president.”By sending in the military, some noted, Trump was probably escalating crime, contributing to distrust in the government and creating unsafe situations both for residents and service members.Even Republican mayors or mayors in red states have said they don’t agree with Trump usurping local control for tenuous reasons. The US Conference of Mayors, currently led by the Republican mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt, pushed back against Trump’s takeover of DC, saying “local control is always best”.“These mayors around the country, by the way, from multiple ideological backgrounds, they love their city more than they love their ideology,” said Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis.Mayors told the Guardian they are ready to stand up for their cities, legally and otherwise, should Trump come knocking. They are working with their chiefs of police to ensure they agree on the chain of command and coordinating with governors in the event the national guard is deployed. Because Trump has so frequently brought up plans to crack down on cities, large Democratic cities have been strategizing with emergency planning departments and city attorneys.But Trump has shown he’s willing to bend and break the law in his pursuits against cities. The Pentagon is reportedly planning to potentially put national guard troops at the ready, stationed in Alabama and Arizona, to deploy to cities experiencing unrest. He has indicated this is just the beginning of an assault on cities. His attorney general sent letters to a host of Democratic cities this week, threatening to arrest local leaders if they don’t cooperate with federal authorities on immigration enforcement.The idea that troops could be on the ground for any number of reasons in cities around the US should alarm people, said Brett Smiley, the Democratic mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.“This is not something that we should be used to, and we shouldn’t let this administration break yet another norm or standard in our society, such that a couple years from now, we don’t think twice about when we see troops in our cities,” Smiley said.Why Trump is going after citiesThe roots of Trump’s battle with cities stretch back to his first administration, and they align with common narratives on the right about how cities today have fallen off because of liberal policies. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint, called for crackdowns on cities, including withholding federal funds to force compliance with deportation plans.His campaign promises included a commitment to “deploying federal assets, including the National Guard, to restore law and order when local law enforcement refuses to act”. In a video from 2023, he explained: “In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order, where the fundamental rights of our citizens are being intolerably violated, I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored.”In 2020, he reportedly wished he cracked down much harder and faster on protesters and rioters during the demonstrations after George Floyd’s murder. Now, he’s using smaller problems – anti-immigration protests and crime against a government employee – to declare emergencies.Minneapolis, where the protests began after a police officer killed Floyd, has at times made Trump’s list of rundown cities. Frey, a Democrat, said he didn’t know whether 2020 protests played a role in Trump’s current actions.“I don’t think anybody can pretend to know what’s in Donald Trump’s head,” Frey told the Guardian. “It’s an utter mess of idiocy. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he’s thinking or what the rhyme or reason is. I mean, clearly there’s a focus on Democratically run cities.”When Trump called out other cities on his radar, he named blue cities run by Black mayors – Baltimore, Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago.“The fact that my city and all the others called out by the president on Sunday, led by Black mayors, are all making historic progress on crime, but they’re the ones getting called up – it tells you everything that you need to know,” Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, said in a press call this week.DC is differentThe federal government can often partner with cities to address crime – several Democratic mayors noted that they worked with the Biden administration on this front successfully. But those partnerships are mutually agreed upon collaborations, not overrides of local policing.“We’re not anti-federal help. We’re anti-federal chaos,” Frey said.Detroit’s mayor, Mike Duggan, said in a statement that his city is seeing its lowest homicides, shootings and carjackings in more than 50 years, crediting a partnership with federal agencies and the US attorney as a major part of that success.“This partnership is simple and effective: DPD does the policing and the feds have strongly increased support for federal prosecution,” Duggan said. “We appreciate the partnership we have today and are aware of no reason either side would want to change it.”Mayors are not saying they have solved the issue of violent crime, Scott said, though they are acknowledging they have reduced it and will continue to work toward further reductions. “We need folks that want to actually help us do that, versus try to take and show force and make us into something other than a representative democracy that we all are proud to call home,” he said.Mayors throughout the US made a clear distinction between Trump’s authority in Washington DC compared to other cities. Washington has a legal provision in the Home Rule Act of 1973 that allows for a president to take over its police department during an emergency on a temporary basis, though Trump is the first to use this power. Other cities have no similar concept in law.Even with the Home Rule Act, Washington officials sued Trump after his attempt to replace the city’s police chief, saying the president was mounting a “hostile takeover” of DC police. Trump and the city agreed to scale back the federal takeover on Friday, keeping DC’s police chief in place.“We know when people want to say they’re going to be a dictator on day one, they never voluntarily give up that aspiration on day two,” Norm Eisen, an attorney who frequently sues the Trump administration, said in a press call this week. “That is what you are seeing in the streets of the District of Columbia.”Cities are preparingIn Minneapolis, Frey said the city has prepared operational plans with police, fire and emergency management and readied itself legally.“Our chief of police and I are lockstep, and he reports up to the commissioner of safety, who reports up to me,” Frey said. “There’s no lack of clarity as to how this reporting structure works, and it certainly does not go to Donald Trump. Doing something like that in Minneapolis, it would be just a blatantly illegal usurpation of local control were this to happen here. Of course, we would take immediate action to get injunctive relief.”Trump’s decision to send in national guard troops to Los Angeles is also legally questionable. Governors typically direct guard troops. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, sued Trump for using the military for domestic law enforcement in defiance of the Posse Comitatus Act. The case was heard by a judge this week.Harrell, of Seattle, said he is confident he will be able to protect his police department and the city’s residents if Trump sends troops.“What I have to do is make sure that the people under my jurisdiction as mayor feel confident in an ability to fight his overreach, and that our law department is well geared to advance our legal arguments,” he said.Scott, of Baltimore, said he was prepared to take every action “legally and otherwise”.Still, there is some uncertaintyand unsteadiness about how cities can respond if Trump calls up the national guard.“It’s very difficult to know what our options are, because we’re in unchartered territory here,” Smiley, of Providence, said. “It’s unprecedented and I don’t know what my options are with respect to preventing troops from coming in, which is one of the reasons that I’m trying to be so proactive about making it clear that it’s not necessary, it’s not wanted.” More

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      Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts are likely a dud, but other documents could reveal much

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      When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files.Indeed, the justice department’s filings in this request revealed that only two law enforcement officers testified during grand jury proceedings in New York, undermining notions that unsealing them would reveal numerous truths.Manhattan federal court judge Paul Engelmayer recently rejected the justice department’s unsealing gambit and, in his decision, dealt yet another blow to the suggestion that grand jury documents would foster transparency about Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes and their social links to powerful figures such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump himself and many others.“Insofar as the motion to unseal implies that the grand jury materials are an untapped mine lode of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or confederates, they definitively are not that,” Engelmayer said, adding that anyone who expected new information to emerge from the documents “would come away feeling disappointed and misled”.“There is no ‘there’ there,” Engelmayer said in his written decision.In disabusing the possibility of bombshells in Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts, questions once again abound as to whether other investigative documents on Epstein will ever see the light of day – and whether there will be any political consequences for Trump if his justice department does not deliver them to a public increasingly convinced of a cover-up.Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, have the legal power to release these other documents – but it might be politics that is keeping them from doing so.“They hold the key,” he said. “With a stroke of their pen, they can release the Epstein files.”Most of the Epstein files are not grand jury transcripts protected by sealing, Rahmani said. “There has to be a treasure trove of information that the Department of Justice has.“Members of the public [and] the media, they can’t compel the DoJ to release the information under a [Freedom of Information Act] request or anything similar, because there’s the law enforcement privilege, the deliberative process privilege,” Rahmani added. “The DoJ doesn’t have to make public its confidential files just because the public wants to, but they can certainly choose to do so.“Trump was inaugurated in January. Bondi has been AG for seven months now. How long does it take to go through these documents?“I think we’re waiting for something that’s never going to come to fruition.”Victims’ advocates have also noted that the Trump administration is capable of releasing these documents so that those whom Epstein and Maxwell preyed on can get justice.“For the last 20 years the victims have always wanted the full disclosure of information regarding Epstein and Maxwell’s sexual-trafficking scheme. They have always wanted all individuals to be held accountable for their part in the sexual exploitation,” said Spencer Kuvin, chief legal officer of Goldlaw, who has represented multiple Epstein victims.“The current administration has the power to release everything by merely signing an executive order. Instead of trying to help victims and expose sexual predators, they are more worried about protecting their friends who socialized with these criminals.”Analysts have voiced differing views on whether there is longterm political liability for Trump if the documents are not released.Susan MacManus, professor emerita of political science at the University of South Florida, said there are several possibilities. Republicans might hope that people grow bored with the issue and start focusing on other subjects.A smaller cohort of ultra-conservative Republicans, however, is dissatisfied that the documents have not been released.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’re disappointed in Trump because they think that there’s something hidden there, and they believe in transparency,” MacManus explained. Some Republicans might think that “ultimately, at least some of this stuff will come out”, implicating Democrat and Republican politicians alike.MacManus does not think that this issue will sway an election, however.“I see this as something that goes out of the picture and comes back in and goes out and comes back in,” MacManus said. “But I don’t think it’s enough to move somebody’s vote if they’re a Republican or if they’re a Democrat, they’re going to stick with their party.”Rick Wilson, the Lincoln Project co-founder and former Republican strategist, felt the document issue presented a dramatic problem for Trump.“I just feel like they’re in a really bad rut right now. I don’t think they’ve got an easy way out of this,” Wilson said.Wilson said that recent polling he’s conducted indicates that the controversy is not going away.“Americans, and Republicans in particular, are paying attention to this story because there is a ‘there’ there for them,” he said.Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist and managing partner of public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies, said that at the moment, interest in the issue has died down for the time being. Americans are focused on issues such as the economy, and many are on vacation.When Congress returns, however, Terrill expects the controversy will also return to the forefront, but that doesn’t mean the attention will be entirely on Trump. The House oversight committee subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as several former attorneys general and law enforcement officials, to testify about Epstein.“That could take the spotlight off President Trump,” he said. Even if this diverts attention from the president, Terrill said it would behoove the administration to be more open about whatever is going on.“There are many people in the Maga base who joined the Maga base because they want government transparency and they want accountability. They want justice and, for right or wrong, many people in the Maga base, and even those outside of the Maga base, feel as though they’re not getting that right now with this situation.”“So I do think it’s important, if you’re the administration, the Trump administration, to continue to put out everything you have in terms of this case,” he said. “If you can’t put things out, explain to the American people why you can’t put those things out.” More