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      Trump news at a glance: top CDC officials resign over ‘weaponization of public health’

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      The leading US public health agency faced a number of top-level resignations on Wednesday after its director was ousted from her job, with one departing official reportedly saying he was leaving “because of the ongoing weaponization of public health”.US officials announced CDC director Susan Monarez had left her role just weeks after being sworn in. This was followed by the resignations of three senior CDC officials – Dr Debra Houry, the chief medical officer, Dr Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Dr Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.Daskalakis told colleagues “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health”, according to an email obtained by STAT, a health news site.Houry echoed his concerns and wrote that “ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency”, adding that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations”.Here is the key Trump administration news of the day.CDC director ousted after less than a month in jobReporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times indicated that Susan Monarez ran afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to commit to fully support changing the coronavirus vaccine policy.Monarez was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was named acting director in January and then tapped as the nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon.Read the full storyTony Blair attends White House meeting with Trump on postwar GazaFormer British prime minister Tony Blair has attended a White House meeting with Donald Trump to discuss plans for postwar Gaza, the Guardian understands.After stepping down as prime minister in 2007, Blair took on the role of Middle East envoy until 2015 and spent time in Jerusalem trying to formulate a plan for a two-state solution.The former Labour leader, 72, was in Washington DC on Wednesday for the meeting with Trump. The Axios website reported that Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was also in attendance.Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump administration from deporting Kilmar Ábrego García againA federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October, according to multiple reports.Read the full storyNational guard troops deployed in DC rake leaves and clear homeless campsNational guard troops have spent their last days of the summer mulching cherry trees, collecting trash and clearing homeless camps across Washington DC, as Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the capital evolved the guard from makeshift cops to armed jacks of all trades.Read the full storyHow hard will Trump’s tariff hit India, and what is Delhi doing about it?Donald Trump’s tariffs of 50% have come into force on most US imports from India. The US president followed through on his threat to punish one of the world’s largest economies for its purchases of discounted Russian oil. We explain how hard the tariffs will hit India and what it might do about that.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Republicans in California are proposing a “two-state solution” for the Golden state, in a move that is unlikely to go anywhere but is reflective of partisan divisions amid a nationwide battle over control of Congress.

      The US Food and Drug Administration has approved updated Covid vaccines but has placed new restrictions on who can get them.

      Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days,a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.

      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.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 26 August 2025. More

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      DC mayor says she ‘greatly appreciates’ Trump’s surge of federal officers but adds there is ‘break in trust’ with residents – as it happened

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      “We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser says.She cites police data which shows there has been an 87% reduction in carjackings in DC over the last 20 days, compared to the same period last year.Boswer then says she spoke with Donald Trump today, and that she was “reminded” of their first meeting after his re-election earlier this year.“We discussed shared priorities for the district,” Bowser adds. “I was reminded that the president’s interest in cities predates his time in office, and his knowledge of DC had significantly increased from the first time he was in the White House.”Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is being ousted from the position less than a month after being sworn in, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing multiple Trump administration officials familiar with the matter.The Washington Post did not cite a reason for the departure. Citing several anonymous CDC employees, the newspaper reported that Monarez on Friday canceled an agency-wide call that had been scheduled for Monday. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately provide comment.Monarez, a federal government scientist, was confirmed by the Senate on 29 July and sworn in by Robert F Kennedy Jr two day later. Her departure comes after a police officer was killed in a shooting at the CDC.

      Donald Trump has ordered the American flag to be flown at half-staff at the White House and across federal buildings until 31 August, following the mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis which killed two children and injured 17 people. My colleagues are tracking the latest developments here.

      Earlier, DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, held a press conference to discuss the federal takeover of the DC police. The mayor balanced deference towards Trump with occasional bursts of defiance. Bowser said that while she “greatly appreciates” the impact of the federal law enforcement surge on district crime (pointing to the substantial decrease in carjackings compared to this time last year), there was ultimately a “break in trust” between officers and local residents. “We know having masked Ice agents in the community has not worked, and national guard from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources,” she added.

      Bowser said she has a “courtesy meeting” with the president today, where they did not discuss any of his plans to extend the federal takeover beyond 30 days (a move that would require congressional approval). The mayor did say that Trump’s “knowledge of DC” appeared to have “significantly increased” from the first term in office. She declined to offer any details about her “substantive” conversation with attorney general Pam Bondi and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

      Bowser offered glimpses of pushback against the administration when taking questions from reporters. She said was was “devastated” to hear that immigrants in DC are living in fear of being arrested by Ice agents, and claimed that if the Metropolitan police department had more officers –a recurring plea from DC government – local law enforcement wouldn’t require any federal intervention.

      Staying in the nation’s capital, The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said that his department is taking back control of Union Station from Amtrak –the railroad company that receives federal subsidies and has managed the daily operations of the DC transportation hub for over a year. At a launch event for a new fleet of high-speed trains today, Duffy said that the station has been “neglected for decades”. He added that reclaiming station management “will help make this city safe and beautiful at a fraction of the cost.”

      Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said on CNN today that Donald Trump hasn’t “made a final call” on when he plans to nominate a replacement for Lisa Cook – the Federal Reserve governor he moved to fire this week. Hassett’s comment came after Trump suggested at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday that he had a candidate in mind. Cook has not been charged with a crime, and is expected to file a lawsuit challenging her attempted firing.

      Meanwhile, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García cannot be deported again until at least early October. Judge Paula Xinis has set a hearing for 6 October on the administration’s plans to deport Ábrego. His lawyers also said their client wants to seek asylum in the US, for fear of torture and persecution if deported to Uganda.
      California Republicans are proposing a “two-state solution” for the Golden State.James Gallagher, the top Republican in the California assembly, unveiled a resolution on Wednesday that would split the state in two – their response to the Democrats’ attempt to redraw the congressional boundaries in the state, itself a response to a Republican-led redistricting effort in Texas.The provocatively named proposal – adopting a phrase more often used in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – is a political nonstarter. But it underscores the new messaging Republicans in the state plan to use to rally opposition to the ballot initiative in November.Gallagher argued that the redistricting push would further “silence rural voices and rig the political system against them forever” in California.“I have come to see that the only way we can obtain proper attention is by pursuing our own statehood. With this measure, we will begin the first step of that process,” he said.The Republican plan would divide California vertically, splitting the deep-blue slice of the coast from the more rural and red inland. According to Gallagher, it would create a state with a population of more than 10 million people – making it one of the 10 most populous states in the US.“Whether you are from the north state, Central valley, or the Inland Empire, life has become harder and completely unaffordable,” the Republican leader explained. “We have been overlooked for far too long, and now they are trying to rip away what little representation we have left.”The referendum, led by the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, will ask voters to approve a gerrymander aimed at securing five more Democratic House seats in California to offset the five new Republican-heavy districts created by the Texas legislature.“We will not be subject to a state that deprives us of a fair voice,” he said. “Gavin, let my people go.”Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days, a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.The Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s administration appealed the order by federal court judge Kathleen Williams that the tented detention camp in the Florida Everglades, which attracted criticism for its harsh conditions, must be dismantled within 60 days.But in an email reported Wednesday by the Associated Press, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida department of emergency management, which operates the jail on behalf of the federal government, appeared to confirm it would be shuttered.“We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Guthrie wrote to Mario Rojzman, a Miami Beach rabbi who has been helping to arrange chaplaincy services.Representatives for Rojzman confirmed the authenticity of the memo to the news agency. Guthrie’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Miami Herald had previously reported that hundreds of detainees were moved from “Alligator Alcatraz” to other immigration facilities in the state in advance of Williams’s’ ruling.Donald Trump has ordered the American flag to be flown at half-staff at the White House and across federal buildings until 31 August, following the mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis which killed two children and injured 17 people.A reminder that my colleagues are bringing you the latest developments from Minneapolis.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.The DC mayor said officials will “answer any questions” that are posed to local government, when it comes to the House oversight committee’s investigation into allegations of manipulated DC crime statistics.On Monday, Republican congressman James Comer, who chairs the committee, asked the DC police chief, Pamela Smith, for transcribed interviews with the seven commanders of DC’s patrol districts.Bowser also confirmed today that there was no update on the internal Metropolitan police department investigation – after local reports of a former DC commander facing accusations from the police union of falsifying data.Earlier, Bowser said that she was “devastated” by immigrants in DC living fear during the surge of federal law enforcement in the nation’s capital.
      I think you know very clearly how I feel about our nation needing comprehensive immigration reform, about Congress establishing a pathway to citizenship for hardworking people who came to this country for a better life, and who are not criminals, who are law abiding. And I think when that question is finally answered, that’s the only way to deal with this fear, or to deal with these agencies going after law-abiding people.
      Bowser is now addressing a direct question from a reporter about whether she pushed back in her meeting with the president, particularly when it comes to the anger from DC residents at the federal law enforcement presence in the district, and the use of masks covering the faces of agents.She characterizes her discussion with Trump as a “courtesy meeting”, but says that she had a “substantive” conversation with the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, but declined to discuss the details of her meeting.Boswer confirms that the Metropolitan police department is “supporting the ask” of the administration to assist Ice agents with immigration enforcement efforts.A notable exchange at this press conference. A reporter asked how Bowser can be sure that MPD officers wouldn’t have made all the arrests illustrated today on those charts without the additional federal law enforcement.“Let me put it this way, if there were 500 additional MPD officers…that same activity, arrests and gun recovery would have likely been made,” Bowser said, underscoring the city’s aim to increase the number of local police.Bowser also just said that when she spoke to the president earlier today, they didn’t talk about his possible plan to try to extend the federal takeover of the DC police beyond 30 days. A reminder: Trump would need congressional approval for an extension, according to section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act.Reporters are now asking questions, and the mayor says the number of cited arrests (more than 1,500) represents a combined number – from both the Metropolitan police department (MPD) and federal law enforcement.However, she says this number might not include all federal arrests.The DC mayor says that despite statistics that show a reduction in crime, the “break in trust” between police and the local community is “not working”. She says this is particularly apparent between federal law enforcement and DC locals.“We know having masked Ice agents in the community has not worked, and national guard from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources,” she adds.A short while ago, Muriel Bowser said that her office “will be supportive” of Donald Trump’s $2bn “beautification” request to Congress.“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser says.She cites police data which shows there has been an 87% reduction in carjackings in DC over the last 20 days, compared to the same period last year.Boswer then says she spoke with Donald Trump today, and that she was “reminded” of their first meeting after his re-election earlier this year.“We discussed shared priorities for the district,” Bowser adds. “I was reminded that the president’s interest in cities predates his time in office, and his knowledge of DC had significantly increased from the first time he was in the White House.”The deputy mayor for public safety and justice, Lindsey Appiah, is now talking about the hiring push for the DC police department. “We continue to do that work to stabilize, and to increase our for strength to what we believe is where we need to be – 3,800 to 4,000 officers,” she says.Bowser is now speaking, and says she’s providing a “situational update” on the surge of federal law enforcement in DC.“I always want to remind people give you a quick little primer of who we are in Washington, DC,” Bowser adds. “We function as a city, county and state…We pay federal taxes. In fact, we pay more per capita than most places, and we get back less.”The pre-amble that Boswer is giving seems to be a pointed refresher on what the limited rights and representation of the district.The mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, is about to hold a press conference to give an update on the federal takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. More

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      ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ to be vacated in compliance with court order to shut it

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      Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days, a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.The Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s administration appealed the order by federal court judge Kathleen Williams that the tented detention camp in the Florida Everglades, which attracted criticism for its harsh conditions, must be dismantled within 60 days.But in an email reported Wednesday by the Associated Press, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida department of emergency management, which operates the jail on behalf of the federal government, appeared to confirm it would be shuttered.“We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Guthrie wrote to Mario Rojzman, a Miami Beach rabbi who has been helping to arrange chaplaincy services.Representatives for Rojzman confirmed the authenticity of the memo to the news agency. Guthrie’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Miami Herald had previously reported that hundreds of detainees were moved from “Alligator Alcatraz” to other immigration facilities in the state in advance of Williams’s ruling.On Monday, protesters who have maintained an almost permanent presence at the gates of the jail reported seeing convoys of buses driving out.Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democratic congressman, said that he was told during a tour last week that only about 300 to 350 detainees remained.“Alligator Alcatraz” was touted by Donald Trump as a holding camp for up to 3,000 undocumented immigrants as they awaited deportation. The jail, he said, was reserved for “the most vicious people on the planet”.Since it opened in early July after being hastily constructed in late June at a remote disused airstrip about 50 miles (80km) west of Miami, it drew waves of criticism. Several lawsuits sought its closure, and there have been claims that hundreds of those detained had no criminal records or active proceedings against them.Williams’s ruling was a significant victory for a coalition of environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, who claimed the camp had caused permanent and irreparable damage to the ecologically fragile wetland and its wildlife.Another lawsuit, filed by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), claimed detainees were abused by jail staff, and that their human and constitutional rights were denied because they were refused access to attorneys and due process.The plaintiffs said the Everglades facility was not needed, especially because Florida plans to open a second immigration detention facility in the north of the state that DeSantis has dubbed “deportation depot”.Williams had not ruled by Wednesday on a request by attorneys for the state to stay her order of closure. In her original 82-page ruling, she said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days by transferring detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed.She wrote that the state and federal defendants could not bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property.The environmental groups and Miccosukee tribe had argued in their lawsuit that further construction and operations should be stopped until federal and state officials complied with federal environmental laws. Their lawsuit claimed the facility reversed billions of dollars spent over decades on environmental restoration.State officials have signed more than $245m in contracts for building and operating the facility at a lightly used, single-runway training airport in the middle of the rugged and remote Everglades. The center officially opened on 1 July.In their lawsuits, civil rights attorneys described “severe problems” at the facility which were “previously unheard-of in the immigration system”. Detainees were being held for weeks without any charges, had disappeared from the online detainee locator maintained by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), and nobody at the facility was making initial custody or bond determinations, they said.Detainees also described worms turning up in the food, toilets that did not flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, mosquitoes and other insects everywhere and malfunctioning air conditioning that alternated the temperature between near freezing and extreme heat. More

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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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      America survived a coup attempt. Can it endure dictatorial creep? | Lawrence Douglas

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      January 6 demonstrated that longstanding democracies can readily resist a disorganized effort at a coup. They are less equipped to withstand the normalization of exceptional measures: the use of federal agents to quell domestic protest, the staging of police raids on the homes of leaders’ political opponents, the pretextual invocations of emergency powers. Each of these steps may seem temporary and targeted; they may even enjoy a thin patina of legality. But over time, a democratic order turns into what Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish lawyer whose book The Dual State stands as one of the first and most perceptive examinations of Hitler’s regime, called a “prerogative state” – a government in which the executive “is released from all legal restraints and depends solely on the discretion of the persons wielding political power”.So let us be clear: Trump’s commandeering of control of the Washington DC police department was simply an opening salvo. While Americans were greeted with images of soldiers in combat gear, toting rifles and establishing roadblocks and checkpoints near the National Mall, Trump was already tasking his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, with creating “specialized units” of the national guard to be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues”.What are the politics behind this militarization of domestic policing? Trump says he alone has the will and resources to pacify the “killing field” of Chicago, but clearly his “crime fighting” justification is no more than a ruse. Statistics – that is, reality – tell us that the crime rate in Washington DC was at a 30-year low when Trump sent in the troops. Which is not to deny the rhetorical power of ruses. Installing soldiers in Democratic strongholds allows Trump to present himself as the protector of law and order, especially to Maga supporters who have been trained by rightwing news outlets to view the nation’s largest and most multiethnic metropolitan areas as dens of iniquity and vice. Never mind that this is the president who pardoned members of the lawless mob that stormed the Capitol, fired career justice department prosecutors who worked to hold insurrectionists to account, and has installed in the department the likes of Jared Lane Wise, an insurgent who was charged with urging his fellow rioters to kill members of the police.Militarizing the police also serves Trump’s politics of intimidation. Here we can connect the deployment of troops on the National Mall to the FBI’s raid on John Bolton’s residences. Both are disturbing displays of the kind of force more familiar to a police state than to a constitutional democracy. The fact that both acts were formally legal – two federal magistrates signed off on the Bolton warrants, while several statutes specific to the District of Columbia authorized the president’s use of the national guard – makes them textbook examples of the kind of dictatorial creep that Fraenkel diagnosed.Deploying troops to police Chicago would, of course, represent a far more alarming and legally dubious exercise of executive power. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a post-Reconstruction law, essentially bars presidents from using troops as domestic police. But we would be naive to conclude that federal law provides an adequate safeguard against the consolidation of the prerogative state. The Insurrection Act carves out disturbing exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, allowing the president, in cases of “rebellion”, to deploy the military to enforce federal law. Would a supreme court that has held that a president enjoys broad immunity from future prosecution for all “official acts”, no matter how nefarious, question a president’s determination of what constitutes a “rebellion”?While the appearance of troops on the streets of Chicago or New York may frighten marginalized communities from exercising their basic rights of free movement, it may also trigger an equally dangerous and predictable response. The specter of city streets patrolled by soldiers trained to fight enemy combatants, not US citizens, may well serve not to quell violence but to invite it. The prospect of protests turning ugly and violent is all too real. The deployment of troops, under the pretext of responding to an emergency, then works to create the very emergency that justifies an ever-greater deployment. The danger is this is precisely what the president wants.Why? Trump has already aggressively inserted himself in the battle over the 2026 midterms, pushing Texas to further gerrymander its already gerrymandered districts; jesting that war may supply a justification for delaying elections; and pledging to issue an executive order ending mail-in ballots – while clearly lacking the authority to do so. What if he were to deploy troops to polling places on election day?In principle, a strong edifice of law explicitly bars such a deployment on election day, but imagine if the president, in the wake of a series of violent protests, invokes the Insurrection Act to “safeguard” polling stations from domestic unrest. Now we have armed soldiers at polling stations, handling ballots and “monitoring” the chain of custody – all done in the name of protecting democracy. Legally, such a deployment would stretch the Insurrection Act beyond recognition, but courts deliberate slowly; elections are decided in days.As Fraenkel noted, authoritarianism does not operate outside law; it manipulates law until legality and illegality are indistinguishable.

      Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts 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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      Democrat flips Iowa state senate seat and breaks Republican supermajority

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      A Democratic candidate has defeated an extremist Republican in a state senate election in Iowa, claiming that voters are “waking up” to realise Donald Trump’s party “sold the working class a bill of goods”.Catelin Drey flipped Iowa state senate district 1, beating Christopher Prosch in a special election held on Tuesday to fill the seat of the late senator Rocky De Witt.Prosch had aligned himself with Trump’s Maga movement, floating conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and climate crisis. He also compared abortion access to the Holocaust.But Drey, a 37-year-old marketing executive, won with 55% of the vote to Prosch’s 44%, representing a swing of more than 20 points from Trump’s performance last year in the district, which covers most of Sioux City.Describing herself as “thrilled” with the result, Drey said on Wednesday: “We delivered a message that resonates with voters. People right now are frustrated with the way things are going. Iowa’s economy is last in the country, we’re last for maternal healthcare providers per capita, and people are ready for a change.”Asked whether the outcome delivered a verdict on Trump’s Maga agenda, Drey said: “It speaks to the level of authenticity and transparency that’s necessary to win in this environment. People want to make a connection with their candidate and they want to believe that person is going to be looking out for their best interests.”The founder of the grassroots organisation Moms for Iowa added: “Folks are waking up to the fact that Republicans in Iowa and, frankly, across the country have sold the working class a bill of goods and they are ready for policies that actually work for them.”Despite Democrats’ struggles in Washington, this is the second Iowa state senate district they have flipped this year, after a January victory in a district Trump won by more than 20 percentage points.Democrats have consistently overperformed in special legislative elections across the country, including winning another Trump-friendly seat in the state senate in Pennsylvania in March.The trend potentially spells trouble for Trump before next year’s midterm elections for the US House of Representatives and Senate. An Economist/YouGov poll last week found that 40% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency while 56% disapprove. Republicans have also faced rowdy town halls in their congressional districts.Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said: “As Trump and Republicans wreck the economy and erode democracy with power-grabbing schemes, Democrats’ special election wins should send a flashing warning to the GOP: voters are rejecting the failing Maga agenda and leaving Republican candidates in the dust.”Drey had raised $165,385 and spent $75,066 on the campaign as of 21 August, the Des Moines Register newspaper reported, while Prosch raised $20,020 and spent $18,425 as of the same date. Both candidates received substantial in-kind support from their state parties.The Democratic National Committee (DNC) also deployed 30,000 volunteers for “get out the vote” efforts and hosted text and phone banks in conjunction with the Iowa Democratic party for Drey’s campaign.Ken Martin, chair of the DNC, said: “Iowans are seeing Republicans for who they are: self-serving liars who will throw their constituents under the bus to rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s disastrous agenda – and they’re ready for change.“They are putting Republicans on notice and making it crystal clear: any Republican pushing Trump’s unpopular, extreme agenda has no place governing on behalf of Iowa families.”Republicans poured scorn on the intervention by national Democrats as a sign of desperation.Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican party, said: “National Democrats were so desperate for a win that they activated 30,000 volunteers and a flood of national money to win a state senate special election by a few hundred votes.“If the Democrats think things are suddenly so great again for them in Iowa, they will bring back the caucuses.”Drey’s victory breaks a Republican supermajority in the Iowa state senate for the first time since the 2022 election. The new chamber margin is 33 Republicans to 17 Democrats. This gives Democrats the ability to block governor Kim Reynolds’s picks for state agencies, boards and commissions.Matt McDermott, a Democratic pollster and strategist, on the X social media platform posted: “If you’re wondering why Republicans are rigging maps, this is what they’re afraid of.” More

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      The unlikely alliance pressing Trump to regulate Pfas on US farms: ‘This is a basic human right’

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      An unlikely alliance of farmers, bikers, truckers, a detective and scientists from across the political spectrum are working to pressure the Trump administration and Republican leadership to rein in the use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer on the nation’s farmland.Sludge often teems with Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, which present a health risk to farmers and the public, and have destroyed farms and contaminated water across the country. The issue has touched the groups’ lives in different ways, highlighting its broad risks to health.“We can all sit down and agree that we and our children shouldn’t be fed literal poison,” said Dana Ames, a Johnson county, Texas, detective who is investigating contamination from sludge on local farms.In Oklahoma, farmer Saundra Traywick lives in an area where she says toxic sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer. Her family and animals get sick, and the potent stench can be unbearable.Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, a biker who lives in a dairy- and oil-producing region in Texas, wonders whether Pfas from sludge contributed to the rare brain cancer that killed his six-year-old son; in Johnson county, Texas, Ames took the unprecedented step of opening a criminal investigation, which is ongoing, over sludge that polluted local farms and water.Billy Randal, a trucker, just learned about the sludge’s dangers, and fears that people hauling the substance are exposed to toxic waste. And in Massachusetts, Kyla Bennett, a former US Environmental Protection Agency scientist and cancer survivor, is part of a lawsuit that could lead to sludge being banned.The alliance has a real chance of success, those involved say, because it includes everyone from liberal scientists to people on the far right – they are willing to set aside political differences for the fight.“The American people are smart – once we figure out what’s occurring, we have a whole lot more in common than we don’t, and this is a basic human right,” said Ames, the Texas detective. “We all deserve safe and clean food and water.”The alliance is aiming to hold rallies thatit hopes will draw thousands of people in Austin, Texas, and Washington DC in the coming months. Those involved are aiming to get Trump’s attention and to pressure the Texas legislature to act.Getting Trump’s attentionSludge is a mix of human and industrial waste, and a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process that regulators allow to be used as fertilizer because it’s rich in nutrients that help plants grow. It also virtually always teems with Pfas and other dangerous chemicals, which contaminate water, crops and livestock, while also sickening farmers and contaminating the nation’s food supply.Maine became the first state to ban sludge, also called biosolids, after it found Pfas had contaminated crops or water on at least 73 farms where the substance had been spread. The state established a $70m fund to bail out affected farmers.Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds that are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down. The chemicals are linked to a range of serious health problems like cancer, liver disease, kidney issues, high cholesterol, birth defects and decreased immunity.View image in fullscreenIn the Biden administration’s final days, the EPA issued a draft risk assessment for Pfas in sludge that could in effect ban the substance, but Republicans in Congress slipped a rider into the current appropriations bill that would essentially kill the process by withdrawing key funding. The rider was inserted just a few weeks after the EPA met with a sludge industry trade group to hear its grievances about the assessment.Ames said the EPA “has gone rogue” and she suspects Trump is unaware of the situation. The president has publicly said he wants clean water and food, Ames said, and she suspects he will act if alerted.“As his voters and his base, we want his ear, and we want to make sure that the president knows what’s going on,” Ames said.In Massachusetts, Bennett, the scientist, who is now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit, has been frustrated with the Biden and Trump administrations’ policies on sludge, and has sued the EPA under the Clean Water Act to force the agency to regulate the substance. Peer is assisting with letters for the action, though it is not directly involved with organizing the rallies.It’s not often that Peer works with folks on the right, but the “strange bedfellows” are a hopeful development, Bennett said.“This is an issue that should transcend politics because it affects human health and people are humans before they’re Republicans and Democrats,” Bennett said.‘We’ve got to make a change’In 2021, doctors diagnosed six-year-old Rylan Pruitt with a rare and aggressive brain cancer. After 30 rounds of radiation treatment and several months of chemotherapy, he died, leaving behind distraught parents looking for answers.There was no family history of cancer, and his father, Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, began to hear about the risks of Pfas. He turned his attention to the huge dairy and oil operations – both known sources of Pfas and other chemical pollution – in the rural community in which he lives.Only about 50 other people have developed the type of cancer that killed Rylan – and one of them was a young girl who lived about 11 miles (17km) away, Pruitt said. He said he put together the pieces, like family history, how the cancer was “stupidly and exceedingly rare”, and the research that has connected sludge and Pfas to rare pediatric cancers.“For me it’s: ‘This is why this is happening, and we’ve got to make a change,’” Pruitt said.View image in fullscreenHis 15,000-member motorcycle group, the Rylan Strong Network, pressures lawmakers on issues around pediatric cancer and health insurance. He contacted every Texas legislator asking them to support a bill that would require measuring Pfas in sludge. So far, very few have responded, and previous versions of the legislation were killed.“It’s all about who has the biggest checkbook,” Pruitt said.In Oklahoma, Traywick’s non-profit, Save Oklahoma Farms and Ranches, has had similar results in pressuring lawmakers. Her kids’ immune disorders, the flies that gnaw her donkeys’ legs raw and the unmeasured effects of suspected Pfas on land and water – none of it has so far convinced state legislators to act.But, she said, she is more optimistic as “a growing movement of people is waking up to the fact that this is not Democrats versus Republicans or left versus right – we all want our children to have a healthy future,” Traywick said.In New Jersey, Randal, founder of the national Truckers Movement for Justice, just learned about the sludge from Ames, and worries about what people hauling the waste are exposed to.The truckers, with thousands of members in the US and Mexico, recently worked with environmental groups to petition the US Department of Transportation to strengthen regulations around hauling fracking waste. The problem with sludge is similar, Randal said. Many drivers have to clean their trucks, there are few protections and they are not made aware of the Pfas and other risks in what they are hauling.“We have truck drivers handling this shit and they don’t have a clue about what they’re working around,” Randal said. “Industry laughs all the way to the bank and it’s time for it to stop.” He plans to mobilize truckers to join the rallies.In Johnson county, Texas, Goldman Sachs-owned Synagro, sold local farmers the tainted sludge that a lawsuit alleges polluted local waters and destroyed the land. The farms’ drinking water was found to be contaminated at levels more than 13,000 times higher than the federal health advisory for Pfos, one kind of Pfas compound, and affected meat was as much as 250,000 times above safe levels, the federal lawsuit against Synagro alleges. Synagro denies that the Pfas came from its sludge.Last year, Ames opened the first-ever criminal investigation into the situation, and Johnson county joined Peer’s Clean Water Act lawsuit. “We’re coming together and we’re saying: ‘No, this isn’t a third-world country, and there’s no reason why in America our food should be poisoned like this,’” Ames said. More