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

    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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    Washington DC restaurants suffer sharp drop in diners since Trump crackdown

    The number of people eating at restaurants in Washington DC has plummeted since Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the city, according to data, as the president’s purported crackdown on crime continues.Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.Trump announced the move on 11 August, claiming that Washington had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people”. His claims contradicted official statistics which show that violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low.Data from Open Table shows that the number of people making online reservations dropped by 16% on Monday compared with the previous year. The number fell by 27% on Tuesday and 31% on Wednesday, as military vehicles and armed troops were deployed to the city.Metropolitan Washington Summer Restaurant week in 2024 was from 12 to 18 August. The 2025 edition of the event, during which diners are generally offered premium experiences at more affordable prices than usual, began on Monday. The data did not immediately make clear to what extent that may have factored into the year-to-year drop.On Friday, Democrats introduced a joint resolution to end what they described as “egregious attacks on DC home rule”, stating that Trump was overreaching in his actions in Washington.The Democratic US congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland issued a statement saying Trump’s decision to send the military into the nation’s capital was meant to distract the public from the president’s “close friendship” with the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.Raskin’s statement also alluded to broken promises from the Trump administration to fully divulge all files pertaining to the prosecutions of Epstein and his associate, the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.“The only emergency here is a lawless president experiencing a growing public relations emergency because of his … stubborn refusal to release the Epstein file despite his promise to do so,” Raskin’s statement said.Other Democrats echoed the sentiment that Trump’s move was an attempt to distract from criticism over Epstein and an economy that was struggling amid the passage of his congressional agenda bill, which included a historic $1tn cut to Medicaid.“What’s happening here in Washington DC is just a stunt. Donald Trump didn’t like the fact that the walls were closing in on him, that his own base was questioning why he wouldn’t release the Epstein files, why he was protecting very powerful people,” Chris Murphy, the US senator from Connecticut, told NBC on Sunday.“He didn’t want to talk any more about the fact that our healthcare system is about to collapse because of the cuts that they have made, that premiums are going to go up by 75% on Americans. And so true to form, he just decided to create a new news cycle.”Murphy added: “He’s just trying to distract from the stories he doesn’t want Americans to be talking about.” More

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    West Virginia governor says deploying national guard to Washington DC is ‘show of commitment to public safety’ – US politics live

    Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines.We start with news that three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the nation’s capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.The statement came after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.Read the full story here:In other developments:

    In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. “You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

    A Texas judge has expanded a restraining order against former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization over its fundraising for Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to prevent a legislative session on congressional redistricting.

    The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.

    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. Read the full story here.
    White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said India’s purchases of Russian crude were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and has to stop, while adding that New Delhi was “now cozying up to both Russia and China.”“If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times, adding that it was risky for American companies to transfer cutting-edge military capabilities to India.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines.We start with news that three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the nation’s capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.The statement came after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.Read the full story here:In other developments:

    In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. “You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

    A Texas judge has expanded a restraining order against former congressman Beto O’Rourke and his political organization over its fundraising for Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to prevent a legislative session on congressional redistricting.

    The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.

    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. Read the full story here. More

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

    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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    Trump’s DC crackdown will do little to prevent crime, advocates say: ‘That’s not what creates safety’

    Donald Trump’s hyperbolic portrayal of crime in major American cities, and his deployment of the national guard in Washington DC ostensibly in an effort to combat it, have reignited a decades-old debate about crime, violence and which policies and approaches can address it.The US president has cited cities such as Oakland, Philadelphia and Chicago as examples of places overwhelmed by crime and violence. He has put forward an increased militarization of law enforcement, and more money and legal protections for police, as the most effective ways to address homicides and other violent crime.But to violence prevention workers, the recent statements appeared made not out of care and concern for the lower-income Black and Latino victims who bear an outsized share of the nation’s crimes, but to undermine and dismiss the progress community groups have made.And, the advocates argue, the administration’s emphasis on law enforcement and prosecution as the sole ways to stop crime will do little to stop the cycles of violence and property crime that these groups have faced through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.“The police are about response. But that’s not what creates safety,” said Aqeela Sherrills, a longtime community violence intervention leader in Los Angeles. “A lot of our urban communities have been war zones because they lack investment in infrastructure and programming. It’s really disheartening to hear the president of the United States put out misinformation.”Sherrills began his career in violence prevention in Watts in the early 90s. Since then he’s been a leading force in several organisations that work intensely with the small portion of a city’s population responsible for the most violence in an effort to prevent crime and support victims of crime. Throughout his tenure, he said, he had seen the biggest successes in violence reduction come through training local non-profits, community leaders and officials on different violence community prevention models and then allowing them to build bespoke strategies from there.Over the decades, various models have seen major successes. Some deploy violence prevention workers to middle and high schools. In other programs, they use probation officers as a conduit to connect with young adults who are carrying and using firearms illegally. Some programs send workers to hospitals after a shooting, in an effort to prevent retaliatory violence. Some models rely on a police-community partnership, others don’t involve police at all.But most programs center on connecting with mostly young men and teenage boys whose conflicts spill out on to city streets, traumatizing entire neighborhoods.This method has shown promise, research shows, In 2024 the Brooklyn community of Baltimore went a year without homicides after deploying a program called Safe Streets. And cities such as Oakland, Seattle and Philadelphia, where city leaders have invested in similar gun violence reduction programs, have seen drops in homicides when the programs were thriving, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s violent crime survey.And while the reasons for the ebb and flow of homicides can’t be reduced to one program or strategy, those working to build these programs up have been fighting for credit and acknowledgment.During the Biden administration, they got it. Their approaches finally found federal support with the creation of an office of gun violence prevention and federal dollars for community prevention groups working on the ground. In past years, programs have expanded across the US as more municipalities build their own offices of violence prevention.But these insights don’t appear to inform the Trump administration’s approach, Sherrills adds.“He’s not reading the data, he’s not looking at the trends and reports, it’s just more kneejerk reactions,” he said. “It’s shortsighted because they’re only speaking about one aspect of our criminal legal system.”This most recent crime debate comes nearly four months after the Trump administration cut nearly $170m in grants from gun violence prevention organizations, including several groups founded and co-founded by Sherrills who have had to lay off several staff members, dealing a serious blow to critical summertime programming.For small, upstart organizations this loss of funds puts their work in jeopardy, said Fredrick Womack, whose organization, Operation Good, lost 20% of its budget due to the April cuts.Womack says he was dismayed to hear the list of cities that Trump singled out, because they are all cities with Black leaders who have invested in community violence intervention. The calls for increased police and potential military presences, he says, shows a disconnect between the halls of power and the needs of the people most affected by violent crime.“How is the military going to provide support for victims when they need someone who’s going to be compassionate to what they’re going through?” He asked. “I know people want justice, but they also need support. They need healing and counseling.“They won’t go into the projects and ask the people how life is going for you. But they’ll look at someone who lives in the hills who heard a gunshot two miles away last week and say: ‘We have a crime problem,’” he continued.Womack founded Operation Good in 2013, and since then he and his small staff and gaggle of volunteers have worked with the teenagers and young men responsible for most of the city’s violence and given them odd jobs and taken them to civil rights museums so they can understand where they come from and gain a sense of community. Womack’s work has made a difference: in the years since the pandemic – which saw nationwide surges of gun violence – the homicide rate started to tick down, a change city officials have attributed in part to the work of community-based groups including Operation Good, and their collaboration with the police.Community leaders also argue that not only will Trump’s approach be less effective, it’s not aimed at helping the people most affected by violence. During a 12 August press conference, Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host who was recently appointed the US attorney for DC, argued that Trump’s rhetoric about crime and his administration’s approach to violence in DC were done in the name of victims. Flanked by posters of mostly Black teenagers and children killed by gun violence, Pirro argued that policies including DC’s Youth Rehabilitation Act have only emboldened perpetrators.“I guarantee you that every one of these individuals was shot and killed by someone who felt they were never gonna be caught,” Pirro told reporters.And when reporters asked about addressing the root causes of crime and violence and the recent cuts to community-based programs, Pirro argued that her focus is on being punitive, not preventive.For Leia Schenk, a Sacramento-based victim and violence prevention advocate, these sorts of sentiments, while common among conservatives, miss the point.“It’s tone-deaf and an oxymoron. The root causes are why we have victims,” Schenk said. “In my experience [crime and violence] come from systemic oppression. Meaning if a family can’t feed their kids, they’re gonna steal, rob or commit some sort of fraud to just live and survive.”Schenk has been working in the community advocacy space for more than three decades and in that time has seen the most successful approaches to youth crime, shootings and other forms of violence happen when schools districts, local mental and physical healthcare systems get a level of investment that matches the scale of the problem.“We’re seeing the most success when we are supported – from schools to law enforcement to churches – their support allows us to do what we’re doing on a bigger scale.”Despite the comments and moves from the Trump administration, Sherrills says the field of violence prevention will continue to thrive thanks to a strong foundation that was fortified in recent years due to federal support and increased support from philanthropic groups.“We know that we’re in challenging times but it’s about doubling down on success and making sure we preserve the wins,” he said. “We’re going to continue to see violence trend down because of the work practitioners are doing in the field. Folks are tired of the killing and the dying and are looking for alternative ways to create better ways of navigating a conflict so that it doesn’t lead to violence.” More

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    Three states to deploy hundreds of national guard troops to Washington DC

    Three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the nation’s capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement that the deployment was “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation” and the state would provide equipment and “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed”.The statement came after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Washington DC national guard troops to mount a show of force and temporarily took over the city’s police department to curb what the president depicts as a crime and homelessness emergency in the nation’s capital.Data compiled by the DC police department shows that violent crime was actually at a 30-year-low when Trump returned to office in January, and has declined a further 26% since then.Last weekend, Trump ordered the district’s homeless residents to leave, or face forcible relocation, after his motorcade passed a handful of unhoused people en route to his golf course outside the city. On Thursday, local officials cleared away one of the roadside encampments Trump had complained about, arguing that they could do so in a more humane fashion than untrained federal forces.A justice department order to replace the Washington police chief, Pamela Smith, with DEA head Terry Cole as the city’s “emergency police commissioner” ran into problems after a challenge in federal court by the DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb.Without issuing a direct ruling on the challenge, US district judge Ana Reyes indicated that Smith has to remain in charge.But efforts to increase federal control of the district resumed on Saturday with the order to deploy West Virginia’s national guard.Drew Galang, a spokesperson for Morrisey, said the state’s national guard received the order to send equipment and personnel to DC late on Friday and was working to organize the deployment.A White House official told Reuters on Saturday that more national guard troops were being called in to Washington to “protect federal assets, create a safe environment for law enforcement officials to carry out their duties when required, and provide a visible presence to deter crime”.View image in fullscreenA protest against Trump’s intervention drew scores to Dupont Circle on Saturday before a march to the White House, about 1.5 miles away. Demonstrators assembled behind a banner that said, “No fascist takeover of DC”, and some in the crowd held signs saying, “No military occupation”.Fueling the protests were concerns about Trump overreach and that he had used crime as a pretext to impose his will on Washington.The Chamberlain Network, a veteran’s group that describes itself as “dedicated to protecting democracy”, commented on X that the order for West Virginia’s national guard to police DC was “pulling them away from their core mission of protecting our communities”.“From floods to winter storms, we count on our Guard on in a crisis,” the group said. “They should be home, ready to respond—not on a political policing mission.”Since arriving in Washington last week, about 800 national guard troops under Trump’s direct control have served as a visible presence in public areas, assigned to administrative and logistical duties as well as “area beautification” work, according to the Wall Street Journal.Defense officials had said they would not be carrying weapons but “weapons are available if needed but will remain in the armory,” the US army said in a press release.A US official told Reuters that a formal order authorizing the national guard troops to carry firearms would be issued but it would largely affect military police officers with sidearms.The White House also said on Saturday that national guard in DC are conducting patrols on foot and in vehicles around the national mall and Union Station, adding that the troops are not making arrests at this time.Trump has indicated that he may take similar actions in other Democratic-controlled cities. A federal judge in San Francisco is expected in the coming weeks to issue a ruling on whether Trump violated the law by deploying national guard troops to Los Angeles in June without the approval of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.Typically the national guard is deployed only instances where a state governor requests it. However the DC national guard reports directly to the president. More

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    Washington DC and White House agree to scale back Trump ‘takeover’ of city police

    White House officials and attorneys for Washington DC have agreed to scale back the Trump administration’s takeover of the city’s police department.Under an agreement announced early Friday evening, the US capital city’s Metropolitan police department will remain under the control of its chief, Pamela Smith, instead of Terry Cole, the top administrator for the Drug and Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to reports.A revised directive Bondi issued late on Friday referred to Cole instead as her “designee” for purposes of directing the DC mayor “to provide such services of the Metropolitan Police Department as the attorney general deems necessary and appropriate”.Those services, according to Bondi’s two-page order, would include assisting federal immigration enforcement, contrary to DC “sanctuary city” policies constraining metropolitan police department action on immigration.Friday’s pact would also allow the Trump administration to use Metropolitan police department officers for federal purposes in emergencies.It comes after Washington DC sought an emergency restraining order on Friday against Donald Trump’s takeover of its police department, dubbing it a “hostile takeover” of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. US district judge Ana C Reyes had signaled that she would issue a temporary restraining order scaling back the Trump White House’s takeover of DC’s metropolitan police if the administration did not alter the arrangement by Friday evening.Reyes, during oral arguments on Friday, expressed skepticism that the Trump administration has legal authority to run the city’s police force or that Cole could effectively take charge of the department as its chief.“I still do not understand on what basis the president, through the attorney general, through Mr. Cole, can say: ‘You, police department, can’t do anything unless I say you can,’” Reyes told a justice department lawyer.The District of Columbia attorney general, Brian Schwalb, filed a lawsuit on Friday morning, hours after the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, late on Thursday issued an order for the federal government to impose a new police chief on the city’s Metropolitan police department (MPD).Schwalb says the US president and his administration are going beyond legal federal power over the nation’s capital, and he wants a judge to rule that control of the police remains in district hands. The justice department and the White House haven’t commented.“By declaring a hostile takeover of MPD, the Administration is abusing its limited, temporary authority under the Home Rule Act,” the lawsuit says.The Trump administration named Cole as the “emergency police commissioner” over Washington DC – a move that further escalated federal control of the city – but were immediately challenged by local leaders, who then sued.Federalized national guard troops were ordered into the city four days ago as Donald Trump declared a crisis of crime and homelessness there, amid outrage from opponents.Bondi put Cole in charge of the capital’s police department, saying he would assume the “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police”.She said police department personnel “must receive approval from Commissioner Cole” before issuing any orders. It was not immediately clear where the move left Smith, who works for the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser.Bowser promptly hit back, saying late on Thursday in a social media post: “In reference to the US Attorney General’s order, there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.”Bowser included a letter from Schwalb to Smith opining that Bondi’s order was “unlawful”and that Smith was “not legally obligated to follow it”.“Members of MPD must continue to follow your orders and not the orders of any official not appointed by the Mayor,” Schwalb wrote in the letter to Smith.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBondi’s directive came hours after Smith directed MPD officers to share information regarding people not in custody – such as someone involved in a traffic stop or checkpoint – with federal agencies including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).But, as a so-called sanctuary city, DC police would still be prevented by local law from providing federal immigration agencies with the personal information of an undocumented person in MPD custody, including their release details, location or photos, and cannot arrest people on the basis of their immigration status or let immigration officials question subjects in police custody.But the justice department said Bondi disagreed with the police chief’s directive because it allowed for continued enforcement of “sanctuary policies”, and the US attorney general said she was rescinding Smith’s order.The DC power struggle is the latest move by the US president and his administration to test the limits of federal authority, relying on obscure statutes and a subjective declaration of a crisis to bolster a hardline approach to crime and immigration.Bondi also sent anti-sanctuary-city letters to the mayors of 32 cities and a handful of county executives across the US, warning that she intends to prosecute political leaders who are not in her view sufficiently supportive of immigration enforcement.Leaders in Democratic-led cities dispute the administration’s characterizations that their cities are overrun with lawlessness, including unhoused people with substance abuse and mental health issues contributing to an increase in homeless and tent encampments.They say that while Washington has grappled with spikes in violence and visible homelessness, the city’s homicide rate also ranks below those of several other major US cities and the capital is not in the throes of the public safety collapse the administration has portrayed.Trump earlier praised Smith’s directive to share information with federal agencies.“That’s a very positive thing. I have heard that just happened,” Trump said of Smith’s order. “That’s a great step. That’s a great step if they’re doing that.”Bowser, walking a tightrope between the Republican White House and the constituency of her largely Democratic city, was out of town on Thursday for a family commitment in Martha’s Vineyard, fetching her child from summer camp, but would be back on Friday, her office said.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    ‘It’s not illegal to be homeless’: disquiet as Trump crews clear DC encampments

    For the past eight months, David Harold Pugh has found his “spot” outside the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library in Washington DC. He keeps all his belongings, including a guitar, tied up together on a two-wheeled buggy.“This is shelter. It’s a safe place where I can put my buggy up against the wall, and it’s up against that beam so nobody can roll it,” said Pugh. “I roll it on its back, and then I sleep alongside of it, so nobody can get it without me waking up.”He’s one of the more than 5,000 people in the city without a permanent place to live and now facing uncertainty about where to find shelter after Donald Trump said homeless people in DC must be moved far from the city.Crews tore down a major encampment near the Kennedy Center on Thursday, with federal law enforcement removing residents and clearing out the remaining encampments across the city overnight. The removal is part of Trump’s federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard across the city.Pugh believes the Trump administration is out of line for blaming crime on unhoused individuals. “It’s not illegal to be homeless,” he said.Despite the widespread encampment closures, Pugh told the Guardian he didn’t have any plans to visit a shelter this week and wanted to stay close to his spot. “If they tell me to roll, I’ll roll and I’ll come back when they leave,” he said.View image in fullscreenIn an encampment across the city, near the interchange of Rock Creek Parkway and Whitehurst Freeway, one homeless individual, who identified himself as G, had already packed up his belongings. He said he had had to bounce around to various locations over the last few weeks.“It’s just going with the punches,” said G. “So you just never get settled. It feels like you [are] on the edge.”G is also just days away from moving off the streets and into permanent housing. He said the only thing he’s missing is a new social security card, which he will have very soon, but until then, he’s not sure where he will go.“What am I supposed to do for six days? Am I supposed to tell the national guard, or whoever, I got six days? Gonna get six days, and I literally have the appointment at the social security [office] on the 20th,” said G.With encampments now closed around DC and just a few days before he can secure stable housing, G said he may consider staying at a shelter.“I know the shelters might be full. I don’t even know where a shelter is, they haven’t gave us any list. No, nothing. They just made us fully aware of possibilities,” he said.According to the DC office of the deputy mayor for health and human services, unhoused residents who want shelter will not be turned away, and the city is prepared to expand capacity as necessary.View image in fullscreenBut if homeless individuals refuse to leave encampments, the Trump administration said their options are limited.During a news briefing earlier this week, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said homeless individuals could face fines or even jail time if they refused to go to a shelter or receive addiction or mental health services.“We’re in the business of making sure people have the information, they have the connection to resources if they choose, but then people are, you know, left up to make their own decisions,” said Kierstin Quinsland, chief program officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless service provider in DC. “However, it is extremely concerning that people are being threatened with arrest if they are refusing services.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center said many unhoused people sleep outside in DC and across the nation because rent is too expensive. “Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money and simply does not work. The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails,” said Rabinowitz in a written statement.Quinsland said advocates and community partners have mobilized to keep an eye on encampment closures to make sure unhoused individuals are offered support and “treated as respectfully as possible”.She said one of their biggest concerns about these federal police sweeps is losing contact with homeless residents. In many cases, Quinsland said advocates work with members of the city’s unhoused population for weeks, months or longer if they are trying to move them toward permanent housing.“Trust is an issue in homeless outreach, you know. A lot of folks [who] are outside, they decline shelter for a reason, because they don’t trust services,” said Quinsland. “So these relationships that we have with folks are precious, and they are hard fought.”View image in fullscreenAdvocates also warn that these citywide encampment closures may separate homeless individuals from critical support and social services.“If they’re moved somewhere where they don’t know where they can get a meal, they don’t even know how to get back to the neighborhoods that they’re familiar with,” said Quinsland.Ahead of the encampment closures, Quinsland said outreach street teams with Miriam’s Kitchen have been passing inexpensive mobile phones to unhoused residents to help them stay connected.“Making sure that they have our phone numbers, have our business cards with them, to make sure that wherever they may end up, we can remain in contact,” she said.With Trump’s temporary takeover of the DC police department in place for the next few weeks, Quinsland said there had also been discussion about bussing homeless residents to neighboring areas like Montgomery county, Maryland, or parts of Virginia to be “out of sight of Donald Trump”.But that’s just a temporary fix, she said, as homeless service providers need more funding to address the issue.“The long-term answer is, if we have the political will to put money in the city budget for housing, then we can do that,” said Quinsland. “This year, there is zero dollars in the budget for permanent supportive housing vouchers, so that’s not a help.” More