BY MATT BERG & CROOKED MEDIA |
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I live rent-free in his head.”
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Donald Trump’s brazen takeover of the Washington D.C. police force sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of his term.
- President Donald Trump shocked residents of the nation’s capital this morning by announcing that the city’s police force would now answer to him. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump told reporters in the West Wing, painting the capital as an unhinged wild west, a dangerous criminal playground where thieves and murderers roam free and savage gangs make daily life unbearable. The situation is so bad, he said, that he also plans to deploy 800 members of the national guard.
- To be clear: Trump’s announcement has little to do with safety. It appears to have everything to do with testing his ability to seize control of the capital, five years after his supporters staged a violent attempt to keep him in power despite losing an election during the infamous January 6 Capitol riot. Would that day have gone differently if Trump had seized control of the local cops and flooded the streets with loyal soldiers?
- Here’s the truth: The violent crime rate in D.C. spiked in 2023 — but it has fallen to historic lows since then (aside from youth crime), and declined 26 percent last year alone. In fact, the city isn’t even in the top 25 most dangerous cities in America. Regardless, the capital will become the second city in the country, after Los Angeles, where the president has deployed troops as a show of force.
- But Washington, D.C. is different. In his decision, Trump cited the city’s Home Rule Act, which allows him to deploy the district’s National Guard and take control of the police for 30 days. After that, Trump will need Congress’s approval to continue. So far, Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, isn’t putting up a fight.
- “We’re in uncharted waters here,” Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU-DC, told What A Day. “The Home Rule Act, our limited self-governance, and our lack of statehood allows the president to do this to a limited amount. What we are really concerned about is this abuse of power and the full frontal attack on our democracy.”
- Trump also vowed to begin removing homeless encampments in the city, but he was vague about what would happen next. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” Trump posted online Sunday.
Trump is already plotting which American cities to target next.
- He is following a classic autocratic playbook to take over Washington: Exploit a phony pretext to claim “emergency powers” and seize control — in this case, Trump keeps citing the assault of a DOGE agent, the famous 19-year-old Edward Corsitine, aka “Big Balls,” during a carjacking. (Side note: I still can’t get over the fact that when kids learn about this in history books, their teachers will have to explain how a teenager named “Big Balls” caused Washington’s takeover.)
- The question becomes: What happens after the 30-day mark? Will Trump find some other excuse to maintain control? Will he treat this month like a practice round, and bust this move again later to grab power during some future political crisis?
- Trump is openly talking about cracking down on other municipalities, too. “We're not going to lose our cities over this,” Trump said, hinting at plans to tackle New York, Baltimore and Oakland as well. “This will go further.”
- Side note: This move comes with a massive dose of irony. Trump is blaming the city for failing to apprehend violent criminals — after he pardoned his supporters for violently seizing the Capitol, in an incident when 174 police officers were assaulted and seven people died.
- “On January 6, President Trump failed to lift a finger to call the National Guard. He sat in the Oval Office and did nothing for three-and-a-half hours,” Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, who also represented a prominent Capitol riot defendant, told What A Day. “But today … he needs a manufactured crisis to diverge from the other issues facing him, including the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Irony is too weak of a word.”
About 150 protestors immediately gathered outside the White House following the news. “D.C. is our home. It belongs to the people who live here, and Trump can’t have it,” one of the organizers said.
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Israel is facing fresh international backlash after it killed five Al Jazeera journalists in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip. That included Anas Al-Sharif, one of the most prominent reporters in Gaza. Israel claimed that Al-Sharif was part of Hamas — but didn’t comment on the four others killed. In the final message posted on his X account, Al-Sharif wrote: “I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.”
The Supreme Court has been asked, for the first time in a decade, to take another look at the question of same-sex marriage, thanks to an appeal by Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple. So far, it’s not clear the court will take the case… but you never know what this conservative-dominated court might do!
Donald Trump and his immediate family have made at least $3.4 billion since he took office, according to an estimate by the New Yorker. Meanwhile, Vietnamese farmers who are being forced to vacate their land to make room for Trump’s $1.5 billion golf course are being compensated with a few thousand dollars… and rice.
A judge denied the Department of Justice’s request to unseal transcripts from sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury. That’s not surprising: Judges never release grand jury testimonies, and Attorney General Pam Bondi wanted to make it look like she’s trying to release documents related to the Epstein files. In reality, she could release troves of documents anytime she wants.
Trump seems to think it would be pretty cool if he put a flunky loyalist in charge of distributing U.S. economic data. Perhaps someone from Project 2025? He’s reportedly considering E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Throwback to when Trump repeatedly distanced himself from Heritage, only to make pluck its leaders to run the country. *sigh*
Trump is squeezing massive artificial intelligence chip makers for a fortune. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices both struck a deal to give the Trump administration 15 percent of their sales to China. That could amount to billions of dollars in a bizarre agreement, which deepens the company’s connection with the White House. I think there’s a word for this… y’know, something Republicans are supposed to hate… Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s a “TAX.”
A top American medical journal rejected HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s request to recall a major study that found aluminum in vaccines isn’t harmful to children. “I am used to controversy around vaccine safety studies — especially those that relate to autism, but I have not been targeted by a political figurehead in this way before," the lead author of the study told Reuters. “I have confidence in our work and in our ability to reply to the critiques of our study.”
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THERE'S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
Texas Democrats just fled the state to stop Republicans from locking in five extra congressional seats — and the legal fight is about to get messy. This week on Strict Scrutiny, Melissa Murray and guest co-host Imani Gandy of Rewire News Group break down whether this walkout can actually work, what the legal fallout could be, and how it fits into a week of big legal stories — from college admissions in the age of Trump to the latest Epstein revelations. Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
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Donald Trump’s Truth Social app launched a new AI chatbot… that keeps contradicting him. One example: The chatbot described the January 6 riots as a violent “insurrection” linked to the president’s “baseless claims of widespread election fraud.” As one professor put it, “their own AI is now being too ‘woke’ for them.”
An appeals court denied the Trump administration’s attempt to hide a public database that tracks the president’s federal spending. “No court would allow a losing party to defy its judgment. No President would allow a usurper to command our armed forces,” Judge Karen Henderson, a Republican appointed, wrote in the decision. “And no Congress should be made to wait while the Executive intrudes on its plenary power over appropriations.” *Mic drop.*
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