rump's DC Press Conference

[struggle4progress]

The Bulwark
Aug 11, 2025

JVL, Sam Stein, and Andrew Egger take on Donald Trump’s latest press conference -- part authoritarian cosplay, part surreal stand-up routine. From talking about “good violence” and floating military takeovers of blue cities, to comparing DC to Baghdad and rambling about a new presidential ballroom, the spectacle was as bizarre as it was alarming.

[struggle4progress]

1. rump Deploys National Guard to Washington DC

The Warning with Steve Schmidt
Aug 11, 2025

Trump has already abused the power of the American military and continues to do so with the latest announcement of putting DC police under federal control. Steve Schmidt reacts to Trump's press conference and explains the real reasons behind Trump's controversial decision.

... @robertcooper1640
3 hours ago (edited)
"Crime in the nation's capital is at a 30-year low.
Crime in the White House at a 250-year high." ...

[struggle4progress]

2. Bowser calls takeover of D.C. police 'unsettling and unprecedented'

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Monday called President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the D.C. police department “unsettling and unprecedented" and said that the city’s police chief remains in charge of the District’s police force. Bowser said city officials would “continue to operate our government in a way that makes you proud.” Earlier, Trump announced the takeover as well as plans to deploy the D.C. National Guard to fight crime, saying the nation’s capital was suffering from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) called the takeover of the police department “unlawful” and said the city is exploring options to respond.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/11/trump-presidency-news/

[Boomerproud]

9. You could use harsher words Mayor.

"Unsettling". I think you can do better than that, unless you feel totally powerless.

[struggle4progress]

3. what the data shows

By Olivia George, John D. Harden and Jenny Gathright

... D.C. police have made about 900 juvenile arrests this year — almost 20 percent fewer than during the same time frame last year. About 200 of those charges are for violent crimes, and at least four dozen are for carjacking. This summer, D.C. officials have also implemented stricter curfew laws for teens in response to concerns about large brawls — recorded in videos that spread on social media — breaking out in communities across the city ...

Violent crime in D.C. has been on the decline since 2023, when a generational spike in killings rendered the nation’s capital one of America’s deadliest cities, plunging communities into grief and igniting a local political crisis that escalated to Congress.

The decrease since then is part of a nationwide drop over the past two years that in 2024 brought homicide rates to their lowest level in decades. This year, homicides are down more than 30 percent in data that The Washington Post collected from more than 100 police departments in large U.S. cities. Reports of burglaries and robberies also dipped by double-digit percentages ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/10/trump-crime-data-federal-takeover/

[struggle4progress]

4. What You Need to Know

Published on August 11, 2025

... Washington’s numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine. But overall, there is an unmistakable and large drop in reported violence in the District since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking. That downward trend is consistent with what’s being reported in other large cities across the country, while the level of violence in Washington remains higher than average in our sample.

To track changes over time, below we’ve pulled statistics for eight different crime types going back to 2018. The monthly data, both counts and rates, for Washington and other cities is viewable in the Offense Dashboard at the bottom of the Mid-Year Crime Trends report ...

There were three peaks of homicide between January 2018 and June 2025: In July 2020 (29 reported incidents, rate of 4.2 per 100,000 residents), October 2021 (31 incidents, rate of 4.5), and August 2023 (33 incidents, rate of 4.9).
In June 2025, there were 12 reported incidents, or a rate of 1.7, a rate reduction of 65% from the highest peak in August 2023 ...

https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-washington-dc-what-you-need-to-know/

[struggle4progress]

5. Is DC crime out of control?

4 hours ago
Lucy Gilder & Jake Horton

... according to crime figures published by Washington DC's Metropolitan Police (MPDC), violent offences fell after peaking in 2023 and in 2024 hit their lowest level in 30 years.

They are continuing to fall, according to preliminary data for 2025.

Violent crime overall is down 26% this year compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28%, according to the MPDC ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8600x7dnn4o

[struggle4progress]

6. The legality of rump's D.C. takeover

... Protester:

If they can place us under military control without our consent, they will carry this playbook to every community that dares to push back in the United States of America ...

Steve Vladeck, Georgetown University Law Center: ...

... in California, President Trump purported to federalize the National Guard. So he took the state National Guard and tried to basically drop them into federal authority. In D.C., he doesn't have to do that. The president is actually already the commander in chief of the D.C. National Guard. It's the only National Guard for which that's true.

And so D.C. is the only place in the country where actually we don't have the question that's arisen in California about the validity of a federalization. Here, the president can act without any trigger. It's part of why I think folks were so critical of President Trump for not using the D.C. National Guard back on January 6 ...

I think the real key is for folks to not get desensitized to the radicalism of using federalized police, using federalized military authority for ordinary law enforcement contexts in a setting in which the facts don't seem to support it ...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-legality-of-trumps-d-c-takeover-as-statistics-show-decline-in-crime

[struggle4progress]

7. fascists can't win because Americans are still fighting

Parkrose Permaculture
54 minutes ago

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. Where is the coverage of his cognitive decline?

Link to tweet