D.C. Showdown

Federal deployment in D.C. continues: Starting at around 9 p.m., FBI and Secret Service agents arrived in D.C.’s Foggy Bottom to remove a few tents from a homeless encampment. “We were told that there would be a list of sites that would receive closure activity from the National Park Service and other law enforcement officials, and we would support that effort by providing a connection to homeless services for those who are adversely impacted,” said Wayne Turnage, Washington’s deputy mayor for health and human services, to reporters assembled at the encampment clearing.

They ran into some thorny jurisdictional problems. A 34-year-old homeless woman named Meghann Abraham presented federal enforcement with a notice she’d received from the city saying she had until Monday to leave the area; federal agents acquiesced and stopped trying to force her and fellow trespassers to leave. But city officials and other law enforcement agents also worked earlier in the day to get homeless people who were camping to leave; shelters are reportedly not at capacity.

“Earlier in the week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt warned of prosecution or fines against people who refuse to leave encampments,” reports Axios. “Leavitt said homeless individuals will be offered transportation to shelters or provided with mental health and addiction resources.”

Using federal law enforcement might actually make sense here: “Many, but not all, of the encampments are in parks, traffic circles and medians in Washington that are federal government property,” notes The New York Times. The executive order signed by President Donald Trump back on March 28 indicated that such cleanups would happen. None of this can come as a shock, and there appears to be decent collaboration between Turnage’s department, the feds, and the White House to get this done in an orderly fashion that attempts to steer homeless people toward existing social services the city provides.

Showdown between Bondi and Bowser: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser are at loggerheads over who has jurisdiction to do what when policing the city. “Bondi ordered the mayor and D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith to recognize Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as the District’s ‘emergency police commissioner,’ empowering him to assume the full powers of the D.C. police chief and issue department policy,” reports The Washington Post. Bondi “also ordered the immediate suspension of D.C. police policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”

Both Bowser, a Democrat, and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb have said they will not follow Bondi’s orders. “Let us be clear about what the law requires during a Presidential declared emergency: it requires the mayor of Washington, DC to provide the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes at the request of the President,” said Bowser. “We have followed the law.” Schwalb is suing the Trump administration over this, reports Politico.

Let us be clear about what the law requires during a Presidential declared emergency: it requires the mayor of Washington, DC to provide the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes at the request of the President.

We have followed the law.

In… pic.twitter.com/XfaNqLalFU

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) August 15, 2025

However, “the very law that gave D.C. the right to an elected local government also includes a provision allowing the president to ‘direct’ the D.C. mayor to provide police services for federal purposes if the president declares an emergency—the provision Trump triggered on Monday,” notes the Post. 

Your tax dollars at work:

Iced out. ???? pic.twitter.com/xhexqgmbzS

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 14, 2025

Though I appreciate the use of DaBaby, and think there’s probably some segment of Trump voters this might play well with, both the new livery and the fact that they spent time filming and distributing this video (which goes pretty hard) just indicates that Trump really really cares about the show of it all, the spectacle, the illusion he can create: one of taking matters into his own hands, under his control, being tough on the bad guys. It’s sort of a Bukele-esque playbook (though Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s not the first to embrace this aesthetic, he’s just one of the first to be so social media–forward with it), very strongman-coded.

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Scenes from New York: I kinda love Staten Island, booing Zohran Mamdani out of a restaurant with “there’s the communist.”

BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani get BOOED out of a restaurant in Staten Island.

“There’s the communist. You are not welcome, you Jew-hating piece of sh*t. You hate this country.”

pic.twitter.com/59baUscwFW

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 14, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting at a summit in Alaska to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine—with no Ukrainian leaders present. “The US president sees any kind of ceasefire in Ukraine as a key objective of the talks. For the Russian leader, getting face time with Trump on American soil without having made any concessions on the war is already a win,” sums up Bloomberg. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt oddly called the summit “a listening exercise for the president,” while Trump said it was a “feel-out meeting” to understand where Putin’s coming from. “The more important meeting will be the second meeting that we’re having: We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, myself, and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders on. Maybe not,” he added yesterday.
• “The final arguments in prominent Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai’s national security trial were postponed Friday after his lawyer said the former pro-democracy newspaper founder had experienced heart palpitations and the judges wanted him to receive medical treatment first,” reports The Independent. “Lai, the 77-year-old founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested in 2020 under a national security law imposed by Beijing following anti-government protests in 2019. He faces charges of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to issue seditious publications. If convicted, he faces up to life imprisonment.”
• More examples of the federal government attempting to get a stake in private companies:

The Trump administration is in talks with Intel to have the US government potentially take a stake in the beleaguered chipmaker, helping support the company’s effort to expand domestic manufacturing https://t.co/destNZJX6R

— Bloomberg (@business) August 14, 2025

• “House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) on Monday said former President Clinton’s alleged ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should be uncovered during his testimony before members of Congress,” reports The Hill. “‘Everybody in America wants to know what went on in Epstein Island, and we’ve all heard reports that Bill Clinton was a frequent visitor there, so he’s a prime suspect to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee,’ Comer said Monday during an interview on Newsmax.”
• Dark:

Disappointing to hear that Finland, education’s golden child, is on about the same trajectory of lowered standards – even for the brightest students – as apparently everywhere else. pic.twitter.com/CvL0eQiNma

— Pamela Hobart (@gtmom) August 14, 2025

• Pretty much:

pic.twitter.com/Mom7NcwEaC

— Chris Freiman (@cafreiman) August 15, 2025

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Source: https://reason.com/2025/08/15/d-c-showdown/