Wednesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

I’ve been surveying the day’s top news stories and my head is spinning. I don’t know what to focus on or where to begin, and there’s no way I can cover everything. There is too much happening, so I’ve just chosen the stories that interested me the most.

Trump’s fascist crackdown on Washington DC

The New York Times: National Guard Troops in Washington Stick to Tourist Areas.

The 800 National Guard troops sent into Washington last week will soon be augmented by hundreds more, as several states with Republican governors commit to supporting President Trump’s crackdown in the city.

But Army officials appear to be trying to keep the troops on the sidelines of the mission, despite the tough-on-crime image that Mr. Trump has sought to project.

The troops have joined an array of federal agents who appeared on city streets after Mr. Trump declared last week that the federal government was assuming law enforcement responsibility in the capital, which he has falsely claimed is essentially lawless.

The first wave of troops sent to the city all came from the D.C. National Guard, which the president can call out directly. National Guard troops from Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia will soon also be deployed, according to the governors of those states. National Guard officials said that there were 869 troops in Washington as of Monday night; the Republican-led states so far have pledged 1,000 more.

The Republican governors said they were providing the additional troops at the request of the Trump administration. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll had asked for the extra troops. “When the secretary of the Army asks for backup support to our troops that are already deployed, yes, we will back up our troops,” Mr. DeWine told the Columbus Dispatch.

The number is still expected to grow. But the role of the additional troops appears vague, and the answers to even basic questions, including whether they will be armed, have shifted.

What is the purpose of this militarization of a city beyond Trump’s effort to distract from the Epstein story and his overall fascist dictatorship project?

“There is no justification for any deployment of Guard forces in D.C., let alone the deployment of hundreds of Guard forces from multiple states, which smacks of a military occupation of the district,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.

“Local crime is a matter to be handled by local law enforcement,” she added.

Members of the National Guard stand near D.C.’s Union Station, within view of the U.S. Capitol.

The places where the troops have been deployed so far tell part of the story. Most have been seen near the National Mall, large monuments and other tourist-heavy areas.

Army officials said that more would be sent to 10 metro stations, most of which are also near tourist and entertainment sites. They include the Foggy Bottom, Smithsonian, Eastern Market and Waterfront stations.

Near the Washington Monument over the weekend, troops posed for photos with tourists. The National Guard presence, with desert sand-colored vehicles parked near the capital’s most visited tourists spots, is now showing up regularly on social media feeds in posts by visitors to Washington.

The rules of engagement for the troops, at the moment, remain limited to supporting, but not providing, law enforcement. That means that troops are not making arrests, though Army officials acknowledged that could change if Mr. Trump decides that he wants an even more forceful presence.

CNN: National Guard troops from GOP-led states begin arriving in DC as part of Trump’s crime crackdown.

West Virginia National Guard troops have begun to arrive in Washington, DC, to assist with President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital, a defense official told CNN on Tuesday.

The troops could begin assisting the DC National Guard operationally as soon as Wednesday after they have completed their in-processing, the defense official added.

Their arrival comes after the Republican governors of six states — West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee — announced they will send guard members to Washington, DC.

The deployment of other states’ troops marks an escalation of Trump’s efforts to amass forces in the capital. The president previously announced that he was deploying DC National Guard troops to the city, surging federal agents into the streets, and federalizing DC’s police force. The president has repeatedly complained about rising crime in DC, but overall crime numbers are lower this year than in 2024.

Servicemembers from the West Virginia and South Carolina National Guards receive an orientation brief upon their arrival at the Washington, D.C. Armory, Aug. 19, 2025

The defense official said Tuesday that while there are roughly 2,400 personnel in the DC National Guard, assistance from other states was needed because of how many troops are either undergoing training elsewhere or are on leave.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said Monday he approved about 135 National Guard troops to DC, while Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced he would deploy approximately 200 members.

Tennessee will send roughly 160 guard members to the city this week following a request from the Trump administration, Gov. Bill Lee’s press secretary said in a Tuesday statement to CNN.

Over the weekend, West Virginia’s governor said his state was sending 300 to 400 National Guard troops to the nation’s capital. South Carolina authorized the deployment of 200 troops, and Ohio said it will send 150.

Federal officers assigned to DC are focusing on beating up food delivery people. NBC4 Washington DC: Detentions of D.C. delivery drivers leave immigrant communities on edge.

Washington, D.C., resident Tyler DeSue woke up tired and craving breakfast Saturday morning, so he did what many people in that situation would do: He used Uber Eats to put in an order for burritos.

When his driver took longer than usual, DeSue checked the app and noticed something seemed wrong — the delivery driver’s GPS location had stopped short of his address. He went outside to look for him.

“I stepped into the street, I looked down and see lights in the direction, like police lights, in the direction of where my driver was,” DeSue said in an interview. “It was my driver by himself and, like, nine different officers all wearing different uniforms. … Most of them had face coverings on.”

When DeSue went to investigate, the driver — whose name appeared on the food app as “Sidi” — was being questioned, first about his vehicle’s registration and then about his immigration status, he said.

“You’re gonna come with us, you’re gonna come with us today,” a masked agent can be heard telling Sidi in video that DeSue recorded and provided to NBC News.

“Can you tell me in Arabic, please?” Sidi says, adding that he did not understand what was being said and that he was nervous.

One of the agents, wearing a vest emblazoned “POLICE HSI” — short for Homeland Security Investigations, a part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — replies that they do not have an Arabic translator. The men then cuff Sidi’s hands, waist and feet before they put him in an unmarked car. DeSue said he has since reported the incident to Uber.

There have been other such reports.

The incident is one of several arrests of delivery drivers recorded by eyewitnesses across the Washington area that have gone viral since the Trump administration took over law enforcement in the nation’s capital last week.

An Uber Eats delivery driver is arrested Saturday in Washington, D.C.Tyler DeSue

The videos, scattered across social media and shared among D.C. delivery driver chat groups, are having a chilling effect on the drivers themselves. Some of them have chosen to stop making deliveries in the city.

It has been “five days since working, looking at what to do. And, well, closed down here waiting for things to pass, because I don’t know what to do,” a D.C.-area delivery driver who did not want to be named told NBC News in a voice message in Spanish.

On Sunday afternoon, DeSue said, an area where 15 to 20 delivery drivers typically would be parked out front of his home looking at their phones for their next orders was an empty lot.

“I haven’t seen a driver anywhere in the last two days,” he said.

There’s more at the link.

Immigration, deportation, and ICE

Paul Krugman at Substack: ICEing the U.S. Economy. Mass deportations will hurt more than people realize.

Donald Trump has been able to convert Immigration and Customs Enforcement (and Customs and Border Protection, which is effectively part of the same operation) into a huge secret police force — because what are we supposed to call an organization whose masked agents, bearing no identification, simply grab people off the street? Who shoot at a family fleeing in their truck, after agents refused to identify themselves and smashed the car window, claiming – apparently falsely according to video footage – that the driver tried to harm them?

We’ve also seen both deportations to foreign gulags and the creation of a network of domestic detention centers — call it the ICE archipelago — that are overcrowded, filthy, and breeding grounds for disease. Last week a judge ordered that detainees at ICE’s Manhattan facility be given bedding mats rather than being forced to sleep on dirty concrete floors, have access to decent hygiene, and receive three meals a day. We’ll see whether this order is obeyed, but it gives you an idea of the conditions detainees are currently facing.

And the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill gives ICE $45 billion to expand its network of detention centers, making room for around 100,000 more detainees, plus $30 billion for arrest and deportation efforts, enough to hire around 10,000 more ICE agents.

I worry, as everyone should, about how a huge expansion of this deeply un-American organization may be used as a tool of presidential power and repression. Furthermore, give people power without accountability — and it’s hard to give a better example than masked, unidentified agents authorized to use force — and some of them will abuse their position. And given what ICE has already been doing, what kind of people do you think are likely to sign up as it massively expands?

Compared with these issues, concerns about the economic impact of mass deportations are definitely second-tier. But they’re still important, and a subject I know something about. So the rest of this post will be devoted to how the Trump administration is about to ICE the economy.

A bit more:

First things first: Trump officials and some of their allies have been touting numbers that appear to show 2 million native-born Americans gaining jobs over the past year. But this claim is, as Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute says, a “multiple-count data felony.” Read Kolko for the details showing that this is a statistical artifact, not something that really happened. No, the native-born adult population didn’t suddenly jump by 4 million in a single year.

What will actually happen is a large decline in America’s foreign-born labor force. When Stephen Miller began promising to deport 3,000 immigrants a day, many people dismissed this as an idle boast. It’s true that we can’t possibly deport people anywhere near that rapidly while obeying the law and following due process. And your point is? [….]

We don’t know how many workers will eventually be incarcerated and deported. But undocumented immigrants make up around 5 percent of the U.S. work force. It seems plausible that a significant fraction of those workers will be pushed out, along with a number of legal workers snatched up based, as Trump’s border czar has said, on their physical appearance.

Losing large numbers of workers sounds as if it will be bad for the U.S. economy. In fact, it will be worse than you may think.

The reason is that immigrant workers aren’t spread evenly across the economy. They’re strongly concentrated in certain industries and occupations, where they constitute a large share, sometimes a majority, of the work force. As a result, the Trump administration’s latter-day Edict of Expulsion will be far more disruptive to the economy than the aggregate number of workers deported might suggest.

Read the rest at the link.

Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark: Fascist Secret Police Cars.

ICE has some new cars. They are cartoonishly fascist….

What is the purpose of these vehicles?

ICE has been performing its snatch-and-grab operations largely with unmarked vehicles. ICE officers in the wild seem to eschew any sort of identification: No badges, no uniforms. Most of the time they go to great lengths to conceal their identities, wearing mask, balaclavas, and ballcaps.

Fascist ICE trucks

Are these new vehicles meant for new kinds of operations, as ICE expands to a size commensurate with its funding?

Also: What is the use-case for an ICE pickup truck? Park Rangers and firefighters can use pickup trucks to haul large loads of gear. Why would ICE need pickup trucks in its fleet?

Next, let’s look at the design. You will notice that ICE employs the slogan “Defend the Homeland.” This slogan is emblazoned in multiple spots: On side panels and on hoods. On the Mustang variant—because apparently ICE operational requirements also necessitate a two-door sports coupe—the slogan appears to be plastered on the spoiler.

It is an odd slogan for a law enforcement organization. For starters, it’s not a statement of principle, like common police tag lines: “Protect and Serve,” or “Duty, Honor, Community,” or “Service Before Self.” It’s a command: DEFEND THE HOMELAND.1

This command implies a threat. The “homeland” is under assault, right now, and must be defended from some unnamed enemy. I cannot think of any LEO that uses the specter of an enemy as part of its self-projection.

Then there’s the word “homeland.” Not “America,” or “the United States.”

The Mustang variant

America and the United States are places that anyone might join, or become a part of. But the homeland is about blood and soil. It’s the patrimony of the true volk.

Finally: “Defending the homeland” isn’t even ILstice Department weaponization chief, called for the resignation of New York Attorney General Letitia James and posed for photos outside of her Brooklyn home last week – all as he is conducting investigations into her conduct.

His investigation of James, whose office brought civil fraud charges against Trump, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization resulting in a half-billion-dollar judgment last year, is one of several the Justice Department has launched into the president’s perceived enemies.

But since beginning of the investigation into James, Martin has taken several unusual steps that fall outside the norms of prosecutorial conduct. He sent a letter to James’ attorney Abbe Lowell on August 12 suggesting New York’s top law enforcement officer resign, he appeared outside of James’ home with a colleague trailed by a photographer for the New York Post, and appeared on Fox News pledging to take an expansive look into all of James’ conduct.

In video obtained by CNN, Martin can be seen posing for photos outside of James’ home.

“This is a criminal investigation, not social media,” said Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst. “A stunt like that might get clicks, but it’s patently inappropriate for a prosecutor to do and it certainly will give James and her attorney a basis to oppose any indictment, to argue it was prejudicial to the jury pool and that an indictment was brought in bad faith.”

The conduct is “outside the bounds of DOJ and ethics rules,” Lowell said in a response to Martin.

Justice Department policy generally prohibits discussing criminal investigations publicly, and attorneys are not supposed to pursue investigations for political means or to go on fishing expeditions.

Jah’han Jones at MSNBC: Trump’s ‘weaponization’ chief seems to admit to punitive fishing expeditions.

Ed Martin is going fishing. On Sunday, the lawyer and Donald Trump loyalist tapped to lead a Justice Department “weaponization” group that’s targeting the president’s perceived enemies vowed to rummage around in the lives of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in search of what he says could be potential fraud — or … something.

Ed Martin

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly targeted people who had been investigated or opposed him with thinly veiled threats of legal prosecution. Now, Martin, in his capacity as head of the so-called Weaponization Working Group at the Department of Justice, has been tasked with putting those prosecutions into action. The list of targets includes James, who led a successful mortgage fraud case against the Trump organization that resulted in a judgment of hundreds of millions of dollars; and Schiff, who served on the House Jan. 6 select committee that documented Trump’s role in fomenting insurrection in 2021.

Officials at DOJ are investigating both Schiff and James of mortgage fraud; both deny any wrongdoing and accuse the administration of political retribution. Martin, a former “Stop the Steal” organizer and attorney for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, has been assigned to oversee the cases. He’s previously said his group would be used to “shame” people it can’t charge with crimes.

In comments to Fox News this Sunday, Martin suggested his group intends to use its powers to poke around in other parts of James’ and Schiff’s lives in search of things unrelated to the mortgage allegations.

He said, “We’re gonna go to the very bottom of the facts, and if somebody did something wrong, we’re not only gonna hold them accountable, we’re also gonna look at everything else that they’ve been doing. Because when you’re a liar, you lie not just on one thing. When you’re a cheater, you cheat not just on one thing. When you’re doing corruption, you generally don’t just do it on one thing.”

The Independent: Bongino to work alongside ‘co-deputy director’ of FBI after sparring with administration over Epstein files.

The FBI has moved to appoint Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as its new “co-deputy director,” meaning its current deputy, Dan Bongino, will be expected to share his duties in the role in the future.

The appointment was made by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel and comes after Bongino, 50, a former Secret Service agent and podcaster, reportedly clashed with Bondi over the administration’s failure to release the Jeffrey Epstein files last month.

“I am proud to announce I have accepted the role of Co-Deputy Director of the FBI,” Bailey wrote in a brief post on X. “I extend my thanks to President Donald Trump and AG Bondi for the opportunity to serve in the mission to Make America Safe Again. I will protect America and uphold the Constitution.”

Bongino responded to a journalist’s post about the appointment by writing simply, “Welcome,” accompanied by three Stars and Stripes emojis.

Explaining the decision, Patel told The Daily Beast that the FBI “will always bring the greatest talent this country has to offer in order to accomplish the goals set forth when an overwhelming majority of American people elected President Donald J Trump again.

You have to wonder why Bongino hasn’t resigned. Maybe this is a step toward pushing him out.

The Epstein case caused controversy in early July after the FBI and Justice Department put out a statement saying that the late pedophile and sex trafficker left behind no “client list” among his possessions and died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in August 2019.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino will find himself sharing his official duties after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Mitchell was hired by the Trump administration

The assessment started a civil war among Trump’s MAGA movement, many of whose members had long been encouraged to suspect foul play in Epstein’s death and had hoped to see influential people brought to justice over their alleged involvement in the disgraced financier’s crimes.

The controversy raged for more than a month, with the president himself repeatedly urged to release all federal files on Epstein and to explain his past friendship with the disgraced financier, a cause of apparent frustration to him….

Even before the contested verdict on Epstein was published, Patel and Bongino, both of whom had stoked conspiracy theories on conservative media before joining the Trump administration, had drawn fire for attempting to pour cold water on the case during a May interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.

The Epstein story is not going away, and now supposedly the DOJ will begin releasing the Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

CNN: House panel to make Epstein files public after redactions to protect victim identities.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform intends to make public some files it subpoenaed related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, though it will first redact them to shield victims’ IDs and other sensitive matters, a committee spokesperson said Tuesday.

The panel is expected to start receiving materials from the Justice Department on Friday, though it appears the public release will come some time after that. The spokesperson said the committee would work with the Justice Department on the process.

“The Committee intends to make the records public after thorough review to ensure all victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted. The Committee will also consult with the DOJ to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations,” the spokesperson said.

Democrats on the committee complained that Comer was slow walking the release of the material by allowing the Justice Department to miss the Tuesday deadline that had been set by the panel and instead turn over the materials to the committee gradually over time starting Friday. They said DOJ had already been directed by the House subpoena to redact material related to victims’ identities and child sexual abuse – questioning the need for further delay to do so.

“Releasing the Epstein files in batches just continues this White House cover-up. The American people will not accept anything short of the full, unredacted Epstein files,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel. “In a bipartisan vote, the Committee demanded complete compliance with our subpoena. Handpicked, partial productions are wholly insufficient and potentially misleading, especially after Attorney General Bondi bragged about having the entirety of the Epstein files on her desk mere months ago.”

I hope this will really happen, but I’ll believe it when I see it.