Trump Scraps Cashless Bail in D.C. as Federal Takeover Intensifies

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order ending cashless bail for detained suspects in Washington, D.C. This is yet another aggressive move in his federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

Cashless bail allows people who are suspected of a crime to avoid spending time in a cage before they’ve actually been convicted just because they can’t meet bail. In states with cash bail, having money determines whether or not you’ll be behind bars.

Trump and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro have framed a cashless bail system, which D.C. has had since 1992, as a “disaster” that leaves hardened criminals running rampant.

“Every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster,” Trump said at his press conference earlier this month announcing the federal takeover of D.C. “That’s what started the problem in New York, and they don’t change it. They don’t want to change it. That’s what started it in Chicago … We’re gonna end that in Chicago. We’re gonna change the statute.”

Pirro echoed Trump’s sentiments.

“I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the [heck] out of you or anyone else,” she said at the same press conference. “We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws. We need to get rid of this concept of ‘no cash bail … We need to recognize that the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens.”

The numbers don’t support this framing. There is no significant documented increase in violent crimes among arrestees out on cashless bail.

Even still, Trump’s order threatens to revoke funding from D.C. city projects if it doesn’t eliminate cashless bail, and will “work to ensure” that those detained are kept in federal custody instead of local. Trump eventually wants to force this order upon the entire country, banning cashless bail in every single state. D.C. is just the testing ground for this show of federal force.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has yet to comment on the order.

Donald Trump’s crudely covered wound is back in a birthday message to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The Trump War Room account on X shared a photograph of Leavitt and the president walking through the White House to celebrate her 28th birthday Sunday. A large pale patch was visible on Trump’s right hand, even from a few feet away.

Reporters previously spotted the dismally disguised injury while speaking to the president outside of the White House last month. One reporter zoomed in on the president’s hand, giving the public the plainest view of the painted patch so far. Since taking office, Trump has been spotted with the bruise in at least February, April, June, and July.

It’s still unclear what exactly the makeup is covering. Leavitt has claimed multiple times this year that the president’s hand was simply bruised from all of his meet-and-greets, and taking a lot of aspirin.

“President Trump is a man of the people, and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history,” Leavitt told the Daily Beast in July. “His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day.”

But Trump was spotted on Saturday with yet another bruise, this time on his left hand.

79-year-old Trump was recently diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, which can cause swelling in the lower limbs when the legs fail to pump blood to the heart.

Three days after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was freed from pre-trial detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him once again at a Monday immigration check-in.

Shortly after his detention on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced on X that the Salvadoran immigrant “will be processed for removal to Uganda,” and repeated disputed, still-unproven accusations of ties to MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said that the Maryland resident had been told to report to an ICE office on Monday for a routine check-in.

“As he was leaving the jail in Tennessee on Friday, he was given a notice requiring him to check in at 8 a.m. this morning. The notice stated the reason was ‘interview.’ Clearly that was false,” Sandoval-Mosheberg said. “There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention. He was already on electronic monitoring from the U.S. Marshall Service and basically on house arrest. The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him. To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”

Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March, as the Trump administration scrambled to push allegations of MS-13 membership. After enduring harrowing conditions in a notorious prison, he was returned to the U.S. where he has been slapped with human smuggling charges and detained, with the Trump administration vowing that he’ll “never go free.”

But after a judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s release on bond, this weekend he experienced freedom and was reunited with his family in Maryland for the first time in more than 160 days.

His release Friday came with bad news, however: Immigration officials informed his lawyers that, after Abrego Garcia had rejected a deal to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for a guilty plea and jail time, they now plan to deport him to Uganda. (Deportation to faraway and unfamiliar countries has become a grotesque hallmark of Trump’s deportation regime.) Monday’s news indicates that the administration is following through on this threat.

This story has been updated.

Charles Kushner—U.S. ambassador to France, father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and convicted felon—has drawn the ire of French President Emmanuel Macron over his allegations of rampant antisemitism in France.

Kushner published “A Letter to Emmanuel Macron” in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. 

“I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it,” Kushner wrote. “Antisemitism has long scarred French life, but it has exploded since Hamas’s barbaric assault on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe. In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized.”

Kushner continued, presenting Macron with a call to action. 

“In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism—plain and simple. President Trump and I have Jewish children and share Jewish grandchildren. I know how he feels about antisemitism, as do all Americans.... I urge you to act decisively: enforce hate-crime laws without exception; ensure the safety of Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, prosecute offenders to the fullest extent; and abandon steps that give legitimacy to Hamas and its allies.” 

Kushner’s letter came just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a similar letter to Macron, condemning him for announcing that France would recognize Palestinian statehood. France refuted Kushner’s allegations just hours after his article was published—and summoned Kushner to appear before Macron and the French foreign ministry. 

“France firmly refutes these latest allegations,” the foreign ministry stated. “The Ambassador’s allegations are unacceptable.” 

Why is the U.S. ambassador to France more focused on lobbying on Israel’s behalf than the United States?  Does he think the so-called French “Hamas allies” are so obtuse that they can’t criticize Zionism two years into a genocide without condemning all Jewish people? Does he know that there are French anti-Zionist Jews who’ve been vocally supporting Palestine since the genocide began? 

Kushner shouldn’t even have this job to begin with—he’s a reverse nepo baby and criminal who spent two years in jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations to the Democratic Party, and witness tampering. He even retaliated against his own sister—who was a cooperating witness against him—by paying a sex worker to seduce her husband and film it, likely for blackmail material. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who investigated Charles Kushner as district attorney, described his case as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he’d encountered. Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020. 

Kushner shouldn’t be here. He’s just lucky his son happened to marry Trump’s daughter. Now, Kushner’s blatant Israeli agitprop risks further fraying an already strained relationship between the United States and France.

Inconvenient truths don’t go unpunished in the Trump administration.

It’s a lesson that Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse learned the hard way on Friday, as The Washington Post reported that he’s been fired from his position as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The DIA under Kruse was responsible for the classified preliminary report about America’s June strike on Iran, which gave President Donald Trump much grief once it leaked to the press, as it painted a starkly different picture of the attack than his administration had.

Though the report expressly acknowledged its preliminary nature, its findings—that the strike set Iran’s alleged nuclear program back by only a few months, at most—put a damper on Hegseth’s and Trump’s insistence that they had totally decimated their targets. The president had referred to the attack as “one of the most successful military strikes in history,” comparable to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hegseth axed Kruse for “loss of confidence,” per the Post.

The ouster is just the latest example of the Trump administration shooting the messenger. After the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a troubling July jobs report, the president fired BLS chief Erika McEntarfer, appointing in her place a MAGA partisan who just happened to have been at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

If another country were to bomb an American-owned factory on foreign soil, one might expect—at the very least—harsh condemnation from the sitting U.S. president.

The anticipated response from a president who enjoys a reputation as both a champion of American business and a tough guy on the world stage would be even fiercer.

But President Donald Trump fell far short of such expectations on Friday, when he was asked about Russia’s strike on the Ukrainian branch of the American electronics manufacturer Flex.

The president mustered only five words—and none very forceful.

“I told [Putin], ‘I’m not happy about it,’” the president said, before immediately changing the subject. “I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war.”

Overnight, Russia hit the factory with two missiles, injuring at least 15, according to Ukraine. About 600 workers had reportedly been at work but took cover prior to impact as air raid sirens sounded. An estimated third of the plant burned down, per the Ukrainian military.

In a statement on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had “practically burned down an American company producing electronics—home appliances, nothing military. The Russians knew exactly where they lobbed the missiles. We believe this was a deliberate attack against American property and investments in Ukraine.”

Andy Hunter, the president of the Ukrainian affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, described the strike as “not only an attack on Ukraine” but “an attack on American business,” which he said is being “destroy[ed] and humiliat[ed]” by Russia.

As Trump quickly changed the subject Friday, he resorted to his oft-repeated lie about having ended several wars during his second term. The president had previously said he ended six of them. Recently, he added a mysterious seventh conflict to that claim.

“I settled seven wars,” Trump continued Friday, before loosening the criteria for the tally in order to bolster the figure. “Actually, if you think about pre-wars, add three more, so it would be 10.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t just want federal control of Washington, D.C., he wants aesthetic control as well—and knowing the president’s garish style, it probably won’t be pretty.

On Friday, Trump said the administration was “looking at doing something very exciting” to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a part of the White House campus that was constructed in the late 1800s. “It’s such a beautiful building, but it doesn’t look it,” Trump said. “I think it’s just incredible, but you have to get past the color, because the stone they used was a really bad color.”

And it won’t stop at the White House: Trump also said that he’s giving out a contract to “beautify” the city, repaving streets and updating lampposts within a three-mile radius of the Capitol Building. “It’s gonna be beautiful, all those lightbulbs—you see the poles, they’re rusting and they’ve got different lenses on top, if you look.… We’re going to have this place beautified,” he said.

This redecoration would require about $2 billion from Congress, according to the president.

Meanwhile, House Republicans still haven’t restored the $1 billion in city funding they blocked earlier this year, holding taxpayer dollars hostage unless the new bill prohibits D.C. residents from spending their own money on things that don’t align with the conservative agenda, like abortion services or reparations.

But gold lampposts (which, if the past is any evidence, could conceivably be part of Trump’s plan) are definitely worth the money! On Thursday, as well, Trump said he wants D.C.’s parks to look like his golf courses.

“I’m very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place,” he bragged. “I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world, and we’re going to be re-grassing all of your parks … it’ll look like Augusta. It’ll look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club—that’s even better,” he said, referring to Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters Tournament is held.

It seems that the president won’t stop until the whole District has been transformed into Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department released transcripts of its interviews with Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

The DOJ interviewed Maxwell as part of its scramble to regain the public’s trust after botching the rollout of the Epstein files. After Attorney General Pam Bondi promised the release of Epstein’s so-called “client list,” she then went on to say the list did not exist.

In the interview, Maxwell reportedly recalled meeting Donald Trump in the early 1990s, when her father, Robert Maxwell, owned the New York Daily News.

“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript.

In the interview, Maxwell did not incriminate anyone, including former President Bill Clinton, Trump, or any other high-level officials. She also maintained that Epstein’s so-called “client list” did not exist.

“There is no list. We’ll start with that,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell’s interview aligns with what Bondi and the Trump administration have claimed about the list, but may disappoint those who expected a bombshell about Epstein’s supposed ties to influential politicians and decision-makers.

Maxwell also took the opportunity to heap praise on Trump. “President Trump was always very cordial and kind to me,” she said. “I just want to say that I find—I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve liked him.”

She also said she “loved going” to Mar-a-Lago.

Of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, she described it as mainly a social one, saying she’d never seen Trump at Epstein’s home or in a private setting. And certainly not getting a massage.

“I actually never saw the president in any sort of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” she said.

Maxwell also said she had never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago, contrary to what Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, said about how she was trafficked by Maxwell in 2000. At 16, Giuffre worked as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, where she was approached by Maxwell to work as a traveling masseuse, which led to her abuse by Epstein, Maxwell, and their associates, she said. Giuffre died by suicide this year.

Trump, however, has told a different story. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One last month, Trump claimed that Epstein “stole” several of the president’s underage resort employees—including Giuffre.

Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein traffic underage girls, isn’t necessarily the most trustworthy of sources. She’s angling for a pardon from the president and so would have every reason to downplay any ties between Trump and Epstein, who had a documented multidecade relationship.

It’s yet to be seen whether the transcripts will quiet MAGA’s uproar about the administration’s lack of transparency on the infamous sex trafficker.

This story has been updated.

In Portland, Oregon, Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s use of chemical weapons has chased away a K-8 school just weeks before the start of the academic year, Rolling Stone reports.

The Cottonwood School, a publicly funded charter school, was, until this month, located adjacent to the city’s ICE facility. But in recent months, as protests against Trump’s mass deportations ramped up around the facility, ICE agents began to deploy tear gas against demonstrators.

According to the school’s executive director, Laura Cartwright, chemical munitions began to stray onto school grounds.

“At the end of the school year, we started noticing more activity at the ICE building, and there were chemicals being used on a regular basis and munitions being found on our playground,” she told local NBC affiliate KGW.

Cartwright also told Portland’s ABC affiliate that they were finding the munitions on a daily basis.“We were getting footage in the evenings of green gases, and gases being used near our gardens and enveloping our area,” she said.

As Rolling Stone reported, in June, the fence of the school’s play area displayed a laminated message. Its reported content, which matches a statement Cottonwood posted to Facebook, denounced the “harm being inflicted on our neighbors, ecosystem, students and school” and called on ICE to cease using weapons such as tear gas, “‘green’ gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets reported near our campus.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve experienced this, Cartwright told Rolling Stone. The school, after all, weathered protests against police brutality in Portland in 2020. (Per KGW, the school emerged from that summer relatively unscathed.)

Historically, the Cottonwood School has operated “harmoniously with the protesters,” Cartwright explained to Rolling Stone. “Our issue is the chemical weapons being used against them that were impacting our space.… We can’t have children picking up a plastic tear-gas ball that’s going to pop.”

As enrollment began to take a hit and it became clear that remaining in place was untenable, the school ultimately decamped to another Portland neighborhood.

Alina Habba is whining that federal judges aren’t respecting the president after one ruled that she’d been unlawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey for over a month.

“I am the pick of the president, I am the pick of Pam Bondi our attorney general, and I will serve this country like I have for the last several years in any capacity,” Habba said about the challenges to her appointment during an appearance on Fox News Thursday night.

“It’s disturbing what we’re seeing. It’s not surprising, but it’s disturbing,” she continued. “They think they have a voice for five minutes, they try to be activists.

“And Pam Bondi called it like it is. The attorney general said it today: We will not fall to rogue judges. We will not fall to people trying to be political when they should just be doing their job, respecting the president,” Trump’s former lawyer said.

But what Habba and Bondi don’t seem to get is that a judge’s job is to uphold the law, not bend to the president’s every whim.

Last month, New Jersey federal judges ousted Habba, refusing to vote to extend her 120-day appointment as U.S. attorney for New Jersey. But the Trump administration found a loophole to keep its thoughtless foot soldier in place without Senate confirmation. After Bondi fired the first assistant U.S. attorney who was approved to replace her, and then appointed Habba to that position, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer found herself as acting U.S. attorney once again.

A federal judge Thursday ruled that Habba had been illegally serving as U.S. attorney for New Jersey since July 1 and blocked her from prosecuting two criminal cases where defendants had challenged her appointment.