Trump’s National Guard in D.C. Given Embarrassing New Task

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to deal with a so-called crime emergency in Washington, D.C.—so why are troops wandering around picking up trash?

A full busload of National Guard servicemembers were spotted collecting garbage across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park on Tuesday.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that servicemembers had also been looped in on landscaping duties, and were tasked with spreading mulch beneath park trees.

“I think it’s nice, as a D.C. resident,” one Guard member told the Post. “But there are different things we could be doing.”

This move comes on the heels of Trump’s announcement last week that he would ask Congress for $2 billion to “beautify” Washington D.C. The process would involve repaving streets, updating lampposts, and upgrading public spaces within a three-mile radius of the Capitol Building. So basically, just the part that Trump has to see on a daily basis.

And they’re already enlisting soldiers and law enforcement officers to help.

The National Guard from the District of Columbia also posted a video on X of servicemembers picking up trash. Officials told NBC Washington that the effort was part of a “beautification and restoration” operation involving more than 40 tasks around the district.

While involving federal forces in trash pick-up is an obvious misuse of resources, it’s probably a better use of time than ramping up arrest numbers to create the illusion of a crackdown on crime in the nation’s capitol. Meandering servicemembers only serve to undermine Trump’s tactic of lying about crime rates to justify law enforcement crackdowns in Democrat-led cities.

Six Republican-led states have mobilized roughly 1,200 additional troops to join the 800 already unleashed on Washington D.C.’s streets, tasked with stopping criminals—though the rate of crime was already down.

But while they’re there, they may as well pick up a broom and start sweeping.

President Trump’s Justice Department has failed to charge the D.C. Sandwich Guy with a felony.  

On August 13, former DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn went viral for chucking a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent in D.C.’s popular U Street corridor. 

Dunn reportedly called the heavily armed officers “fucking fascists,” and yelled “I don’t want you in my city!” before chucking the wrapped sandwich straight at the CPB agent’s chest. The agent was obviously completely fine. Dunn fled but was caught, later saying, “I did it. I threw a sandwich.” The next night, Dunn was arrested at his apartment by multiple federal agents, a gaudy scene the Trump administration posted for all to see. 

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors failed to convince grand jurors that Dunn committed felony assault by throwing a sandwich. It’s unclear if they will pursue lower misdemeanor charges against Dunn, according to The New York Times. 

This is yet another embarrassing failure for the Justice Department, and the second in two days. On Tuesday, prosecutors gave up on charging D.C. woman Sidney Lori Reid with a felony after failing to convince three different grand juries that she deserved eight years in prison for allegedly placing herself between ICE agents and someone they were detaining. After being shoved against a wall by agents, prosecutors claimed Reid “forcibly pushed” an FBI agent’s arm off of her with the intent to injure the agent.

Federal prosecutors typically have success winning over grand juries due to the biased precedent towards the prosecution, and the fact that the defendant’s lawyers aren’t even allowed in the room. To fail twice, especially after making such a huge production out of Dunn’s arrest, signals that the Trump administration’s mission of prosecuting everyone to the fullest extent may backfire. 

President Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland is tearing at America’s strategic alliances.

Denmark’s foreign minister summoned its U.S. diplomat for talks Wednesday after news broke that several individuals with ties to Trump had been conducting an influence campaign in Greenland.

At least three Americans connected to the White House are involved in the campaign, according to unnamed government and security forces cited by Danish public broadcaster DR. It is not clear if the Americans are acting independently or on orders from the Trump administration.

One of the Americans reportedly compiled a list of denizens friendly to the U.S., collected the names of people who oppose Trump, and has conducted reconnaissance on narratives that could potentially frame Denmark in a bad light for sympathetic American media. The other two Americans have been cozying up to politicians, businesspeople, and locals, reported DR.

“We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement. “It is therefore not surprising if we experience outside attempts to influence the future of the Kingdom in the time ahead.”

“Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom will, of course, be unacceptable,” Løkke Rasmussen continued. 

Trump’s quest to conquer Greenland has become increasingly serious since he returned to the White House. In May, the president refused to rule out the possibility of taking Greenland by force. That same month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. intelligence community was conducting a spy campaign on the island, a directive that came from several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  

Greenlanders have not taken kindly to Trump and his associates’ sudden interest in acquiring their land. After months of heavy pressure from the Trump family, including an embarrassing stunt in which Donald Trump Jr. reportedly convinced homeless residents to wear MAGA merchandise in exchange for food, and an effort in the U.S. Congress to rename the territory to “Red, White, and Blueland,” Greenland’s various political parties set aside their differences in March to unite under a singular goal: opposing U.S. aggression.

“This [latest development] shows that the problem has by no means disappeared, and that it is still very much something that must be addressed,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) who focuses on transatlantic relations, told DR Wednesday. “It is very worrying.”

Amid escalations in Donald Trump’s use of lawfare against his political opponents, the president on Wednesday threatened to hit George Soros with charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO—citing long-running MAGA conspiracy theories about the Democratic megadonor.

On Truth Social Wednesday, Trump said George Soros and his son Alexander “should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”

Trump and his allies frequently claim that popular displays against their agenda must be the result of an astroturfed campaign—with George Soros often posited as the mastermind.

The Soros’s Open Society Foundations issued a statement in response to Trump’s threat. The philanthropy network does “not support or fund violent protests,” and the president’s remarks about its founder, George Soros, and chair, Alex Soros, are “outrageous,” the statement says.

Going back to 2018, Trump claimed that demonstrators against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination were “paid for by Soros and others.” Similar claims were touted by the MAGA right amid the Women’s March in 2017 and protests against police brutality in 2020.

More recently, Trump said constituents who spoke out at Republican town halls were “paid troublemakers.” Protesters against Trump’s ongoing federal takeover of Washington, D.C., were too, according to the president, bought by Democrats.

Conspiracy theories related to Soros came to the fore in particular during the June demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.

Trump repeatedly claimed protesters were “paid insurrectionists or agitators or troublemakers.” Meanwhile, MAGA social media circulated conspiracy-minded posts, such as photos of pallets of bricks (actually taken in New Jersey and Malaysia) as purported evidence of Soros-funded groups arming L.A. protesters with bricks “to be used by Democrat militants against ICE.”

Now, the president suggests such paranoid claims are sturdy enough to serve as the foundation for RICO charges. “Be careful, we’re watching you!” the president wrote, before signing off.

This story has been updated.

A group of Federal Emergency Management Administration staff who wrote a letter to Congress criticizing President Donald Trump—and who asked to be protected from “politically motivated firings”—have been suspended, likely for political reasons.

Thirty-six FEMA employees, including two who were involved in the federal response to deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer, received emails Tuesday saying they’d been placed on administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to The New York Times.

They were part of a group of 182 FEMA employees who signed a letter warning Congress that President Donald Trump’s efforts to “phase out” the agency could make way for another Hurricane Katrina-level environmental disaster. The rest of the signatories were anonymous.

The employees advocated that FEMA be removed from the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, and made into an independent Cabinet-level agency. The letter criticized faulty leadership, as well as the Trump administration’s decision to gut millions from essential programs related to climate change and resilience.

Notably, they’d asked for protection from “politically motivated firings.” FEMA’s former acting head Cameron Hamilton was fired in May after defending the agency.

While the employees who were suspended Tuesday night were not given a reason for the decision, the suspensions appear to be part of a wider trend in the Trump administration of weeding out dissidents.

In July, 144 staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency were placed on administrative leave after they signed and publicized a “declaration of dissent” against Administrator Lee Zeldin and the greater Trump administration.

President Trump is threatening a Republican-led “comprehensive crime bill” to, of course, “Make America Great Again.”

“Speaker Mike Johnson, and Leader John Thune, are working with me, and other Republicans, on a Comprehensive Crime Bill,” Trump posted on Truth Social just after midnight on Wednesday. “It’s what our Country need, and NOW! More to follow. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

The president offered no other details, but his current federal occupation of Washington, D.C., and his countless unsubstantiated campaign trail claims about just how bad the streets of America are can help us guess.

While some Democrats have framed his unleashing of armed National Guard troops in Los Angeles and D.C. as a distraction, the move has interrupted the lives of real people and serves as a chilling blueprint for what may come next. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order to create a “quick reaction force” in the National Guard that could be deployed nationwide. And he’s already promised to send troops to cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and New York.

This all comes as crime in America is the lowest it’s been in years.

In 2024, Donald Trump won Iowa’s first state Senate District handily, by 11 points. In a Tuesday special election, Democratic candidate Catelin Drey won an upset 10-point victory, as the district swung blue by 21 points since the presidential election.

Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch, filling a vacancy left by late Republican state Senator Rocky De Witt. The last time the seat was up for election, in 2022, De Witt beat a Democratic incumbent by about 10 points.

Drey’s victory breaks a supermajority that Iowa Senate Republicans have enjoyed since 2022. This means Republican senators will have to reach across party lines and recruit at least one Democrat to confirm the nominees of Republican Governor Kim Reynolds.

The election was the fourth Iowa special election this year, all of which bode poorly for the GOP’s standing in the Hawkeye state. Two of the elections that took place before Tuesday also went to Democrats, one of whom ousted an incumbent Republican 52–48. All three also saw Democratic overperformances from 2024—by 24, 25, and 26 points.

Looking beyond state lines, according to The Downballot, Democratic candidates in special elections nationwide have overperformed the party’s 2024 presidential election results by around 16 points.

Republican Senator Susan Collins’s ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday turned into a public shaming as more than 200 protestors gathered to jeer the centrist from Maine.

This was Collins’s first public, press conference-style event in her home state in nearly a decade. Video shows the room erupting in boos as she approached the front of the room to cut the ribbon for a new Main Street in Seaport, Maine. The boos eventually turned into chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Collins smiled and cut the ribbon as if her angry constituents weren’t even there. The crowd continued to shout her down.

“I’m so disgusted with the cuts the Republican Party has made to this Big Ugly Bill.... Get outta here!” one constituent yelled at Collins while she was at the podium.

“So now, if you would let me celebrate—,” Collins responded, alluding to the Main Street grand opening.

“Oh please, there’s no celebration for a genocide!” another constituent shouted, causing the crowd to erupt once again.

“Could you please just listen for one—”

“We’d like you to listen!”

“You don’t ever listen to us!”

“Your votes destroyed our Supreme Court!”

“You refuse to have town halls with us!”

“Why are you funding genocide?”

“I have a suggestion,” Collins said when she was able to get a word in. “Could you listen to the suggestion?”

“Vote Graham Platner!” another attendee shouted.

“Here is my suggestion,” said Collins. “I would like the town of Seaport, which has worked so hard with state, local, and me, to bring today about. To be able to celebrate—”

Collins was again shouted down, this time over her votes to continue funding and arming Israel in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

This all comes as progressive populist Democrat Graham Platner announced his bid to unseat Collins last week in a now viral video. His candidacy serves as a foil to Collins on almost every issue, and Maine residents are starting to notice.

“My name is Graham Platner and I’m running for U.S. Senate to defeat Susan Collins and topple the oligarchy that’s destroying our country,” he said in his campaign video. “I’m a veteran, oysterman, and working class Mainer who’s seen this state become unlivable for working people. And that makes me deeply angry.”

Platner, a Marine veteran, has pledged to end “endless wars” and refuse to take money from AIPAC.

“What is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I refuse to take money from AIPAC or any group that supports the genocide in Gaza,” he told Jewish Insider. Collins has long been AIPAC-backed and voted for President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Collins’s chances of winning have been precarious for some time now. Her dedication to a spineless centrist conservatism has frustrated Maine voters, especially in a state won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 general election. That, combined with Collins’s icy reception at her own event, and Platner’s current surge, should make the longtime senator very worried.

President Donald Trump sounded like a tyrannical toddler Tuesday as he declared that he has “the right to do anything” he wants.

Trump is feuding with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker over Trump’s plot to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, and in a Cabinet meeting he took a turn into downright despotic territory.

“I would have much more respect for Pritzker if he’d call me up and say, ‘I have a problem, can you help me fix it?’ I would be so happy to do it,” Trump ranted. “I don’t love—not that I don’t have... I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it. No problem going in and solving, you know, his difficulties. But it would be nice if they’d call and they’d say, ‘Would you do it?’”

It’s no surprise that the president, who has systematically undermined the country’s checks and balances, feels this way. He even (jokingly) declared himself king. Trump’s tactic of undermining statistics and lying about crime rates as a means to justify law enforcement crackdowns in Democrat-led cities is the latest in a long line of autocratic acts to punish his opposition and seize more power.

The president shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for an invite to Chicago. During a press conference Monday, Pritzker warned that Trump should keep his distance. “You are neither wanted here, nor needed here,” he said. “Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties, and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.”

As the Trump administration contemplates further incursions into the private sector following its Intel deal, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the defense industry could be in the administration’s sights.

When the administration acquired a 10 percent stake in the tech company Intel last week—a move that began with the president attempting to get its CEO fired, alleging problematic China ties—Donald Trump vowed to do more “deals like that.” This week, a top Trump economic adviser said businesses beyond just the tech sector can expect such interventions going forward.

On CNBC Tuesday, Howard Lutnick defended the move, saying it’s “fair” for the U.S. government to take stake in a business if it’s “adding fundamental value” to it.

Host Andrew Ross Sorkin chimed in with a follow-up: “What about defense companies though, secretary?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t the U.S. government say, ‘You know what, we use Palantir services. We would like a piece of Palantir. We use Boeing services. We would like a piece of Boeing.’”

“There are a lot of businesses that do business with the U.S. government that benefit by doing business with the U.S. government,” Sorkin added. “Again, I guess the question is: Where’s the line?”

Lutnick replied that there is a “monstrous discussion” to be had about potentially taking stakes in defense companies. “Lockheed Martin makes 97 percent of their revenue from the U.S. government. They are basically an arm of the U.S. government,” he added.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, he continued, are “thinking about” taking stakes in military contractors.