August was another month of falling gun violence in the United States. Shooting victims were down 11.5% in August compared to August 2024 and down 34% compared to August 2021 per data from the Gun Violence Archive.
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August was another month of falling gun violence in the United States. Shooting victims were down 11.5% in August compared to August 2024 and down 34% compared to August 2021 per data from the Gun Violence Archive.
DOJ has now responded. It says the children "have been deplaned." And its lawyer, Drew Ensign, says he didn't respond by the 4 p.m. deadline because he hadn't yet entered an appearance and therefore didn't get the docket updates.
A couple people in D.C. spent the night in custody Friday after writing messages in chalk on a flagpole outside Union Station. The National Guard apparently witnesses the vandalism in progress. (Which is maybe not surprising as one of the people was in a banana costume.)
A federal judge in D.C. now says DOJ has missed its deadline -- by an hour-and-a-half -- for confirming that it has removed unaccompanied children it planned to deport from the aircraft that were to carry them to Guatemala. The judge also ordered DOJ to explain why it missed the deadline.
Pursuits are one of the most dangerous parts of policing -- for suspects, officers, and the public. This, from @bytomfrank.bsky.social, is very much worth your time. www.usatoday.com/pages/intera...
U.S. Park Police officers are pursuing vehicles when D.C. police would not. They have initiated at least 10 car chases in the past three weeks as part of President Trump’s surge in federal law enforcement in D.C., court records show.
BREAKING: Most Trump tariffs are not legal, US appeals court rules reut.rs/4p0kf0d
The opinion is here: www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-ord...
A federal appeals court has ruled that President Trump’s tariffs exceeded his authority under an emergency powers law.
Nope
DOJ has now charged the man whose assault case was no-billed by a federal grand jury with drug possession in local court in D.C. he walked into court this afternoon to be arraigned on the charge and left in handcuffs.
Military officials raised alarms that using troops during a July immigration raid on Los Angeles' MacArthur park posed an "extremely high" risk, including the possibility of "miscommunication and fratricide." The Secretary of Defense ordered that it go ahead. www.reuters.com/world/us/mil...
NEW: USA Jeanine Pirro's office charged D.C. lawyer & West Point grad Paul Bryant yesterday w/ threatening to kill National Guardsmen. Today, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui released him, calling it "perhaps one of the weakest requests for detention I have seen." www.wusa9.com/article/news...
DOJ has also dismissed another case brought by federal agents after the D.C. surge began, this one involving a man who police said was found asleep in his car. The police searched the car and found a handgun; the driver had a felony record.
This was a case in which police said someone drove onto the Mall, then scuffled with the Park Police officer who stopped him, then ran and was apprehended by DC guardsmen after a brief foot chase.
His lawyers would prefer that the case be dismissed with prejudice. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
A federal grand jury has declined to indict another person arrested as part of President Trump's D.C. crime surge. This was the only case we know of in which the National Guard participated in an arrest. After the grand jury declined to return an indictment, DOJ moved to dismiss the case.
NEW: The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve takes no position on Lisa Cook’s motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent Trump from firing her from the board. Hearing coming up at 10 am today before Judge Cobb
Atlanta’s newspaper, one of the best run metros in the country, will go out of print at year end. A milestone, and a harbinger of much more to come— maybe soon. www.ajc.com/business/202...
It's really hard at this point to measure what effect Trump's law enforcement surge is having in D.C. It essentially added 15% to police staffing; you wouldn't expect huge, immediate effects. Crime is definitely down from last year. But it was before August, too. Here's the trend in gun assaults.
I think that probably depends on how you do the analysis. If you're just selecting for something like incidents within a half-mile of any of these locations, you probably wouldn't end up with double-counts.
Yeah, I think that's an interesting observation. And one of the things I'd wonder about is whether we see a divergence for crimes that might happen in public (robbery, carjacking, etc.) compared to those that might not (assaults, burglaries, etc.).
At presser, BOWSER says increase in federal officers has significantly reduced crimes like carjacking, but it has broken police-community relationship. "Masked ICE agents in the community has not worked. National Guard from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources."
President Trump privately pushed Indiana’s top GOP lawmakers to redraw their state’s congressional maps this week, part of an increasingly urgent effort to help Republicans preserve their narrow majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Stopping people who look suspicious or who are using drugs in public is pretty much everyday policing in the U.S. But it's very unusual for the federal agents tasked with going after drug traffickers or gunrunners to do that work.
Stopping people who look suspicious or who are using drugs in public is pretty much everyday policing in the U.S. But it's never really been the type of work that, say, the FBI, ATF, DEA or federal marshals spent any time doing.
You have to be careful with D.C.'s crime data. For example, as of about an hour ago, the homicide that happened Tuesday morning wasn't in the latest batch of data.
The reason Kilmar Abrego Garcia was not eligible for asylum in 2019 was nothing to do with the merits of his case. It was because of the one year filing deadline, which requires a person to apply for asylum within one year of entering the US. It's now been less than a year since he entered the US!
Court records offer a picture of federal agents taking on an unusual role as, basically, local cops. In one case, DEA agents participated in an undercover operation that resulted in an arrest for selling $25 worth of marijuana. Even the gun cases we found mostly started with pretty routine stops.
ICE officials are using artificial intelligence to generate leads for immigration raids, which have sometimes sent agents to the wrong house. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...
NEW: Reuters examined more than 500 local-court cases filed since the start of Trump's takeover of policing in D.C. Nearly half of the cases involving federal agents have been for comparatively minor charges, including public drinking and marijuana. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...
National Guard is now tasked with picking up garbage in DC
Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure. www.propublica.org/article/heat...
National Guard soldiers called into service for President Trump's law enforcement surge in D.C. have been assigned to spread mulch at federal monuments. Normally the Park Service does that, but the administration laid off the workers. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
JUST IN: A federal judge rules that a lawsuit against Elon Musk and his America PAC — alleging they broke a promise to pay voters for signing a political petition — may proceed. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Donald Trump is appealing last week’s ruling in his civil fraud case, which erased the $500 million disgorgement penalty. He wants the rest of the judgment vacated, too.
I'd be tempted to get that summary, just in case it says "nothing to see here."
Today in federal jurisprudence: An appeals court orders further proceedings to determine if the word FUCK can be trademarked. www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-ord...
News Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan loses her bid to dismiss her indictment on immunity and 10th Amendment grounds. The judge will hold a hearing on Sept. 3 to discuss scheduling. Ruling storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
In which I learned that the National Zoo has its own police force. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The judge says the woman was detained on Wednesday after allegedly spitting on a zoo police officer. Charged Friday in a complaint signed by an FBI agent. Brought to court Monday and ordered released. DOJ agreed to pretrial release. Still not released on Tuesday.
A federal judge in D.C. says the District has unlawfully detained a woman charged with spitting on a National Zoo police officer after she was arrested for entering a staff-only area at the zoo's Bird House. The city jail "has chosen not to comply with this Court’s Order."
The Justice Department has filed felony assault charges against a man who prosecutors say scootered up to two National Guard soldiers at D.C.'s Union Station and spat on them.
BREAKING: Trump-appointed judge *dismisses* DOJ lawsuit against Maryland judges over their decision to automatically pause deportation cases for 48 hours He also calls Trump and his admin's attack on judges a "smear" that is "unprecedented and unfortunate storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Next week: Drama when the line spacing doesn't quite conform to the court's local rules.
The US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has affirmed that it violates the Constitution to exclude timely received mail-in ballots just because the voter failed to handwrite in the correct date. Thrilled to partner w/@eliaslawgroup.bsky.social on this. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
![__________________________ OPINION OF THE COURT __________________________ SMITH, Circuit Judge I. Introduction The ballot is a building block of our democracy. Perhaps no civic act has greater importance—or consequences—than a citizen’s casting of a ballot. Our Constitution calls upon the States to regulate the mechanics of how its citizens cast their ballots so that those citizens may meaningfully express their voices in what George Washington once called “the last great experiment [in] promoting human happiness.”1 But our Constitution also calls upon the Courts to scrutinize such regulations to ensure they do not unduly burden voters’ voices. This inquiry is often a difficult one. It requires a court to balance the State’s constitutionally mandated duty against its citizens’ constitutionally protected right. But “there is ‘no substitute for the hard judgments that must be made.’” Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 789–90 (1983) (quoting Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974)). This appeal asks us to make one such hard judgment. We must determine if the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s requirement that mail-in ballots that arrive in undated or 1 Letter from George Washington to Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham (Jan. 9, 1790) (on file with the National Archives).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:wovz3whdkughp6decczypkqq/bafkreieamj5gfoifz76xhoxw4zcc7kdrt4wpiayemnxavaa65vg5motxka@jpeg "Click to view full size")
BREAKING: Judge Lamberth orders Kari Lake to sit for a deposition about whether she is operating Voice of America up to legal minimum standards. He says this is "one final opportunity" before a contempt trial.
DOJ tried and failed three times to indict a woman for allegedly assaulting an ICE officer during an arrest of two purported gang members. So they were forced to reduce her charge to a misdemeanor. www.courtlistener.com/recap/og-loo...
SCOOP: CBP has had access to more than 80,000 Flock cameras nationwide. Cops said they didn’t understand they were sharing with CBP. Flock has just cut off access: www.404media.co/cbp-had-acce...
18 U.S.C. § 700 sets the *maximum* penalty for burning a flag at one year in prison. (Which is a somewhat academic point for the moment because the Supreme Court has already ruled that enforcing the statute violates the First Amendment.)
The federal government uses a system akin to cashless bail.
Separately, the Trump administration is challenging this standing order by suing all the Maryland federal judges.
Trump crime crackdown deploys troops in Washington's safest sites - www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
JUST IN: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has filed a new federal lawsuit in Maryland. Since it's a habeas corpus case, the petition isn't public now, but his lawyer said it challenges the Trump admin's scheme to send him to Uganda. www.allrisenews.com/p/kilmar-abr...
BREAKING: Kilmar Abrego, the migrant whose wrongful deportation to El Salvador made him a symbol of the US's aggressive immigration policies, was again detained by US immigration officials, his lawyer said, facing the possibility of being deported again reut.rs/4oMojkx
Chicago shootings are down 38% this year. While gun violence remains far too common, it's is at a far lower level so far this year than it has been in quite a while.
JUST IN: Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say the Trump administration is trying to coerce him to plead guilty to the charges he is facing by promising to deport him to Costa Rica — and threatening to deport him to Uganda if he doesn’t. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The deputy attorney general also asked Epstein's convicted associate "who were other famous/politicians, who 9 were other individuals" who were in his life.
The deputy attorney general -- President Trump's former personal lawyer -- also asked Maxwell about a Wall Street Journal article saying Trump had contributed a bawdy page to Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book.
Per the transcripts of the Ghislaine Maxwell interview, the second-in-command of the Justice Department repeatedly asked a convicted sex trafficker about her interactions with the President of the United States, who also happens to have recently been his client.
BREAKING: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been freed from a Tennessee jail so he can rejoin his family in Maryland while awaiting trial.
This is not how the Justice Department normally handles of interviews of federal prisoners.
There will be some 300,000 fewer federal workers on the government payroll by the end of December than there were in January, according to the Trump administration. The reduction would be the largest single-year decline in civilian federal employment since World War II.
Probably not. More meaningful to people trying to identify crime vs. everything else.
Not a new phenomenon -- or a new observation. www.thirdway.org/report/the-2...
They do count legal intervention separately from assault, but the demarcations in any dataset can be pretty fuzzy.
No data collection is perfect, but the CDC's is extremely useful, and if you haven't used it before, you should: wonder.cdc.gov/mcd.html
Some context for thinking about crime: Since the start of 2023, the murder rate in traditionally Republican states has been about 50% higher than in other states, even when you include D.C. (Figures are from CDC's cause-of-death reporting.)
Trump says that DC having a week with no homicides was something that happened "for the first time in memory." The last time that happened was March, where there was a 16-day streak without a homicide.
Circa 2022
NEWS A federal judge finds that Alina Habba's appointment as "special attorney" for the District of New Jersey is UNLAWFUL. Ruling storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Background www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErH2...
BREAKING: #SCOTUS, 5-4, allows admin to proceed with termination of NIH grants under Trump DEI/gender policies. But also 5-4 vote to leave in place ruling voiding the NIH memos enforcing the Trump policies. Roberts w/libs. Barrett swings. Doc: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
Just when I thought I was beginning to understand D.C. crime.
Trump say he will go on patrol in Washington with police, military reut.rs/4moY95N
READ THE OPINIONS from a NY appeals court throwing out Judge Engoron's ~$500K disgorgement order in Trump's civil-fraud case—while preserving the judgment and vindicating the AG's authority to prosecute this case under NY law. nycourts.gov/courts/AD1/c...
fwiw, the appellate division's decision does in fact uphold the verdict of fraud against him. the favorable ruling is just that the penalty was too high.
BREAKING: Trump's civil fraud penalty is thrown out by New York appeals court reut.rs/47C1Oss
Murder is now well below even pre-COVID levels nationally through June in the latest RTCI sample.
Two law enforcement officials told the L.A. Times that Homeland Security carried out a big, geared-up immigration operation outside Gov. Gavin Newsom's redistricting press conference specifically because the governor, a foe of Trump, was there. www.latimes.com/california/s...
Murders are infrequent enough that you can't really calculate a meaningful homicide rate in nine-day increments.
BREAKING: Trump's DOJ STRIKES OUT — 0 for 3 — in all of their requests to unseal Epstein-related grand jury records, blasting feds for seeking a "diversion" rather than unseal the Epstein files. Ruling storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Background www.allrisenews.com/p/maxwell-gr...
For the second time this week, DOJ has brought threats charges against a person who ranted about killing the president while interacting with officers. This person was picked up for destroying a light fixture and was in the back of an MDPD vehicle. He'd just finished saying he was intoxicated.
The places where Trump has sent troops in DC so far tell part of the story, writes Helene Cooper. Most have been seen near the National Mall, large monuments and other tourist-heavy areas rather than where the most violent crime happens. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...
DOJ/Alina Habba filed a motion in the Matt Taibbi's defamation lawsuit against Democratic Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Breaking news: Jeanine Pirro, then a weekend host on Fox News, now the U.S. attorney for D.C., told the chairman of the Republican National Committee in a September 2020 text message that she was determined to aid President Trump and the Republican Party.
NEW: Kilmar Abrego Garcia files motion to dismiss his criminal charges in Tennessee based on selective and vindictive prosecution "Mr. Abrego was charged because he refused to acquiesce in the government’s violation of his due process rights." www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
WASHINGTON (AP) — National Guard troops from West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana have begun arriving in Washington.
The federal officer who arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka outside an immigration detention center in May suggested that he was following the direction of the DOJ's No. 2 official, Todd Blanche, according to bodycam footage.
Days after Edward Martin, a Trump-aligned activist, was tapped by the Justice Department to investigate the New York attorney general, Letitia James, he wrote a letter to her lawyer saying he would take it as an act of “good faith” if she were to resign. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...
So here’s how much — or how little — we know about the case of Israeli cyber official Tom Alexandrovich, who is reportedly back in Israel despite having been charged with a felony sex crime earlier this month near Las Vegas. www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...
Newsmax said today that "we stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism." The CEO said the Delaware court "enforced a confiscation of our property because our reporting was not always sympathetic to Joe Biden."
DOJ says in a court filing that the D.C. National Guard has participated in an arrest, pursuing a person who prosecutors say assaulted a Park Police officer on the mall.
The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday. apnews.com/article/domi...
New: A group of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island today seeking to prevent the Trump administration from forcing them to cooperate with immigration enforcement activities in order to receive grant funding from DOJ to support crime victims. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...
“In reality, there’s not a whole lot of creativity happening. And whatever creativity is happening is coming from the computer.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
ICE's code of conduct for its agents requires that they "be professional, polite, respectful, considerate, helpful, and patient in all official activities that involve contact with fellow workers or members of the public, even in the face of considerable provocation." www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/...
A few months ago, there's a decent chance federal law enforcement would have viewed agents ripping down a sign because they didn't like its message as misconduct. Now the government - and the White House - is tweeting its approval.
Two cities in Ohio -- Cleveland and Dayton -- had murder rates higher than D.C.'s last year. Cincinnati's was close.
NEW: DOJ files notice that AG Bondi rescinded her previous order and issued a new one. Here it is:
As if this week were not bizarre enough: Mount Pleasant residents tell me a group of federal agents gathered for a photo-op near a pro-immigrant banner, pictured below, then tore it down. In its place, they left a dildo. A neighbor's Ring camera captured the whole thing...