Trump Creates Emergency That Doesn’t Exist:
The impact of Trump’s federal actions came into view Tuesday night, with National Guard troops on the ground and agents from numerous federal agencies roaming D.C. streets from the National Mall to busy corridors in Columbia Heights. At a checkpoint in Northwest Washington, local and federal officers, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, pulled over drivers for seat belt violations or broken taillights, as protesters shouted at them.
The White House said the overnight operation would soon become a 24/7 affair, with a significantly greater National Guard presence — and Trump said he intended to ask Congress to extend the emergency allowing him to federalize D.C. police beyond 30 days.
“We’re going to be asking for extensions on that — long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days,” Trump said Wednesday, adding that his administration would be pushing a crime bill to use the city as “a very positive example.”
Trump’s executive action represents the most extraordinary federal intervention into the city’s home rule in decades, coming as violent crime is at 30-year lows following a historic spike in 2023, according to D.C. police data.
A man arrested in D.C. on Sunday night is facing felony charges for throwing a wrapped Subway sandwich at a federal law enforcement officer, Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, announced in a video posted on X on Wednesday afternoon.
Video of the incident, which took place near the corner of 14th and U streets NW, shows a man in a pink collared shirt, shorts, crew socks and New Balance running shoes yelling at several law enforcement officers while holding a sandwich. As he turned to walk away, he hurled his hoagie at the chest of one of the officers and then ran off with the officers in pursuit. The video, which has gone viral, does not show the man being arrested.
Israelis Being Israelis. Everything I learned in Hebrew School was wrong:
It was well past midnight when the masked arsonists sneaked into the hilltop Palestinian village of Burqa. Arriving from the direction of a nearby Israeli settlement, they crept inside a junkyard on the edge of the village.
They sprayed liquid on several cars, security footage showed, and set the vehicles alight. One sprayed graffiti on a barn wall, tagging the name of a nearby settlement, as well as the Hebrew word for “Revenge.”
It was the third attack that July night in this central pocket of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the seventh attack on this particular junkyard since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, according to its owner.
“Before the war they harassed us, but not like this,” said Muhammad Sabr Asalaya, 56, the junkyard owner. “Now, they’re trying to expel as many people as they can and annex as much land as they can.”
Such attacks were on the rise before Hamas led a deadly raid on Israel in 2023, setting off the war in Gaza, and they have since become the new normal across much of the West Bank. With the world’s attention on Gaza, extremist settlers in the West Bank are carrying out one of the most violent and effective campaigns of intimidation and land grabbing since Israel occupied the territory during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
Remember What I wrote About The Washington Post?:
The Washington Post published a couple of op-eds Tuesday from Trump officials trying to spin administration initiatives, reflecting the paper’s rightward shift under owner and multibillionaire Jeff Bezos.
In her op-ed, recently installed U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro argued in favor of the Trump administration’s decision to infiltrate the capital with federal law enforcement and the National Guard, despite falling crime rates.
Pirro was confirmed earlier this month by Senate Republicans, despite her long history of promoting unfounded conspiracy theories on Fox News. President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy federal agencies to Washington has been undermined by clear evidence that agents are being used to respond to mundane street incidents, not the murderous crime wave Trump has touted. (Correction: She was confirmed because of her ‘long history of promoting unfounded conspiracy theories on Fox News.)
In defense of Trump’s actions, Pirro complained on Tuesday that she had no interest in crime statistics that run counter to Trump’s proclamations.
“I’m tired of hearing the crime is down. It’s not down for people who are suffering from violent crime,” she said.
The Post also published an op-ed by National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who wrote in favor of cutting off potentially lifesaving research on mRNA vaccines.
The Trump administration has been criticized for opposing vaccination programs at the behest of current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.
For the record, we tried to cancel our WaPo subscription earlier this year. They said, ‘sure, but you’ve already paid for the entire year. No refunds.’ No renewal, either. Canceled this December.
An idle thought: How many ICE agents would remain ICE agents if they had to show their faces? Sorry, sometimes these thoughts just pop up.
The Battle Of The Texas Hard Asses–Cornyn vs. Paxton vs. Abbott:
As Texas Democrats mull when and how exactly they will return to the state, potentially later this week — despite the fact that Gov. Greg Abbott has vowed to keep calling for special sessions until his Trumped up congressional maps are approved — Texas Republicans’ efforts to outdo one another by attempting to arrest and punish Dems in creative ways are ongoing.
Last week, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and his political group, Powered by People. Paxton has claimed that O’Rourke was illegally funding Texas Democrats’ exodus from the state in order to deny their GOP colleagues a quorum to pass congressional maps designed to hand Republicans five new seats in the U.S. House. He was acting on Abbott’s ongoing claim that the Dems who left the state should be hit with felony bribery charges for any support they may have received to leave Texas or to pay the $500-a-day fines for breaking quorum.
Last night, Paxton upped the ante when he asked a Texas district court judge to jail O’Rourke for the duration of the lawsuit and to fine the former congressman. In the motion he claimed that O’Rourke had violated a court order issued by the district court judge last week that barred O’Rourke from doing any fundraising to help pay for Texas Dems’ exit.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is fighting for his political life in a Republican Senate primary against Paxton, is trying to get in on the going-after-O’Rourke action. He’s been looking for ways to leverage his federal office to get the Trump administration involved in Texas since this story boiled over last week. He was the first to try to get federal law enforcement to help locate and arrest the Democrats who fled the state. Today, he sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the DOJ to open an investigation into O’Rourke, “George Soros” and other amorphous, spooky, dark Dem groups supposedly funding Texas Dems’ protest against the gerrymandered maps and, also, their “plush lifestyles.”
BTW, Texas Has Its Priorities Straight:
For now, stadiums as sizeable and expensive as Buford’s remain rare outside Texas, the state that is the epicentre of the high school football infrastructure arms race. In 2017 the independent school district in the Houston-area suburb of Katy opened a $70m, 12,000-capacity stadium adjacent to its existing and still operational 9,800-seat venue.
According to the website TexasBob.com, more than a quarter of the 1,267 high school football stadiums in Texas can hold over 5,000 people, with eight seating at least 16,500. The combined capacity of 4.4 million is larger than the populations of 24 states. About a quarter have video scoreboards and 27 high school stadiums have opened in Texas since 2020. A $56m multi-purpose venue in the Houston-area city of La Porte is set to host its inaugural match this month.
Texas produces more NFL players than any other state, found a study by the data analysis firm Lineups, with Houston the leading city. On the other hand, Texas is ranked 34th for educational attainment by US News & World Report, is far below the national average for teacher pay and expenditures per student, and according to one study, this year Texas teachers expect to spend on average $1,550 of their own money on classroom supplies. Many would argue there are better things to spend money on than school sports.
Delaware Officials–Preserve SEPTA’s Delaware Rail Service:
Delaware’s political leaders are pleading with Pennsylvania lawmakers to preserve the rail line that runs from Newark to Philadelphia and is slated for elimination.
“It is a lifeline for thousands,” Wilmington City Councilman Coby Owens said this week of the daily route that has stops in Stanton, Wilmington and Claymont.
Owens spoke out as Pennsylvania legislators are exploring and squabbling over possible solutions to bail out funding for the financially troubled Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, known as SEPTA.
Gov. Matt Meyer wrote to SEPTA’s board in May, saying such a move would be disruptive to commuters, students and other travelers between the two states.
“Cutting service that stops in Delaware would undercut the economies and values of both of our states,” Meyer wrote. “Whether it is for work, school or some other purpose, Pennsylvanians and Delawareans depend on this line for quick and efficient travel, to get by and build a better life for themselves and their families.”
Delaware’s two leading Republican senators, Minority Leader Gerald Hocker and Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn, sent the same letter to their counterparts in Pennsylvania’s Senate in late June.
“We recognize that SEPTA is facing challenging financial circumstances,” the letter said, but “cutting essential services will only perpetuate a downward decline.”
Delaware spent $120 million over the last decade to support rail service. The state recently completed a new $90 million project at the Claymont station near the Pennsylvania border that serves SEPTA trains.
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