“”A lot of the problems with criminal justice in Washington lie in the federal courts where the city’s major prosecutions happen,” writes Josh Barro on Substack, imploring his fellow Democrats to be less dismissive about crime and to offer workable alternatives to Trump’s show-of-force plan. “There are too many judicial vacancies, and the U.S. Attorney’s office has been declining too many prosecutions, meaning too many criminals go free and too many miscreants believe they will get away with crime. Fixing those prosecutorial problems is a federal responsibility—Democrats should say that if Trump wants to be tough on crime, he can start by making sure prosecutors are bringing enough cases and there are enough judges to hear them.””
Because of the trade war, China is getting more agriculture goods from Brazil than the U.S.. China is building a port in Brazil to get even more from Brazil and even less from the U.S.. Too bad for U.S. farmers.
If Trump successfully destroys the Fed’s independence, he will have eliminated the country’s ability to manage the economy with limited influence by short-term election cycles.
Israel hits hospital and kills five journalists, then says they will investigate what happened.
Trump is preparing to send the national guard to more cities. The national guard is not designed to enforce crime. Trump focuses on cities run by Democrats even though several high crime cities are run by Republicans. If Trump mostly or only sends troops to “crack down on crime” in Democrat run cities, that indicates that this is political intimidation and U.S. democracy is dead.
“Senate Republicans have already said they plan to move quickly to confirm Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran to fill one current vacancy. If Cook loses a pending legal challenge and is dismissed — and her replacement is confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate —Trump-appointed Fed governors would hold four of the seven seats on the central bank’s board.
That majority, in turn, would be enough to control the reappointment of the 12 regional bank presidents throughout the country who also have a say on rates and whose five-year terms are scheduled to expire in February.
And that, in effect, could give Trump control of the Fed’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee, whose refusal to lower interest rates throughout his second term has put the president on the warpath with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Any exertion of White House control over the reappointment process for regional bank presidents would represent an extraordinary break in precedent.”
“The administration’s attempts to paint all university faculty as woke are misguided. Many leading scientists and scholars have continued to push the boundaries of knowledge while either ignoring ongoing culture wars or avoiding administrative activists on their campuses. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is never a good idea, nor is schadenfreude worth risking the future of knowledge. The proper way to fight one form of intolerance is not to impose your own brand of intolerance.”
“As with any bureaucracy, the agency is fair game for criticism. BLS has plenty of flaws. But we know how Trump and MAGA play the game: Any results that are good for them are the truth—and anything not to their liking is evidence of rigging or conspiracy. Their take on any news is the one that advances their interests.
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the feds need an independent body to analyze statistics. The New York Times quoted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell: “Good data helps not just the Fed, it helps the government, but it also helps the private sector.” Trump has indicated he’d like to replace Powell—presumably with someone who will juice interest rates to help his political goals. Any intelligent person, though, can see why good policy flows from an accurate understanding of reality.
These are banana republic moves, backed by MAGA and the Banana Republican Party. Had any Democratic president tried to so directly politicize these independent agencies, Republicans would be screaming about the coming tyranny. Democrats aren’t immune to politicizing independent bodies—consider the troublesome plan to expand the U.S. Supreme Court—but they didn’t dare meddle in statistical counting.
Consider how budget matters are handled in Democratic-dominated California. The governor issues his budget and revenue/deficit predictions, which, of course, make the most optimistic projections. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) does its analysis, which typically is less sanguine. The governor might take issue with those results—but he doesn’t try to remove the head of the LAO and replace him with a political hack who issues only good news.
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We’re all used to this administration “defining deviancy down,” as we all lower our standards for acceptable presidential behavior (free jet from Qatar, anyone?). So I guess this will be just another deviant action that the Republican Party will eagerly defend.”
“The overcrowding, combined with negligence and malevolence, has led to inevitable abuses that are too large to ignore or deny.
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In one case reported to the senator’s office, a woman in ICE custody “was pregnant and bled for days before facility staff would take her to a hospital. Once she was there, she was reportedly left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance, for over 24 hours.”
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“We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur who was detained by ICE this spring, told the researchers.
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“There was a dude, he passed out. He was crying for his medicine for like two or three days,” A.S. says. “They didn’t give him his medicine until he finally passed out, right before they were gonna put him on the plane.”
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These sorts of abuses aren’t exclusive to the Trump administration; they’re a feature of mass detention. During the Biden administration, Reason obtained whistleblower audio recordings from a tent camp for migrant youths inside the Fort Bliss Army base in Texas. In the recordings, officials frankly discussed filthy conditions, lack of medical care, and inappropriate staff contact with minors.
The Trump administration’s reaction, though, has not been to slow down its deportation efforts, but to supercharge them. The administration awarded a $238 million contract in July to build and operate the largest immigrant detention center in the country at Fort Bliss.”
“Sean Dunn—who, at the time, was an employee for the Justice Department—threw a Subway sandwich at a cop and was subsequently charged with felony assault of a federal law enforcement officer.
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the federal government sent “20 police officers to [Dunn’s] home” to rearrest him on a federal warrant
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The government’s disproportionate response to this offense epitomizes why Trump’s plan appears to be, at least for now, more political theater than a real solutions-oriented approach.
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one murder is still one too many, and some neighborhoods—primarily Wards 7 and 8 across the Anacostia River—disproportionately struggle to get crime under control. Police clearance rates, meanwhile, are abysmal: Law enforcement in 2024 made an arrest in just 60 percent of homicide cases and 31 percent of non-fatal shootings. In other words, if you kill or shoot someone, there’s a really good chance you’ll get away with it. (That problem, however, is a national one.)
Put differently, there’s work to be done. Crime is a serious problem. And serious problems demand serious solutions: where resources are targeted and used effectively to deter—and solve—crimes that violently infringe on the rights of others. It is not serious, then, to use resources to patrol Georgetown, one of the safest neighborhoods in D.C., or the National Mall, where crime is a rarity, while the highest-crime neighborhoods have reportedly not yet seen an increased law enforcement presence. Or to send nearly two dozen government agents to rearrest someone accused of throwing a sandwich, instead of just letting him turn himself in for his appearance in federal court.”