The Latest: Dozens arrested in Washington as White House ratchets up federal police presence

daytondailynews.com -- Friday, August 15, 2025, 6:57:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Categories: Media Coverage & Press Relations, Immigration Policy & Border Issues, Economic Policy & Jobs

The White House said there were 45 arrests in the city last night, including 29 arrests of people living in the country illegally, and that over 1,650 people are now participating in the law enforcement operation. While the National Guard will be able to temporarily detain people while assisting law enforcement, they will not have the power of arrest, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said Thursday.

The federalization push also includes clearing out encampments for people who are homeless and relocating them far from the city, although details of the plan are unclear. Washington officials have opted to tackle some of the work of closing encampments themselves in advance of Trump's threat in order to offer stronger social services resources to those being displaced.

Here's the Latest:

Texas Democrats on Thursday moved closer to ending a nearly two-week walkout that has blocked the GOP's redrawing of U.S. House maps before the 2026 election and put them under escalating threats by Republicans back home.

The Democrats announced they will return so long as Texas Republicans end a special session and California releases its own redrawn map proposal, both of which were expected to happen Friday.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott still intends to push through new maps that would give the GOP five more winnable seats before next year's midterm elections.

▶ Read more about Texas redistricting

A network of clinics that provides health care in Maine asked a judge Thursday to restore its Medicaid funding while it fights a Trump administration effort to keep federal money from going to abortion providers.

President Donald Trump's policy and tax bill, known as the " big beautiful bill," blocked Medicaid money from flowing to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. The parameters in the bill also stopped funding from reaching Maine Family Planning, a much smaller provider that offers health care services in one of the poorest and most rural states in the Northeast.

A federal judge ruled last month that Planned Parenthood clinics around the country must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding as the provider wrangles with the Trump administration over efforts to defund it. That legal fight continues.

Trump on Thursday denied that the federal law enforcement officials he sent into Washington's streets to fight crime have been pulled away from priority assignments.

Asked if he was concerned about that, Trump said he's using a "very small force" of soldiers and that city police are now allowed to do their job under his takeover of the department.

"And no, they're not being pulled off for anything," Trump said.

Ahead of a summit between the American and Russian leaders, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been allowed to "play" American President Donald Trump for months.

"We've seen again red line after red line that he's drawn and then allowed Vladimir Putin to cross while the conflict gets worse or people are killed," Shaheen told reporters. "The president, frankly, should be embarrassed because Vladimir Putin is playing him and has been playing him for months. And this summit, unfortunately, seems like it's just one more effort to do that."

Still, Shaheen said she was hopeful that the meeting could yield a positive result for Ukraine and urged the Republican president to show strength, including by moving ahead with legislation to impose further sanctions on Russia.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, led by prominent vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will revive a childhood vaccine panel to "improve the safety, quality and oversight of vaccines."

The panel was disbanded in 1998.

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary will all sit on the panel but it is unclear who else will serve on it.

The panel will give a formal report to Congress on vaccines within two years, according to an HHS announcement on Thursday.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to reinstate millions of dollars in grant funding that it terminated for several nonprofits involved in agriculture and ecology-related projects.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of five groups that sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture after it terminated their grants in response to executive orders issued by President Donald Trump. One plaintiff, Urban Sustainability Directors Network, received a $28 million grant in 2023 to promote urban forestry.

USDA terminated a total of approximately 600 grants, but the judge's ruling only applies to six grants received by the five plaintiffs.

Howell rejected the government's argument that the plaintiffs' claims are essentially contractual in nature and belong in the Court of Federal Claims. She ruled that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the five grant terminations were "arbitrary and capricious."

Trump was just asked about Washington police chief's executive order regarding cooperating with immigration authorities and said he'd just heard about it.

"That's a very positive thing, I have heard that just happened," Trump said in response to a question in the Oval Office as he marked the 90th anniversary of Social Security.

"That's a great step. That's a great step if they're doing that," Trump said.

The president had no qualms about the possible national security risks from his reassigning of officers for the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to deal with local crime in Washington.

"Like what? Like what?" Trump said.

A reporter suggested that moving federal officials could compromise efforts to stop terrorism.

"Oh, really, terrorism?" Trump said. "They'll stop terrorism as part of what they're doing right now."

That's after he recently reposted a video on social media about a Christian nationalist church that included various pastors saying women should no longer be allowed to vote.

"Of course the secretary thinks that women should have the right to vote. That's a stupid question, to be honest with you," Pentagon's press secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters Thursday.

She was asked about Hegseth's support for Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC.

Doug Wilson has said he was grateful Hegseth shared the video.

"He was, in effect, reposting it and saying, 'Amen,' at some level," Wilson said.

Wilson said Hegseth's support for CREC isn't expected to hurt recruitment in the future.

Some analysts have suggested that, simply by agreeing to meet with Putin on U.S. soil, Trump is undermining longstanding U.S. and international efforts to isolate Putin and Russia.

But asked by reporters if sitting down with Putin in Alaska constituted a win for Putin, the president insisted, "I don't think it's a reward."

Trump says his meeting in Alaska with Putin will be a "big meeting" and is "going to be a good meeting," but that "the more important meeting is the second meeting we're having" with Putin and Zelenskyy.

In comments to reporters in the Oval Office, the president suggested he may even bring in European leaders for the second discussion after meeting with Putin.

Trump said he believes that both Putin and Zelensky want to make peace.

Asked if he might offer a rare earth minerals deal with Russia as part of his discussions with Putin, Trump said, "We're going to see what happens with our meeting" but he also suggested that such minerals were "very unimportant."

In an appearance at the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said that he saved Los Angeles by calling in the National Guard earlier this year, and that the city would have burned down without his intervention.

He said that if he had allowed protests to continue without intervention, he would have had to cancel the Olympics.

"If I didn't send in the troops, I don't think you would have had Los Angeles in condition to have the Olympics," Trump said.

Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano said "Social Security will be great again," under his watch, "you have my commitment," he told Trump. However, the Republican president and Republican lawmakers have not yet proposed a long-term solution to shore up the program.

The so-called go-broke date -- or the date at which Social Security will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits -- has been moved up to 2034, instead of last year's estimate of 2035.

Legislation signed during the Trump and Biden administrations have contributed to the accelerated insolvency date of SSA, including the Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law by Democratic President Joe Biden and the new mega-tax law signed by Trump in July.

During a signing ceremony in the Oval Office commemorating Social Security's 90th anniversary, President Donald Trump repeated the claim that Republicans' mega tax and spending cut legislation signed into law last month will eliminate taxes on federal Social Security benefits.

It does not.

Trump's "no tax on Social Security" claim exaggerates the benefits. The temporary tax deduction for seniors aged 65 and over applies to all income -- not just Social Security.

And it turns out, not all Social Security beneficiaries will be able to claim the deduction. Those who won't be able to do so include the lowest-income seniors who already don't pay taxes on Social Security, those who choose to claim their benefits before they reach age 65 and those above a defined income threshold.

If Trump wants to help cities lower violence and crime, he's doing it the wrong way, Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott said in a call with reporters Thursday.

Scott said federal officials should be working for agencies and collaborating with cities on issues such as gun trafficking and drug crimes rather than being taken off their posts to surge into cities.

Trump should allow public safety professionals "to do what they signed up to do" instead of his D.C. "dog and pony show of force," Scott said.

The National Guard now assisting law enforcement in Washington, D.C. will not have the power of arrest, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said Thursday.

Similar to role they played when responding to protests in Los Angeles, the Guards will have the ability to temporarily detain people but it will be up to law enforcement agencies to arrest anyone, she said.

"They will not be arresting people, but they may temporarily limit the movement of an individual who has entered a restricted or secured area without permission," Wilson told reporters during a press conference. "So this will be very similar to the L.A. mission, where we could temporarily detain someone and then turn them over."

The advocates expressed "profound concerns" about Trump's plan to crack down on crime and homelessness in the nation's capital in a letter sent to the Republican chairs and Democratic ranking members of the House Oversight and Senate Homeland Security committee.

The leaders, who represent some of the largest civil rights groups in the country, argued Trump's moves were an "unprecedented and needless takeover of a local government's law enforcement mechanisms" that posed "a dire threat to public safety as well as to civil and human rights."

They urged Congress to investigate Trump's actions make sure that DC residents' constitutional rights "are being fully protected and enforced."

"This administration has proven that it will push every boundary to test for exploitable weakness in Congress and the courts," reads a letter signed by the leaders of 126 civil rights organizations. "Given the role of your respective committees in matters affecting our nation's capital, we urge you to promptly call for hearings into this decision, and to engage in vigorous oversight moving forward."

The D.C. Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage on Thursday spoke to reporters from a homeless encampment near the Institute of Peace that the city had just closed down.

He said after the National Park Service notified the city it planned to close all encampments in the district, both on federal and district lands, the city opted to tackle some of the work themselves.

He said they have more social services resources than the federal government and can do it "the way it should be done."

"Closing encampments is a very, very complex process," Turnage said. "We're dealing with human beings who, in many cases, have been marginalized. Their lives are being disrupted. And so we have put a process in place that we think respects that."

He said federal officials have laid out an "aggressive timeline" that aims to finish closing encampments within about a week. The city will learn more about which sites will be targeted next at 6 p.m. tonight.

Turnage said that timeline could be achieved if the officials focus only on sites where NPS has jurisdiction, but it may not be possible to clear all 62 encampments across the city in just one week.

The Pentagon says the 800 National Guard members who have been activated in Washington will have missions that include monument security, community safety patrols and beautification efforts.

Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson also said Thursday that the troops won't be armed.

National Guard Major Micah Maxwell added that troops will assist federal and local law enforcement in a variety of roles, including traffic control posts and crowd control. The Guard members have been trained in de-escalation tactics as well as the proper use of crowd control equipment, Maxwell said.

Wilson declined to give more details on what the safety patrols or beautification efforts would entail or how many Guard members have already been deployed to the streets of Washington.

On Thursday, troops and their Humvees are visibly stationed outside Union Station.

The White House said Thursday that Guard members aren't making arrests but are "protecting federal assets, providing a safe environment for law enforcement officers to make arrests, and deterring violent crime with a visible law enforcement presence."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says preparations for President Donald Trump's summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over prospects for peace with Ukraine are proceeding apace and that the U.S. expects any result of the meeting will be known very soon after it begins quickly.

Speaking at the State Department after a meeting with Paraguay's foreign minister, Rubio told reporters on the eve of Friday's summit in Alaska that the preparations are "going very fast because this was put together very quickly." Trump's "hope is to interact with Putin tomorrow and sort of get a sense very quickly and early whether a peace is possible or not."

"We'll see how tomorrow plays out," said Rubio who will be accompanying Trump to Anchorage for the summit in his role as acting national security adviser.

Missouri lawmakers are preparing for a special session on congressional redistricting as part of President Donald Trump's push to draw more favorable maps for Republicans ahead of next year's elections.

A document obtained by The Associated Press shows the Senate has received a $46,000 invoice to activate six redistricting software licenses and provide training for up to 10 legislative staff members. Senate Administrator Patrick Baker says he stands ready to pay the bill as soon as Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe officially calls a special session.

Kehoe expressed support for a redrawing Missouri's congressional districts while speaking to reporters Thursday at the Missouri State Fair but did not commit to a special session.

Republican House Majority Leader Alex Riley said a special session on redistricting is "pretty likely" to happen. Riley said he's had conversations about it with White House staff, and discussions already are underway about what a new map could look like.

Six of Missouri's eight congressional seats are currently held by Republicans. GOP lawmakers could target a Democratic-held district in Kansas City to pick up another seat.

Amber W. Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, said she believes that "federal law enforcement will begin systematically rounding up and arresting unhoused people." She believes officers would ask people to move on or would "offer shelter," arresting people if they refused either directive.

"We do not have enough shelter beds for everyone on the street," Harding said. "This is a chaotic and scary time for all of us in D.C., but particularly for people without homes."

Lucho Vásquez, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said his group is "focusing all energies on opening and operating temporary facilities" for anyone in need of emergency shelter, food or other resources after the removals.

AP journalists talked to homeless people who were being told Thursday either by federal law enforcement officials or advocacy groups to pack up their tents and belongings from public spaces before more formal removal measures. Some expressed fear and anxiety about what might be coming.

Trump posted before announcing the takeover that "The homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital." But whether federal troops will move them and how they'll be provided for outside the city has not been explained.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that homeless people "will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services," and those who refuse "will be susceptible to fines or to jail time."

Trump says there's a 25% chance his summit with Putin fails, but floated the possibility of bringing Zelenskyy to Alaska for a three-way meeting if it's successful.

Trump made the comments in a radio interview Thursday with Fox News commentator Brian Kilmeade.

The president said no decisions have been made about whether he'll hold a joint news conference with Putin, as he did during a controversial 2018 meeting with the Russian leader in Helsinki, Finland.

The White House said Thursday morning marked the start of law enforcement efforts to proactively target certain people and places in the nation's capital, rather than patrolling general areas.

That could include specific gang members, drug dealers or high-crime locations. The White House said it is creating specialized teams from multiple agencies to target criminal hotspots.

The White House also said law enforcement operations will now be taking place around the clock, rather than focusing on the evening hours.

The White House said there were 45 arrests related to its Washington, D.C., law enforcement operation last night, including 29 arrests of people living in the country illegally.

Among other reasons for arrests were distribution or possession of drugs, carrying of a concealed weapon and assaulting a federal officer.

The White House said there are now more than 1,650 people participating in the law enforcement operation.

▶ Read more on developments in the capital as federal troops police the streets

The White House said Thursday morning marked the start of law enforcement efforts to proactively target certain people and places in the nation's capital, rather than patrolling general areas.

That could include specific gang members, drug dealers or high-crime locations. The White House said it is creating specialized teams of people from multiple agencies to target criminal hotspots.

The White House also said law enforcement operations will now be taking place around the clock, rather than focusing on the evening hours.

"Ongoing engagement with partners like Paraguay is vital to deterring illegal immigration and securing our borders. The United States remains committed to working with Paraguay to build a safer, stronger, and more prosperous future for our hemisphere," the State Department said.

Immigration activists have objected to similar agreements with countries that have had less than stellar human rights records.

In its annual human rights reports released earlier this week, the State Department said "the human right situation in Paraguay did not meaningfully improve" during 2024, and pointed to "credible reports of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest and detention; and serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom."

The Trump administration has signed a deal with Paraguay under which U.S. asylum seekers can be held in the South American country while pursuing their claims. The move expands efforts to keep asylum seekers out of the United States until they are processed. Human rights advocates have opposed this, saying it will lead to more questionable deportations.

The so-called "Safe Third Country Agreement" signed by Secretary of State Marbo Rubio and Paraguayan Foreign Minister Ruben Ramírez on Thursday "gives asylum seekers currently in the United States the opportunity to pursue their protection claims in Paraguay, allowing our nations to share the burden of managing illegal immigration while shutting down the abuse of our nation's asylum system," the State Department said in a statement.

The investigation began years ago after two drug dealers got into a car accident in a small Tennessee town. What followed was a series of secret wiretaps, a shootout with police and the discovery of drugs hidden in a tractor trailer that would eventually lead federal investigators to cartel leaders in Mexico.

The investigation culminated with Justice Department indictments unsealed Thursday against three leaders and two high-ranking enforcers of the United Cartels, a leading rival of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

The U.S. government is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of the United Cartels' top leader, Juan José Farías Álvarez -- "El Abuelo," or the grandfather -- along with multimillion-dollar rewards for the others. All five are believed to be in Mexico.

▶ Read more about the case against "El Abuelo" and other "United Cartels" leaders

The Florida Republican is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility at a state prison in north Florida as a federal judge decides the fate of the state's holding center for immigrants at an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."

The new facility will hold 1,300 immigration detention beds and could expand to 2,000 at the Baker Correctional Institution, a state prison west of Jacksonville.

DeSantis justified opening the "Deportation Depot" by saying Thursday that Trump needs more capacity to hold and deport more immigrants.

"There is a demand for this," DeSantis said. "I'm confident it will be filled."

▶ Read more about Florida's plans for a second immigrant detention center

Near the Institute of Peace on Thursday morning, AP journalists saw about a dozen homeless D.C. residents packing their belongings. Items weren't being forcibly thrown out by law enforcement, but a garbage truck idling nearby crunched the mattress and other possessions of at least one man.

Volunteers from some of the organizations around the city that help homeless people were on hand, along with several protesters who held signs. One said: "Being 'Homeless' is not a crime -- Sex Trafficking is -- Release the Epstein files."

Advocates expected law enforcement officers to fan out across D.C. later Thursday to take down any remaining homeless encampments.

Trump has called climate change a hoax -- rhetoric echoed by many in the GOP -- and his administration has worked to dismantle and defund federal climate science and data collection, with little to no pushback from Republicans in Congress.

He's proposed to revoke the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare -- the central basis for U.S. climate change action. He's declared a national energy emergency to expedite fossil fuel development, canceled grants for renewable energy projects and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels.

The Associated Press reached out to more than half a dozen Republicans who criticized Canada but none returned phone calls or emails.

Republican lawmakers are blaming Canada for not preventing and containing the wildfires whose smoke has fouled the air in their states.

In letters expressing outrage and indignation, they're demanding more forest thinning, prescribed burns and other measures. They say the smoke is hurting U.S.-Canadian relations and warn that the U.S. could make it an issue in tariff talks.

What they don't mention is climate change, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels like coal and gas. Scientists say that's a glaring omission that also ignores the U.S. contribution to heat-trapping gases that help set the stage for more intense wildfires.

"If anything, Canada should be blaming the U.S. for their increased fires," said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

A network of clinics that provides health care to thousands of people across Maine is expected to ask a judge Thursday afternoon to restore its Medicaid funding as the Trump administration seeks to keep federal money from going to abortion providers.

Trump's " big beautiful bill " blocked Medicaid money from flowing to Planned Parenthood and also stopped funding for Maine Family Planning, a much smaller provider that offers health care services in poor rural areas.

Anne Marie Costello, deputy director for the Center for Medicaid & CHIP Services, called the lawsuit "legally groundless."

"The core of its claim asks this Court to revive an invented constitutional right to abortion -- jurisprudence that the Supreme Court decisively interred -- and to do so in a dispute over federal funds," Costello said in court documents.

▶ Read more on the Medicaid funding dispute

At least two groups of Guard members were standing near Humvees outside the city's main train station as taxis and other vehicles drove by. They also stood near a tent with an anti-Trump sign hanging from it.

The White House said Wednesday the number of National Guard troops in the nation's capital would ramp up and federal officers would be on the streets around the clock after Trump announced his administration would take over the city's police department for at least a month.

Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 9 fell by 3,000 to 224,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday, below the 230,000 new applications that economists had forecast.

These applications are seen as a proxy for U.S. layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy in the spring of 2020.

Thursday's report showed that the four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, ticked up by 750 to 221,750. The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 2 fell by 15,000 to 1.96 million.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that its producer price index -- which measures wholesale inflation before it hits consumers -- was up 0.9% last month from June and 3,3% from a year earlier.

The numbers were much higher than forecasters had expected.

The wholesale inflation report two days after the Labor Department reported that consumer prices rose 2.7% last month from July 2024, same as the previous month and up from a post-pandemic low of 2.3% in April. Core consumer prices rose 3.1%, up from 2.9% in June. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.

The new numbers suggest that slowing rent increases and cheaper gas are at least partly offsetting the impacts of Trump's tariffs. Many businesses are also likely still absorbing much of the cost of the duties instead of passing them along to customers via higher prices.

The White House says Attorney General Pam Bondi is effectively in charge of the police department in Washington, D.C. But the city's police force already has a Pam at the helm -- Chief Pamela Smith -- and she says she only reports to the mayor.

D.C. and federal officials say they are working together, but the unusual arrangement is raising questions about who gets to make decisions about police resources, personnel and policy.

The judge has yet to rule after a three-day trial over whether the administration broke the law by sending Guard troops to accompany immigration agents on raids in Southern California.

The state argued that the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits military enforcement of domestic laws. Lawyers for the administration said the law does not apply because Trump called up the Guard under an authority that allows separate authority.

It's happening where East meets West, in a place familiar to both countries as a Cold War front line of missile defense, radar outposts and intelligence gathering.

Whether it can lead peace in Ukraine after more than 3 1/2 years of war remains to be seen.

It takes place Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning. It played a key role in the Cold War in monitoring and deterring the Soviet Union.

It's Putin's first U.S. trip since 2015, for the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Because the U.S. isn't a member of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for Putin on war crimes accusations, it's under no obligation to arrest him.

National Guard officials say they expect troops to start doing more missions as orders and plans are being developed and more troops stage at the Guard's armory.

Neither Army nor District of Columbia National Guard officials have been able to describe the training backgrounds of the troops who have reported for duty so far.

While some Guard members are military police, and thus better suited to a law-enforcement mission, others likely hold jobs that would have offered little training in dealing with civilians or law enforcement.

Officials said the number of National Guard troops will ramp up and federal officers will be out around the clock after the president made the unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the police department for at least a month.

Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is walking a political tightrope. She has called the takeover an "authoritarian push" but also framed the infusion of officers as a boost to public safety.

Hundreds of federal law enforcement and city police officers who patrolled Tuesday night made 43 arrests, compared with about two dozen the night before. Councilmember Christina Henderson downplayed these as "a bunch of traffic stops" and said the administration is seeking to disguise how unnecessary the intervention is.

"I'm looking at this list of arrests, and they sound like a normal Saturday night in any big city," Henderson said.

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