DC police made 74 arrests on Wednesday
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) tells the Guardian that it made a total of 74 arrests across DC on Wednesday 13 August.
They note that this number reflects the number of arrests made until midnight on Thursday. We’re still waiting on an exact number of arrests from federal law enforcement from the White House.
MPD confirmed that a total of 76 arrests were made throughout the day citywide on Tuesday. The department’s data showed they made an average of 56 arrests per day in 2024.
Key events
Senator Graham says White House to send funding package to secure ‘safety’ resources for DC
Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that –following discussions with Trump, attorney general Pam Bondi and the president’s senior staffers yesterday – the White House will send a package to Graham and Republican senator Katie Britt of Alabama to “shepherd” a “DC Security Fund” through Congress.
Graham, who is chair of the Senate Budget Committee, wrote on X that the fund would “give President Trump the resources he will need to improve the safety and quality of life in our nation’s capital”.
Alice Speri
More than 120 education scholars have condemned the cancellation of an entire issue of an academic journal dedicated to Palestine by a Harvard University publisher as “censorship”.
In an open letter published on Thursday, the scholars denounced the abrupt scrapping of a special issue of the Harvard Educational Review – which was first revealed by the Guardian in July – as an “attempt to silence the academic examination of the genocide, starvation and dehumanisation of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and its allies”.
The writers note that the issue’s censorship is also an example of “anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza”.
The scholars also asked for the publisher to apologize to the authors, commission a new special issue on Palestine and implement safeguards to protect editorial independence. They pledged to boycott the journal’s publisher and the affiliated Harvard Education Press until then.
The ordeal around the special Palestine issue played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s crackdown on US higher education institutions’ autonomy on the basis of combating alleged antisemitism on campuses.
Harvard is the only university that has sued the administration in response to the White House cutting billions of dollars in federal funds and other punishing measures it has unleashed on universities. But internally, Harvard has pre-empted many of the administration’s demands, including by demoting scholars, scrapping initiatives giving space to Palestinian narratives and adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism that critics say is antithetical to academic inquiry.
White House says 45 arrests made on Wednesday night
A White House official confirmed to the Guardian that federal law enforcement officers made 45 arrests on Wednesday night in Washington DC. They added that 1,650 officers took part in last night’s operations.
The official added that 29 people arrested were allegedly undocumented immigrants.
They also said that the National Guard are not making arrests at this time, but instead troops deployed to the capital are “providing a safe environment for law enforcement officers to make arrests” and protecting federal buildings and property.
The White House added that operations will now be around the clock, seven days a week – instead of focused on the evening hours.
Law enforcement will also target specific high-crime areas, the White House said, and will focus on “drug dealers, street corners and set-up investigations”. They will also form multi-agency teams to help with this effort.
In that same interview, Trump called California governor Gavin Newsom “incompetent” when asked about Newsom’s push to get the president to stand down and defuse the redistricting arms race that has spread across the country.
Newsom has also trolled the president on social media – mimicking Trump’s all-caps writing style. Later today, the California governor will host a press conference to announce plans to offset the GOP-drawn congressional map in Texas.
“The state has gone to hell. You see what’s happened to Los Angeles, and if I didn’t send the troops in, you probably wouldn’t have much of a Los Angeles standing right now,” Trump said, referring to the deployment of the California National Guard to quell protests in LA earlier this year.
My colleague, Jakub Krupa, is bringing you the latest developments ahead of Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska tomorrow.
Jakub’s got the latest lines from Trump’s interview with Fox News Radio happening now.
Trump says that the main aim of tomorrow’s summit is to set up a second meeting – involving Volodymyr Zelenskyy – to make a deal.
Trump adds there is a “25% chance” that the meeting with Putin will be unsuccessful, but earlier the president said that the Kremlin leader “wants to get it done”.
Gabrielle Canon
As federal firefighters grapple with strained resources in an intense year of fire activity, Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from the Trump administration about how severe cuts to staffing and budgets at the US Forest Service may have hamstrung wildfire preparation and response.
Leaders at the agency and the US Department of Agriculture, which oversees it, have repeatedly assured the public and Congress that they were fully prepared for the critical fire season that’s already well under way.
But internal data, first reported by the Guardian last month, painted a dangerously different picture, with more than a quarter of firefighting roles left unfilled in mid-July, just as fire activity and risks spiked. Trump administration policies designed to rapidly shrink the federal government have also left significant gaps in the workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression.
In a letter issued Thursday, the representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, gave USDA secretary Brooke Rollins two weeks to provide documents with a detailed accounting of firefighter staffing and support personnel, and called for clarity from the USFS on information that’s largely been shielded from the public.
“The Forest Service’s firefighting capacity has been dangerously hampered by Department of Government Efficiency and Trump Administration layoffs, deferred resignations, and other early retirements and resignations just as climate change is extending the fire season,” Garcia wrote in the letter, requesting specifics that would show “the extent to which the Trump Administration’s policies have affected the ability of firefighters to protect the American public”.
The president, late Wednesday, continued to post unfounded claims about DC’s crime rate.
On Truth Social, he said:
Violent Crime Rate in D.C. has worsened, and the Murder Rate has essentially DOUBLED in just over a decade — But these are only the “official” statistics released by corrupt City Officials.
He said “the REAL numbers are many times worse,” and claimed that because the “the Democrat Government of D.C. has largely stopped investigating, arresting, and prosecuting most Crime,” the published statistics “don’t even capture a fraction of the actual Violence”.
There is no evidence to support these allegations.
A US justice department report, however, showed that violent crime in DC hit a 30-year low in 2024. Similarly, independent reports show that even when DC’s violent crime rate spiked in 2023, it was still lower than metropolitan cities like St Louis, New Orleans and Detroit, according to the Rochester Institute of Technology.
MPD data also shows that DC experienced a 35% drop in violent crime from 2023 to 2024.
DC police made 74 arrests on Wednesday
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) tells the Guardian that it made a total of 74 arrests across DC on Wednesday 13 August.
They note that this number reflects the number of arrests made until midnight on Thursday. We’re still waiting on an exact number of arrests from federal law enforcement from the White House.
MPD confirmed that a total of 76 arrests were made throughout the day citywide on Tuesday. The department’s data showed they made an average of 56 arrests per day in 2024.
DC police announces new ‘juvenile curfew zone’ in Navy Yard area
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) also announced that, beginning Friday 15 August, groups of nine or more young people – under the age of 17 – will not be allowed to gather in the popular Navy Yard area after 8pm. This particular curfew will be in effect until August 18.
The citywide curfew (from 11pm-6am) for anyone under the age of 17 remains lasts until August 31.
‘Get off our streets’: DC residents protest federal law enforcement
A number of DC locals protested the increased presence of federal law enforcement on Wednesday night.
Protesters also encouraged drivers to avoid the 14th street area, where dozens of authorities had set up a traffic checkpoint to stop cars for alleged traffic violations. A CNN report noted that they saw at least one person being handcuffed and taken away by law enforcement.
According to various reports, several people chanted at officers telling them to “go home, fascists”. Those protesting in the busy 14th st area of the city – where several popular restaurants and bars are located – also noted that some of the officers assisting the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Other local reports shared video of residents shouting “get off our streets”, “go home pigs”, and “shame on you” as they filled pavements, surrounding police cars.
I’m waiting to hear back from the White House and the MPD about Wednesday night’s arrest numbers, and I’ll make sure to provide an update.
Ben Makuch
While secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s links to an extremist church and crusader tattoos caused a stir during his confirmation hearings, the former Fox & Friends host is now openly bringing his ultra-conservative brand of christianity to the Pentagon.
Veterans tell the Guardian that Hegseth’s religiosity – rubbing off in new recruitment ads and official US Department of Defense social media activities – is dividing the ranks and doing untold damage to the future of the US military.
In one of the Pentagon’s latest videos that it posted on X – with the message: “We Are One Nation Under God” – paratroopers are seen dropping from the back of airplanes as soldiers in full tactical gear aim assault rifles at an unknown enemy somewhere in the whirling sands of what looks like the Middle East.
“I pursued my enemies and overtook them,” text from the book of Psalms appears across the screen as the scene unfolds in a desert resembling where medieval crusaders once fought. “I did not turn back till they were destroyed.”
Days before the ad was posted, Hegseth, on his personal account, reposted a CNN segment about pastor Doug Wilson – Hegseth is a congregant at one of Wilson’s churches – with the quote “All of Christ for All of Life,” a slogan for embracing christianity in every facet of society (including government). In the original report, Wilson contends that women should not have the right to vote. Many critics saw the post as showcasing Hegseth’s own pitiful track record with feminism and undermining promises he made to Senator Joni Ernst to champion women in uniform.
We can expect to hear from the president at 1pm ET today. He’ll deliver remarks from the Oval Office, according to his daily schedule.
We don’t now yet what those remarks will focus on. It could end up covering a number of topics, like his Kennedy Center appearance yesterday which touched on several ongoing stories: his Friday meeting with Putin, National guard troops in DC, the federal takeover of the city’s police, and replacing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.
