Today’s notice: Rhetoric vs. reality in D.C. We still do not have Epstein grand jury transcripts. We will soon have new Texas congressional maps. Asking voters to allow for (even) older judges. And: The future of FEMA and Louisiana’s memories of it.
THE LATEST
What does victory look like for Trump in D.C.? “Lower crime and making D.C. safe again,” a White House official told Jasmine on Wednesday — an amorphous goal lacking metrics. They called the ongoing effort “a work in progress.” But big questions remain about exactly what is being accomplished, and what can be.
Arrest numbers are being regularly touted by White House aides. But what do they mean? “The devil is in the details,” Martin Austermuhle, a longtime local D.C. reporter and contributor at nonprofit outlet The 51st, told us yesterday. He broke it down:
- By Wednesday, “administration officials said there had been 550 arrests and 76 illegal guns seized since the federal surge began on Aug. 11,” he said. Is that a big number? Well, “between June 30 and July 6, before this federal surge, MPD officers alone seized 70 guns,” Austermuhle told us.
There’s more that only a veteran local reporter would notice. The U.S. Marshals Service announced Tuesday there would be a $500 reward for tips that lead to an arrest during the D.C. surge. “When MPD offers such monetary rewards, it’s almost always for information that leads to an arrest and conviction,” Austermuhle said. “Arresting someone can be relatively easy; convicting them is tougher.”
Crime reduction schemes are obviously not new to the District. How does this one stack up? Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that federal officers made half of their non-immigration arrests in higher-crime parts of the city. And FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News yesterday that his bureau “will continue until every community is safe.”
But causes of crime are not part of this. Persistent truancy after the pandemic was cited by District officials as a key reason for the 2023 rise in crime. Washington Post education reporter Lauren Lumpkin told us local officials she talks to don’t see Donald Trump putting money back into youth programs that work to reduce crime, like after-school and mental-health offerings. Trump is seeking to close the U.S. Department of Education and tried to freeze billions of federal dollars for schools.
“Right now we’re dealing with what’s happening in the immediacy,” the White House official told Jasmine. There is no “threshold” for success, they added. “The overall plan is to lower crime and make D.C. safer.”
Open Tabs: Elon Musk Is Already Pumping the Brakes on His Political Party (WSJ); Eric Adams Advisor Handed Reporter Cash Stuffed in a Bag of Potato Chips (The City); Winklevoss Twins Sink $21M Into New GOP-Supporting Super PAC (NOTUS); Kristi Noem wants to buy a fleet of deportation planes (NBC)
From the courts
DOJ loses again in Epstein case: A federal judge in New York on Wednesday denied a DOJ request to unseal Jeffrey Epstein-related grand jury transcripts. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote that, given the grand jury materials “do not contribute anything to public knowledge,” the public might conclude that “the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.”
The ruling marks the third time a federal judge has denied recent requests to unseal grand jury transcripts from cases concerning Epstein.
From the states
Texas’ new lines: The Texas House, quorum in place, voted along party lines last night to redraw the state’s U.S. congressional map to Trump’s liking. NOTUS’ Helen Huiskes reports on a huge victory for the White House political operation. It’s now up to Democratic lawmakers to redistrict other states if they want to deny the president the seats he wants.
Speaking of: “I believe that Gov. [Gavin] Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach,” Barack Obama told a crowd at a fundraiser in Martha’s Vineyard on Tuesday.
THE BIG ONE
FEMA’s future and Louisiana’s past: Former Sen. Mary Landrieu still has a lot of hard feelings over what she saw from FEMA 20 years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. But she told NOTUS’ Torrence Banks she still worries about what will happen to the agency under Trump.
“We need to have the federal government’s full support, mostly financial support,” Landrieu, a Democrat, told Torrence. She’s got ideas about how to reform FEMA — forged in the experience of struggling to work with it in Katrina’s aftermath — but like a lot of Louisianans Torrence spoke with who remember that fateful August, she cautions against steep cuts to the agency’s budget.
The future of FEMA remains in question even after the White House backed off earlier plans to shutter the agency entirely. Trump is “committed to right-sizing the Federal government while empowering State and local governments by enabling them to better understand, plan for, and ultimately address the needs of their citizens,” White House spox Abigail Jackson told Torrence.
Republicans in the state expect FEMA to stick around. “The president is acknowledging that there is the need for some sort of federal response, even when we reform FEMA,” Sen. Bill Cassidy said. He rushed to LSU’s basketball arena two-decades ago to triage evacuees from Katrina.
Go backward to go forward? “FEMA should go back under the White House as a Cabinet-level position, and take it out of Homeland Security. That just provides another bureaucratic influence,” retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, a face of the federal Katrina recovery effort, told Torrence.
NEW ON NOTUS
Secret helicopter update: End Citizens United is calling for an investigation into Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s private helicopter, which Dave Levinthal revealed on NOTUS recently. The left-leaning group alleges Bresnahan violated federal law by not disclosing the chopper on financial disclosure forms. Bresnahan’s attorney: “It is defamatory and an egregious lie to allege that Congressman Bresnahan violated federal law by failing to disclose an asset he does not personally own.”
Benchwarmers: Voters in several states will be asked whether they want aging judges to be able to serve even longer, NOTUS’ Oriana González reports. The retirement age would be increased to around 75 in New York, Maryland and Louisiana if ballot measures pass. “There’s no, like, ‘People Against Old Judges PAC,’” Bill Raftery of the National Center for State Courts told Oriana.
Former HHS staff defend CDC: “The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization — and now, violence,” reads an open letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from hundreds of former HHS employees in the wake of a shooting at the CDC, NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports. She recently reported on low morale at the agency after the attack.
More: Gabbard Says She’s Cutting Nearly Half of Her Office’s Staff, by Amelia Benavides-Colón
NOT US
- The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis, by Shane Goldmacher with Jonah Smith for The New York Times
- Transportation cuts hit home in GOP districts, by Chris Marquette and Sam Ogozalek for Politico
- Federal workers: Fired by Trump, frozen out by Moore, by Sapna Bansil and Brenda Wintrode for The Baltimore Banner
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