The Latest: Dozens arrested as White House ratchets up federal policing of DC
The White House now says more arrests are being made and homeless people are being forced to remove their tents from public spaces as federal troops and law officers deploy in Washington, D.C. to enforce President Donald Trump’s monthlong takeover of the city’s police.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer meanwhile hugged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after talks in London on Thursday in a show of support as Trump prepares for his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Both Zelenskyy and the Europeans have worried that the bilateral summit would leave them and their interests sidelined.
Here’s the Latest:
Guard will do monument security and crowd control in Washington
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.”
Rubio says preparations for Trump-Putin summit ‘going very fast’, says result will be known very quickly
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 preparing for special session on redistricting
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.
What’s happening to encampments?
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.
In DC, homeless people are fearful over federal troops
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 25% chance Alaska summit is a failure
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.
White House says law enforcement efforts are targeting known issues in DC
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.
White House provides an update on arrests in DC
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
White House says law enforcement efforts are targeting known issues in DC
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.
Activists point to Paraguay’s human rights record
“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.”
Paraguay agrees to hold migrants seeing US asylum
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.
Here’s what led to charges against Mexican cartel leaders
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
Gov. Ron DeSantis announces second immigration detention facility in north Florida
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
Garbage truck crunches the possessions of homeless DC residents
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.
GOP climate change denial continues amid soaring heat and fires
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.
Republicans demand Canadian action on wildfires — but not on climate change
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.
Maine clinics want their Medicaid funding
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
National Guard sets up outside Washington’s Union Station
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.
The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell modestly last week
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.
Inflation surges as Trump’s import taxes push costs higher
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.
There’s confusion over who controls Washington police
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.
Trial over California National Guard deployment concludes
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.
What to know about the US-Russia summit in Alaska
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.
▶ Read more on things to know about the meeting between Trump and Putin
— Dasha Litvinova and Michelle L. Price
Guard troops expected to ramp up DC missions Thursday
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.
Federal agents will patrol the streets 24/7 in Washington, White House says
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.
▶ Read more about the intervention
By The Associated Press
