Prepared for the Office of Public Affairs (OPA)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Editorial Note: The DHS Daily Briefing is a collection of news articles related to Department’s mission. The inclusion of particular stories is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse the political viewpoints or affiliations included in news coverage.

The Wall Street Journal [8/11/2025 9:47 PM, Tarini Parti, Meridith McGraw, and Lara Seligman, 646K] Video: HERE reports President Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and placed the city’s police department under federal control, launching an unprecedented effort to take charge of the nation’s capital. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said during a news conference at the White House, where he was flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration officials. Trump deployed roughly 800 D.C. National Guard troops to the city, and he said he would consider calling in active-duty military troops if needed. He also suggested he might attempt to exert more federal control over other U.S. cities, mentioning Baltimore, New York and Oakland, Calif. The president compared the homicide rate in Washington with capitals around the world, including Bogotá, Colombia. Violent crime in the city was down 35% last year from 2023, Justice Department data show, the lowest in more than 30 years. The data showed a decline in homicides, robberies, armed carjackings and assaults with a dangerous weapon. Crime remains a problem in the city, according to local officials. D.C. has a higher per capita homicide rate than most other major U.S. cities. “You want to have safety in the streets. You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe in going to a store to buy a newspaper or buy something, and you don’t have that now,” Trump said, adding that he was going to “get rid of slums.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link] NBC News [8/11/2025 5:02 PM, Megan Lebowitz and Raquel Coronell Uribe, 44540K] reports that the president also said that he would declare a public safety emergency in D.C. and that Attorney General Pam Bondi would "take command of the Metropolitan Police Department as of this moment." One hundred to 200 troops out of the 800 activated "will be supporting law enforcement at any given time," Army Public Affairs confirmed, adding that the troops would have "administrative, logistics and physical presence" tasks. "When you walk down the street, you’re going to see police or you’re going to see FBI agents," Trump said during a press availability Monday morning. "We’re going to have a lot of agents on the street. You’re going to have a lot of, essentially military. And we will bring in the military if it’s needed." NBC News previously reported that Trump was considering ordering the National Guard into the district. He announced that around 800 National Guard troops would be deployed, but said he would send "much more if necessary." Bondi, who Trump said will helm D.C. police, declared that crime would end in D.C. "Let me be crystal clear: Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today," she said. FOX News [8/11/2025 11:02 AM, Diana Stancy, 46878K] Video: HERE reports Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will operationalize the D.C. National Guard, and signaled that more National Guard troops could be roped into the deployment down the line. "You will see them flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week," Hegseth told reporters Monday. "At your direction as well, sir, there are other units we are prepared to bring in. Other National Guard units, other specialized units. They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]The Washington Post [8/11/2025 3:53 PM, Michael Birnbaum and Perry Stein, 32099K] reports that the decision to take over the D.C. police and deploy 800 National Guard troops comes as the president has been slamming America’s cities as places where crime is out of control, despite two years of declines that have brought homicide levels in many major cities to their lowest levels in decades. The administration has already mobilized FBI agents in recent days in overnight shifts to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime, officials said. Because the District of Columbia is not a state, the federal government has unusually sweeping powers to intervene over the objections of its residents and leaders, giving the president an opportunity to use it as a laboratory for a militarized approach to urban crime-fighting. Under the city’s Home Rule Act, the president can take over the D.C. police for a period of up to 30 days by declaring “special conditions of an emergency nature exist.” After that time, the police would revert to local control unless Congress passes a law to allow a longer period of federal control. Whether the administration would want to extend the takeover beyond 30 days is unclear. In previous actions, including sending the National Guard to Los Angeles, Trump made high-profile declarations, then allowed the federal deployments to fade out over time. A longer period of federal accountability for local D.C. crime could raise the political risk for Trump.

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Los Angeles Times [8/11/2025 11:23 AM, Jenny Jarvie, Michael Wilner, and Sonja Sharp, 14672K]
New York Post [8/11/2025 10:06 AM, Diana Nerozzi, 49956K]
Breitbart [8/11/2025 11:42 AM, Staff, 3077K]
The Hill [8/11/2025 5:13 PM, Zach Schonfeld and Julia Mueller, 18649K]
AP [8/11/2025 4:32 PM, Josh Boak David Klepper, 56000K]
Reuters [8/11/2025 4:10 PM, Trevor Hunnicutt and Nandita Bose, 51390K]
Axios [8/11/2025 6:03 PM, Mimi Montgomery, 13599K]
CNN [8/11/2025 6:35 PM, Staff, 21433K]
USA Today [8/11/2025 5:17 PM, Cybele Mayes-Osterman, 75552K]
Washington Examiner [8/11/2025 10:52 AM, Naomi Lim, 1934K]
Daily Caller [8/11/2025 10:51 AM, Nicole Silverio, 1010K]
NewsMax [8/11/2025 1:12 PM, Staff, 4622K]
(B) NBC News Daily [8/11/2025 3:01 PM, Staff]

New York Times [8/11/2025 5:47 PM, Karoun Demirjian and Campbell Robertson, 138952K] reports Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, on Monday called President Trump’s announced takeover of the city’s police force “unsettling and unprecedented” but appeared resigned to cooperate with it, stressing at a news conference that there was little she could do to block the move. She repeatedly characterized Mr. Trump’s federalization of the city’s police force, under an emergency declaration to combat a crime “crisis” despite falling violent crime rates, as a workable extension of the oftentimes collaborative relationship between federal and local law enforcement entities tasked to the nation’s capital. Ms. Bowser’s tone was strikingly diplomatic, an approach in keeping with the more muted posture she has adopted toward Mr. Trump during his second term, as compared to more fiery statements during his first term opposing similar threats to the city’s limited autonomy. The “plain language” of the city’s home rule charter, she explained, authorized the president to declare a public safety emergency and request the city to defer to the directions of the federal government. And, she added, “it says the mayor shall comply with those requests.” Under the Home Rule Act of 1973, which gave D.C. the power to elect its own local government but left Congress with ultimate power over the city’s laws and budget, Mr. Trump can declare a state of emergency to assert control over local law enforcement for 30 days. “We have a responsibility to support the executive order and one of the roles I have is to ensure that we work very collaboratively with our federal partners,” she said, later adding: “Our relationship with our federal partners is not new, we do this on a daily basis.” But despite her calm demeanor, it was clear that Ms. Bowser viewed Mr. Trump’s announcement as fundamentally different than anything the city has experienced in decades. “I don’t want to minimize what was said, and I don’t want too minimize the intrusion on our autonomy,” she told reporters. She dismissed Mr. Trump’s assertions of a crime-ridden D.C. as fundamentally divorced from fact, rattling off statistics indicating that the city had actually reversed a crime wave that rose on the heels the Covid-19 pandemic and crested in 2023. She argued that Mr. Trump was fully aware of those details. “In every conversation I have with him, we’re always briefing the president on our progress,” she said. In their first meeting after Mr. Trump’s November re-election, she added, “we went over the crime trends, we went over how we’re seeing decreases, so the president is read in on our efforts.”

AP [8/11/2025 3:21 PM, Konstantin Toropin] reports President Donald Trump is bringing in 800 National Guard members to help law enforcement fight crime in Washington, but just 100 to 200 of the troops will be on the city’s streets at any given time, the Army said. Trump’s directive on Monday for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to activate the National Guard is just the latest example of him sending the Guard into cities to support immigration enforcement or fight crime over the objection of local and state officials. According to the Army, Guard troops will be deployed under Title 32, or "federal-state status" authority. That means the troops can conduct law enforcement activities on the streets of the nation’s capital — though, at the moment, that doesn’t appear to be the plan. About 500 federal law enforcement officers are being assigned to patrols in Washington, including from the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and the Marshals Service. Hegseth told reporters that Guard members will be "flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week." He also said the Pentagon was "prepared to bring in other National Guard units — other specialized units," though he didn’t offer any further details. The timeline for the troop deployment also is vaguely defined. According to Trump’s directive, National Guard troops will remain deployed until the president determines "that conditions of law and order have been restored." Besides the 800 Guard members, Trump said "we will bring in the military if it’s needed" — seemingly referring to active duty troops in addition to the Guard — but added that "I don’t think we’ll need it."

Breitbart [8/11/2025 12:10 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K] reports the Department of Defense has mobilized the National Guard and has other specialized units ready to address crime in Washington, DC, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a press conference with President Donald Trump on Monday. At the press conference Trump declared a "public safety emergency" in D.C., explaining that the capital city "has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people." "And we’re not going to let it happen anymore," Trump said, invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and activating the National Guard. "You’re going to see police, or you’re going to see FBI agents — going to have a lot of agents on the street," Trump said. "You’re going to have a lot of, essentially, military. And we will bring in the military if it’s needed. By the way, we’re going to have National Guard, but Pete Hegseth will tell you about it. We will bring in the military if needed." "At your direction this morning, we’ve mobilized the D.C. National Guard. It will be operationalized by the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, through the D.C. guard. You will see them flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week," Hegseth said. "At your direction as well, sir, there are other units. We are prepared to bring in other National Guard units — other specialized units. They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners," he said, noting that this is not new for the Department of Defense.

NewsMax [8/11/2025 5:19 PM, Theodore Bunker and Eric Mack, 4622K] reports Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday blasted President Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing the capital as "unsettling and unprecedented.” "My message to residents is this: We know that access to our democracy is tenuous," Bowser told reporters during her news conference that aired in part live on Newsmax. "That is why you have heard me and many, many Washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia. We are American citizens. Our families go to war. We pay taxes and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship. "And while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised. I can say to D.C. residents that we will continue to operate our government in a way that makes you proud. "We will balance our budgets. We will deploy our services. Our kids are going to start school on Aug. 25 and we will work with the federal government to do the things that they should do for our city, including making sure that we have the judges that we need, including making sure that all federal parks are supported, not just with law enforcement, but with other clean and safe activities, and including making sure that our economy is supported by rational federal actions as it relates to the federal workforce, federal workers and federal property in the District of Columbia.” Trump announced Monday morning he would place the city’s police force under federal authority and deploy the National Guard to reduce crime. Bowser said later that day during her press conference that Trump’s "view of D.C. is shaped by his COVID era experience during his first term," admitting it is "true that we experienced a crime spike post COVID, but we worked quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets and gave our police officers more tools, which is why we have seen a huge decrease in crime" since 2023. Trump invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, which lets the president assume control of the Metropolitan Police Department if deemed necessary for federal purposes. In a letter to Congress, he claimed the step was needed to "maintain law and order" in the nation’s capital, protect federal property, and ensure "the orderly functioning of the federal government.” Under the law, Trump’s control can last more than 48 hours, but extending it beyond 30 days would require approval from both chambers of Congress. Although she acknowledged the president’s "broad authority" under the law, Bowser said she expected federal intervention would focus on the National Guard — not a direct takeover of her city’s police force. She referred to Trump’s declared state of emergency as a "so-called emergency.”

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Breitbart [8/11/2025 5:03 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K]
Washington Examiner [8/11/2025 5:25 PM, Molly Parks, 1934K]

Breitbart [8/11/2025 10:06 PM, Paul Bois, 3077K] reports Mayor Muriel Bowser reportedly has no plan to issue a legal challenge against President Donald Trump’s order for federal law enforcement to take over Washington, DC. MSNBC Justice and Intelligence Correspondent Ken Dilanian reported on X that lawyers for Bowser did not believe they had any legal grounds to oppose the president’s recent order. "The news out of the DC mayor’s press conference is that her lawyers apparently do not believe they have grounds to challenge President Trump’s declaration of a DC crime emergency. The city appears to be surrendering to a federal takeover of its police department," wrote Dilanian. As Breitbart News reported last week, President Trump ordered federal law enforcement officers to patrol the streets of Washington, DC, for the next seven days to crack down on violent crime. The federal presence will be led by the U.S. Park Police and will reportedly "include officers and agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF, divisions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies," per the Hill. "The order came after a March executive order establishing the Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force ‘To ensure effective federal participation’ in the enforcement of immigration laws and redirecting resources to apprehend and deport migrants in Washington, as well as monitoring its sanctuary city status to comply with federal immigration laws," noted the outlet. The federal presence will be in marked units. On Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called the president’s order "unsettling and unprecedented.” "And while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that — given some of the rhetoric of the past — that we’re totally surprised," she said, adding that she will be "making sure that we have the judges that we need, including making sure that all federal parks are supported, not just with law enforcement, but with other clean and safe activities, and including making sure that our economy is supported by rational federal actions as it relates to the federal workforce.” The D.C. police union publicly backed the president’s order. "We stand with the President in recognizing that Washington, DC, cannot continue on this trajectory. Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits," said Gregg Pemberton, the chairman of the union, according to a statement shared by WUSA’s Spencer Allen. "The federal intervention is a critical stopgap, but the MPD needs proper staffing and support to thrive," he added. ‘This can only happen by repealing the disastrous policies that have driven out our best officers and hindered recruitment.”

AP [8/11/2025 2:11 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports President Donald Trump said Monday he’s activating the National Guard to help reduce crime across Washington. Joined by some members of his Cabinet in a packed briefing room, the Republican president said he was putting the District of Columbia’s police under federal control and declaring a public safety emergency. Demonstrators gathered outside the White House to protest Trump’s moves.

Washington Examiner [8/11/2025 3:55 PM, Annabella Rosciglione, 1934K] reports President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Washington, D.C., police department will temporarily reduce the district’s autonomy. Trump can more easily take over the Metropolitan Police Department than he can suspend the district’s home rule because ending home rule requires congressional action. Home rule is the authority by which district residents can vote for local government members and the mayor. The president can determine that "special conditions of an emergency nature exist which require the use" of a federal takeover under Section 740 of the district’s Home Rule Act, which Trump declared Monday. Trump said Attorney General Pam Bondi would lead the MPD. Under Section 740, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is sidelined, with police enforcement now being placed on Bondi. The section additionally allows the president to deploy federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Secret Service, the Park Police, and other law enforcement bodies. To completely abolish the home rule, Congress would have to create and pass new legislation — an unlikely move, as just a handful of elected Republicans support the repeal. Trump does not have the authority to "federalize" the district government without congressional approval. While this takeover is intended to last for just 48 hours, the president can extend the control of the local police to 30 days if he notifies the top-ranking members of certain House and Senate committees that oversee the district.

FOX News [8/11/2025 9:09 PM, Louis Casiano, 46878K] reports FBI Director Kash Patel endorsed President Donald Trump’s plans to take over the Metropolitan Police Department to tackle crime in Washington D.C., amid heavy criticism from Democrats and local officials who say the move is part of a power grab. Patel was seen Monday afternoon inside a command post for the first night of the temporary takeover in a show of support for law enforcement. "Proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with the men and women who keep our nation’s capital safe," Patel said in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital. "When you let good cops be cops, give them the tools they need, and back them every step of the way, they deliver - every time.” In photos exclusively provided to Fox News Digital, Patel can be seen speaking Monday to FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel wearing protective vests at a command center at a U.S. Park Police station. On Monday, Trump said he would federalize the police department and place it under the authority of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in an effort to address crime. He also said he was activating approximately 800 National Guard troops to "reestablish law, order and public safety" in the capital. Washington D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser called the move "unsettling and unprecedented.” "While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised," Bowser said during a news conference. "I can say to D.C. residents that we will continue to operate our government in a way that makes you proud.” The District of Columbia Home Rule Act allows Trump to place the city’s police department under federal control for up to 30 days. Bowser noted that granting D.C. statehood, an issue local officials have repeatedly advocated for, could have prevented the takeover. "If people are concerned about the president being able to move the National Guard into our city, the time to do that would have been when the Congress had a bill that it could have given control of the D.C. National Guard to D.C.," she said. "So there are things that, when a city is not a state, and not fully autonomous, and doesn’t have senators, that the federal government can do.” Other Democrats heavily criticized the Trump administration for the move. "If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence," the office of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said. "Sending in the national guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.” The Washington, D.C. City Council called the temporary takeover a "manufactured intrusion on local authority.” "Violent crime in the District is at the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years. Federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department is unwarranted because there is no Federal emergency," the council said in a joint statement. "Further, the National Guard has no public safety training or knowledge of local laws. The Guard’s role does not include investigating or solving crimes in the District. Calling out the National Guard is an unnecessary deployment with no real mission." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [8/11/2025 11:15 PM, Ashley Carnahan, 46878K] reports that, Jeanine Pirro, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said President Donald Trump’s decision to place the D.C. police under temporary federal control and deploy the National Guard to the nation’s capital was a first step toward cracking down on crime. "We are now in the process of bringing to the attention of law-abiding citizens, not just in D.C., but throughout the country, that we’re not going to tolerate crime that is out of control in the nation’s capital," she said Monday on "Hannity.” "This is the shining city on the hill that our forefathers talked about. This is the place where Ronald Reagan talked about looking up to. And in the end, it is an incredibly violent area.” Pirro, a former Fox News co-host, joined Trump and other top administration officials at the White House briefing room when the commander-in-chief announced the changes and a surge in federal law enforcement. Trump wrote on his Truth Social account that he wants to make the federal district one of the safest cities in the world and called for teenagers as young as 14 to be charged as adults. The comments came after ex-DOGE employee Edward Coristine, nicknamed "Big Balls," was allegedly assaulted during an attempted carjacking. Two 15-year-olds have since been arrested and face charges of unarmed carjacking in connection with the Coristine attack, according to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Pirro told Fox News host Sean Hannity that D.C.’s juvenile justice system is focused more on rehabilitation than accountability. "We’ve got an area where criminals are emboldened for a variety of reasons," said the top federal prosecutor. "They know these young gangs – or, as they’re called here, crews – they know that if they’re 14, 15, 16, or 17, they are below the age of criminal responsibility unless they commit the crime of murder, rape one, armed robbery or burglary in the first degree. And that means if you shoot someone and they don’t die, I don’t even get the case as a prosecutor.” She added: "Unless and until we get our hands on them and unless and until we have the ability to punish them, they are emboldened and they are laughing at us.” MPD reported a 7% decrease in overall crime and a 26% reduction in violent crime in Washington, D.C., as of Monday, compared to the same period in 2024. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser cited a decline in crime incidents since the COVID-19 pandemic, after a spike in 2023, and noted that the city is at a 30-year low in violent crime. She called the deployment of National Guard troops "unsettling and unprecedented" but pledged to work with federal officials to ensure residents are safe. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NBC News [8/11/2025 11:12 PM, Rich Schapiro, Ryan J. Reilly and Michael Kosnar, 44540K] reports Jillian Snider, a retired New York Police Department officer, began working at a think tank in downtown Washington, D.C., four years ago. Back then, at the height of the pandemic, the area had a very different feel. "You couldn’t walk down 14th Street or 16th Street near the White House without seeing a lot of disorder, a lot of homeless encampments," Snider recalled. "Today, it’s much cleaner. You feel much safer.” Snider is among a half-dozen policing and military experts who told NBC News they were perplexed by President Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and order the National Guard to help fight crime in Washington, D.C. For one, they note, crime is at its lowest level in decades in the nation’s capital. In early January, federal prosecutors in Washington released a press bulletin with the subject line: "Violent crime in D.C. hits 30 year low." And since then, it has plummeted 26%, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Yet Trump on Monday portrayed D.C. as a crime-infested hellscape and said Attorney General Pam Bondi would "take command of the Metropolitan Police Department as of this moment.” In making his case, Trump ticked off recent violent incidents in Washington, including the fatal shooting of a congressional intern and the attempted carjacking of Edward Coristine, an original Department of Government Efficiency staffer known online as "Big Balls.” "Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people," Trump said. A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that an initial federal effort this weekend was chaotic. As many as 120 FBI agents, mostly from the FBI Washington Field Office, worked shifts with the Metropolitan Police Department this weekend, the official said. But agents were confused about their exact role on the streets and who they reported to at any given time. A second federal official said that confusion continued on Monday. "No one knows who is in charge or what they’re supposed to do," the official said. Unmarked federal law enforcement vehicles are trailing patrol cars in Washington to provide support if needed, another federal official said. Some agents dismissed such efforts a waste of resources, with one jokingly calling the processions "a federal funeral.” One notable group, the D.C. police union, said it supports the takeover by the president, saying the department has been beset by "chronic mismanagement" and "staffing shortages.” "The union agrees that crime is spiraling out of control, and immediate action is necessary to restore public safety," it said in a statement. "However, we emphasize that federal intervention must be a temporary measure, with the ultimate goal of empowering a fully staffed and supported MPD to protect our city effectively.” The announcement of the federal takeover was met with alarm by Art Acevedo, a retired police chief who led departments in Houston, Austin and Miami. "Not only is it unprecedented, it’s unwarranted," Acevedo said. "There’s no reason for it other than the political optics sought by the administration to pretend that crime is out of control and they are the saviors.”

Wall Street Journal [8/11/2025 2:01 PM, Jess Bravin and Sadie Gurman, 646K]
reports President Trump said Monday he would take command of Washington, D.C.’s local police force, known as the Metropolitan Police Department, under a rarely cited provision of a 1973 federal law granting home rule to the capital city’s residents. Here’s what to know about Trump’s unprecedented move. The Constitution provides for Congress to govern the District of Columbia, which occupies 68 square miles. The city’s residents have enjoyed various degrees of autonomy in the centuries since, and currently exercise self-government under a 1973 law, the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. Although an elected mayor and city council govern the district, a section titled “Emergency Control of Police” entitles the president to take temporary command of local law enforcement in limited circumstances. The statute requires D.C.’s mayor to provide “such services of the Metropolitan Police force as the President may deem necessary and appropriate” whenever the president “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist.” The statute doesn’t specify what those emergency conditions might be, but the law was adopted at the end of a tumultuous period when mass protests against the Vietnam War and other federal policies, along with episodes of civil unrest, including riots in D.C. following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, were on lawmakers’ minds.

NBC News [8/11/2025 9:16 PM, Alicia Victoria Lozano, 44540K] reports that, just hours after President Donald Trump said he would deploy the National Guard to Washington, D.C., a federal judge in San Francisco heard arguments Monday about whether the administration violated federal law when it mobilized troops to Los Angeles this summer. California is asking U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer to order the Trump administration to return control of the remaining troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom and to stop using the military "to execute or assist in the execution of federal law.” The federal government is arguing that the deployment of the National Guard and Marines was solely to support immigration officials, who were impeded by large-scale protests across the city in early June. In response, the Department of Defense ordered some 4,000 California National Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles as thousands of immigration activists and supporters marched in the streets and outside federal buildings to show their opposition to Trump’s mass deportation effort. Trump characterized the demonstrators as violent mobs, but Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom maintained that local law enforcement was equipped to handle the protests. Trump said the troops would protect federal personnel and property and would not engage in law enforcement activities. About 250 National Guard members remain on duty, according to the Pentagon. The state sued the Trump administration for what it called an unwarranted deployment and won an early victory from Breyer, who found the federal government had violated the 10th Amendment clarifying the balance of power between federal and state governments. The Trump administration appealed, arguing that courts cannot second-guess the president’s orders. The U.S. Department of Justice secured a temporary halt to Breyer’s ruling, which allowed control of the California National Guard to remain with Trump. Central to the trial is the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the president from using the military as a domestic police force. The case, which is expected to continue through Wednesday, could set a precedent for how the Trump administration handles future deployments of federal troops in D.C., Baltimore and other cities led by Democratic mayors. (Newsom and Bass are Democrats.). "The factual question, which the court must address, is whether the military was used to enforce domestic law, and if so, whether there continues to be a threat that will be done again," Breyer told the court. The New York Post [8/11/2025 6:25 PM, Chris Nesi, 49956K] reports that the three-day trial kicked off in San Francisco, with attorneys for the state arguing the deployment — which California Gov. Gavin Newsom strenuously objected to — violated a federal law against using military forces for domestic law enforcement. The protests began June 6 as lawful demonstrations stemming from a series of raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that saw more than 100 illegal immigrants rounded up around the city. Hundreds took to the streets, chanting in opposition and waving Mexican flags and anti-ICE signs while clashing with cops and federal immigration officers. But the protests soon escalated into full-blown riots, with cars burned in the streets, public buildings vandalized and local businesses pillaged by looters. As the violence dragged on, President Trump announced he was deploying some 4,000 Coast Guard members and around 700 active-duty Marines to the City of Angels to put an end to the anarchy. Newsom condemned the deployments, saying it amounted to using soldiers as "props in the federal government’s propaganda machine.” The Trump administration fired back, arguing the state’s sanctuary city laws preventing local law enforcement from upholding immigration laws made federal intervention necessary. Newsom sued the administration, and federal Judge Charles R. Breyer — a former President Clinton appointee who is overseeing the California bench trial — ruled the deployment was illegal. However, hours later an appeals court rejected Breyer’s ruling which cleared the way for the mobilization to continue. By July 1, nearly all of the National Guard members and Marines called to Los Angeles had been released, with around 300 still in the city. Those remaining on duty are "supporting the request for assistance" from federal law enforcement agencies, William Harrington, former deputy chief of staff for the Army task force in charge of the Guard troops said in court Monday.

Reported similarly:
The Hill [8/11/2025 6:00 AM, Zach Schonfeld, 18649K]
(B) NBC News Daily [8/11/2025 3:15 PM, Staff]
San Francisco Chronicle [8/11/2025 3:24 PM, Bob Egelko, 4120K]

Reuters [8/11/2025 7:16 PM, Dietrich Knauth and Jack Queen, 51390K] reports troops were used to protect federal property and personnel in California in recent months even though intelligence assessments showed little danger, two military officials testified on Monday at a landmark trial over President Donald Trump’s authority to use soldiers to police American streets. The three-day non-jury trial before San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer will determine whether the government violated a 19th-century law that bars the military from civil law enforcement when Trump deployed the troops in June, as the state of California claims in its legal challenge. Los Angeles experienced days of unrest and protests sparked by mass immigration raids at places where people gather to find work, like Home Depot stores, a garment factory and a warehouse. Republican president Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June, against the wishes of its Democratic governor Gavin Newsom. The administration denies that troops were used in civil law enforcement and plans to show that they were protecting federal property and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The trial kicked off hours after Trump said he was taking the extraordinary step of deploying National Guard troops to fight crime in Washington and suggested he could take similar measures in other U.S. cities. Much of Monday’s testimony came from U.S. Army Major General Scott Sherman, who until recently commanded the military operations in Los Angeles.

USA Today [8/11/2025 1:45 PM, Joey Garrison, 75552K] reports that President Donald Trump said he might expand his crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital to other major U.S. cities as he announced plans to send 800 National Guard troops into Washington, D.C. Trump singled out New York City, Los Angeles Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, California during a Monday, Aug. 11, news conference as potential future targets in what would be a drastic escalation of federal presence on the streets of American cities. "We’re not going to lose our cities over this. This will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C., and we’re going to clean it up real quick," Trump said. Trump did not elaborate on his plans for other cities. But one of the two executive actions he signed Aug. 11 directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to coordinate with governors of states and "authorize the orders of any additional members of the National Guard to active service, as he deems necessary and appropriate, to augment this mission." "We’re going to take back our capital," Trump said. "And then we’ll look at other cities also. But other cities are studying what we’re doing." Each of the cities that Trump mentioned are led by Democratic mayors in states with Democratic governors, who could be less likely to request the Trump administration’s intervention than Republican governors who are political allies of the president.

Wall Street Journal [8/11/2025 9:00 PM, Michael R. Gordon, Vera Bergengruen, and Lara Seligman, 646K] Video: HERE reports President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., is his boldest move to date to expand the use of military power on U.S. soil. The deployment of 800 National Guard troops to Washington, which the president alleges has been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals,” amplifies the law-and-order themes that play well with his political base. He buttressed this announcement Monday by effectively federalizing the Washington police department, putting it under the control of the Trump administration. In making these moves, he alleged the actions were warranted for a number of reasons that ranged from crime to homelessness. The announcement was the latest in a series of moves by Trump to push the boundaries of how U.S. troops can be deployed in American territory, triggering a fierce legal debate over the U.S. military’s expanding footprint at home. Trump is also using U.S. military bases for migrant detention centers and has deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles and on the Southern U.S. border. “The most benign interpretation is that this is an attempt to gain a public-relations victory by claiming credit for the already historically low crime rates in D.C.,” said Carrie Lee, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a former professor at the U.S. Army War College. “The worst-case interpretation is that it is a test run for more legally dubious uses of military forces in other American cities.” The same day as Trump’s announcement about the National Guard in D.C., a federal trial began in San Francisco over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s challenge to Trump’s move to federalize state National Guard units there two months ago. The case might be the opening salvo in a much broader battle over the use of military force in the nation’s streets when the president’s claims of emergency are widely disputed. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [8/11/2025 7:15 AM, Lisa Mascaro, 56000K] reports President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan visited Capitol Hill just weeks after Inauguration Day, with other administration officials and a singular message: They needed money for the White House’s border security and mass deportation agenda. By summer, Congress delivered. The Republican Party’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts that Trump signed into law July 4 included what’s arguably the biggest boost of funds yet to the Department of Homeland Security — nearly $170 billion, almost double its annual budget. The staggering sum is powering the nation’s sweeping new Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, delivering gripping scenes of people being pulled off city streets and from job sites across the nation — the cornerstone of Trump’s promise for the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Homeland Security confirmed over the weekend ICE is working to set up detention sites at certain military bases. The crush of new money is setting off alarms in Congress and beyond, raising questions from lawmakers in both major political parties who are expected to provide oversight. The bill text provided general funding categories — almost $30 billion for ICE officers, $45 billion for detention facilities, $10 billion for the office of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — but few policy details or directives. Homeland Security recently announced $50,000 ICE hiring bonuses. And it’s not just the big bill’s fresh infusion of funds fueling the president’s agenda of 1 million deportations a year. In the months since Trump took office, his administration has been shifting as much as $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other accounts to pay for immigration enforcement and deportation operations, lawmakers said. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Associated Press the department is in daily discussions with the committee "to honor all briefing requests including the spend plan for the funds allocated" through the new law. "ICE is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity," she said. "This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”

Washington Post [8/11/2025 5:29 PM, Jasmine Golden, 32099K] reports a 24-year-old man from El Salvador who unlawfully entered the U.S. was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole Monday in the 2023 rape and murder of a Maryland mother of five, a case held up by President Donald Trump against the former administration’s immigration policies. A jury convicted Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez in April of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, kidnapping and third-degree sex offense in the killing of Rachel Morin, 37, in Bel Air, Maryland. Harford County Circuit Court Judge Yolanda L. Curtin handed down the sentence almost exactly two years after the Aug. 5, 2023, giving Martinez-Hernandez the maximum penalty for each count. Rachel Morin’s mother, Patricia Morin, who joined Trump on the campaign trail in 2024 and spoke at the White House this year in honor of her daughter and against illegal immigration, said she felt both “happy and sad” following the ruling. FOX News [8/11/2025 10:06 AM, Taylor Penley, 46878K] reports for nearly two years, the family of Rachel Morin has carried the weight of unimaginable grief after the Maryland mother of five’s brutal murder at the hands of an illegal immigrant. On Monday, her loved ones, including her mother, Patty Morin, will speak in court, seeking justice, closure and dignity while remembering the life she lived. "I’m going to ask that the judge would honor Rachel’s life and preserve her dignity by giving her the justice that she deserves," Patty Morin told "Fox & Friends" ahead of the sentencing.

FOX News [8/11/2025 5:00 PM, Cameron Arcand, 46878K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem responded to the sentencing of Rachel Morin’s killer on Monday. Victor Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, is being sentenced to life without parole for murdering, kidnapping, and raping the 37-year-old Maryland mother in August 2023. He was found guilty of the charges in April. Specifically, he’s facing two life sentences on top of an extra 40 years. "Today, Rachel Morin’s killer was sentenced to life without parole for her brutal murder. This criminal illegal alien should have never been in our country in the first place. Rachel should still be here watching her 5 children grow up," Noem said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital. "We hear far too much in the mainstream media about sob stories of gang members and criminal illegals and not enough about their victims. God bless Rachel and her family," she added. Martinez-Hernandez entered the United States in 2023 during the Biden-era border crisis. He was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 2024. Morin went missing on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland, and her remains were found the next day in a nearby drain pipe, according to police at the time. He beat Morin’s head with rocks and then raped her corpse before trying to hide it in the pipe, according to DHS. Her family have been vocal advocates in the public sphere following her murder. DHS is also noting the reopening of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office that was started during President Donald Trump’s first term. The office provides a hotline and services to victims and their families.

ABC News [8/11/2025 4:23 PM, Laura Romero, 31733K] reports federal law enforcement agents are interviewing unaccompanied migrant children who are in government custody, according to a notice sent to shelter providers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The notice is an update to an email from July, which said that Department of Homeland Security officials are visiting shelters to issue "Notices to Appear, locate children who are deemed missing, and conduct criminal investigations." According to the email dated Aug. 4, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a sub-agency of HHS, notified shelters that federal law enforcement officers were starting interviews that day. The notice, which was obtained by ABC News, instructs shelters to "please cooperate with requests for access to unaccompanied alien children." "In March 2025, [HHS] identified a backlog of more than 65,000 reports regarding children who came across the border unaccompanied that were ignored during the Biden administration," said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement. "Since discovering this, HHS stood up a triage center and modernized outdated software systems to triage and action all reports," McLaughlin said. "As of July 24, 2025, more than 59,000 of the backlogged reports have been analyzed and processed, resulting in more than 4,000 investigative leads, including fraud, human trafficking, and other criminal activity." The notification from HHS has sparked concern among some immigrant advocates.

FOX News [8/11/2025 3:20 PM, Staff, 46878K] reports DHS Public Affairs assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin claims Rhode Island ‘refused’ to honor a detainer for an illegal migrant on ‘America Reports.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Breitbart [8/11/2025 3:56 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K] reports a partnership among the Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Division of Emergency Management, and Border Patrol’s Miami Sector is resulting in a pilot program of sorts, allowing non-criminal illegal migrants caught in traffic stops to voluntarily leave with a paid flight to their home country, thereby circumventing detention. According to the Washington Examiner, "The program has not been publicly announced but has been in effect for several weeks and has seen early success, three federal and state officials told the Washington Examiner this week.” Jeffrey J. Dinise, chief patrol agent for Border Patrol’s Miami region, descried the partnership as the "first of its kind.” "The program allows illegal aliens that are noncriminal, that are apprehended by the Border Patrol and the state of Florida law enforcement officers that are 287(g)-trained, to choose whether they want to immediately return to their country of origin or remain in DHS custody pending an immigration hearing with an immigration judge," Dinise explained, according to the outlet. Gov. Ron DeSantis also addressed this program earlier this month. "You’ll be escorted, they’ll make sure you get on the plane, and there’ll be oversight," DeSantis explained. "You’re not going to be able to abscond, but you will be able to return to your home country without having to go through all this.” The program follows the same idea touted by federal immigration officials who have repeatedly promoted the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) mobile app, which allows illegal aliens to self-deport rather than wait for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to detain them, a lengthier process. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formally revealed the app in May, which comes with financial incentives for illegal migrants — a $1,000 dollar stipend issued to them after their return to their home country has been confirmed. Self-deportation is a dignified way to leave the U.S. and will allow illegal aliens to avoid being encountered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Even with the cost of the stipend, it is projected that the use of CBP Home will decrease the costs of a deportation by around 70 percent. Currently the average cost to arrest, detain, and remove an illegal alien is $17,121. "If you wait and we bring you to this facility, you don’t ever get to come back to America," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said ahead of the grand opening of Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades. "You don’t get the chance to come back and be an American again.”

FOX News [8/11/2025 11:35 AM, Charles Creitz, 46878K] reports Illinois Democrats are pushing back on Trump-era attacks against the state’s immigration-related policies, arguing the statutes uphold the Constitution, support public safety and leave federal authorities free to do their jobs. "These policies are in accordance with the law, maintain local autonomy, boost local economies, focus law enforcement resources on serving local needs, and promote effective policing strategies that foster trust between police and the communities they serve," reads a letter by Rep. Jesus Garcia and Sen. Richard Durbin. The letter noted how the Justice Department labeled both Illinois and Chicago as "sanctuary jurisdictions" in its latest public listings, and rebutted the assertion that either the state or city is committing any sort of violation. The letter, backed by several Illinois Democrats, pointed to the state’s TRUST Act – signed by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican. Critics have long called it a sanctuary-style policy for barring police from holding people over immigration status alone. "Similarly, the Chicago Welcoming City Ordinance prevents the arrest or detention of an individual solely on the basis of a civil immigration violation and prevents local officials from giving ICE access to detainees unless such access is based on a legitimate law enforcement purpose that is not civil immigration enforcement," Garcia and Durbin wrote. "Consistent with the Illinois TRUST Act, the Welcoming City Ordinance does not prevent ICE from engaging in immigration enforcement activities," they said, adding that Cook County – which includes Chicago – has similar policies. They claimed, citing court precedent, that state or local authorities holding people without an immigration detainer violates the Fourth Amendment – while federal detention does not.

Daily Caller [8/11/2025 12:13 PM, Jason Hopkins, 1010K] reports a Democratic congressman "personally requested" to meet with a criminal gangbanger and several other illegal migrants with serious rap sheets during a detention facility tour, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Amid a Friday visit to the Farmville Detention Center — an immigration detention center in central Virginia — Democratic Virginia Rep. Don Beyer personally requested to meet with several illegal migrant detainees with heinous criminals rap sheets, DHS exclusively shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. One of the individuals Beyer asked to meet with was Ricardo Hernando, an 18th Street gang member previously convicted of parental kidnapping, abduction by force, burglary to commit armed larceny and a slate of other crimes. The 18th Street gang, also known as Barrio 18, is a massive criminal syndicate originating in Los Angeles that boasts tens of thousands of members across the U.S., Mexico and Central America, according to the Department of Justice. The gang largely takes in revenue from drug distribution, and its members have been convicted of an endless number of crimes, such as homicide, drive-by shootings and robberies. "Congressman Beyer personally requested to meet with an 18th street gang member, drug trafficker, and repeat DUI offender who are in our country illegally," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated in a public comment shared with the DCNF. "He continues to do the bidding of dangerous criminal illegal aliens that endanger his own constituents." A spokesperson for Beyer’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF. "When will Congressman Beyer meet with the American victims of these illegal aliens’ violent crimes?" McLaughlin continued.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [8/11/2025 9:45 PM, John Binder, 3077K]

Washington Examiner [8/11/2025 12:23 PM, Molly Parks, 1934K] reports the last standing New York City hotel sheltering homeless migrants is set to close in the coming months as the influx of migrant asylum-seekers to the city slows. The Row NYC hotel, home to 1,300 rooms throughout 28 floors and located one block from Times Square on 8th Avenue, was the first NYC hotel to be converted to a migrant shelter in 2022. "In the coming months, we are proud to share that we will be closing another site — the Row Hotel, the last hotel in the city’s emergency shelter system — marking yet another major milestone in our administration’s recovery from this international humanitarian crisis," NYC Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. The city repurposed the former hotel in October 2022 to help lessen the effect on homeless shelters as it dealt with an influx of migrants from the southern border. According to the New York Post, the city government initially contracted with the hotel, owned by Rockpoint Group based in Boston, for a $5.13 million per month lease. The lease expires in April, and Adams announced the city would not renew it.

Wall Street Journal [8/11/2025 4:08 PM, Maggie Grether and Redmond Bernhold, 646K]
reports New York City developers are seizing an unusual opportunity: converting at least a dozen hotels that housed migrants into new apartments. In Queens, a former Hilton near JFK airport is reopening as affordable housing. In Manhattan’s Financial District, the world’s tallest Holiday Inn is becoming for-profit student housing. In Midtown Manhattan, a developer is transforming a 600-key hotel into more than 500 residential units. In all, developers are already poised to create more than 1,100 apartments from former hotels. Over a dozen more hotels could work as affordable housing conversions, said David Schwartz, co-founder and principal of multifamily developer Slate Property Group. “Really, the opportunity is right now,” said Schwartz, who redeveloped the JFK Hilton into the 318-unit Baisley Pond Park Residences. The final tally of hotel to residential conversions could be considerably higher. Vijay Dandapani, president of the Hotel Association of New York City, estimates that no more than 40% of the 160 hotels used as migrant shelters will reopen to the commercial market, mainly because of poor conditions and a hotel market recovering from the pandemic. Many of these properties will be converted back to hotels or other commercial uses. But residential conversion is often the most likely alternative. The lack of housing, especially affordable housing, has become a flashpoint in this year’s mayoral election. New York City rents stand at all-time highs and the vacancy rate hit a historic low of 1.4%. Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to freeze rent on rent-stabilized apartments helped propel him to victory in June’s Democratic primary for mayor. Now, these conversions create an unexpected opening for the city to add housing. Even though the new units won’t do much to narrow the city’s overall housing shortage, developers said that conversions will play an important part in revitalizing stagnant neighborhoods by bringing in new residents and boosting local businesses there. New York City has spent $8 billion to house migrants since 2022, to comply with the city’s legal obligation to provide shelter to all unhoused individuals.

Reuters [8/11/2025 11:53 PM, Rich McKay and Julia Harte, 51390K] reports multiple explosions on Monday at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh killed two people and injured 10 others, according to the company and local authorities. The blasts at the Clairton Coke Works - part of a sprawling industrial complex along the Monongahela River - took place just before 11 a.m. ET (1500 GMT). Firefighters battled flames and heavy smoke that billowed out of the plant, which is owned by U.S. Steel, a subsidiary of Nippon Steel (5401.T). Initially, two people were reported missing. One person was found and transported to a local hospital, said Allegheny County Police Assistant Superintendent Victor Joseph at an afternoon briefing. The other individual, who had been missing, was found deceased following an extensive search and rescue effort, U.S. Steel said in an emailed statement to Reuters late on Monday. There was no word yet on a possible cause of the explosion. The probe into the explosion would be "a time-consuming technical investigation," Joseph said. David Burritt, president and chief executive officer of U.S. Steel, said in a statement that the company was working with local authorities to discover the cause. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro posted on X that there were multiple explosions at the plant and that his administration was in touch with local officials. "The scene is still active, and folks nearby should follow the direction of local authorities," he wrote at the time the employee was missing. The severity of the injuries was not known, but news accounts said that several people were taken to hospital burn units. Clairton Mayor Rich Lattanzi said it was a horrible day for the city, about 20 miles (32 km) south of Pittsburgh, long known as America’s Steel City.

AP [8/12/2025 12:16 AM, Marc Levy, Gene Puskar, Michael Casey and Patrick Whittle, 4120K] reports an explosion rocked a steel plant outside Pittsburgh on Monday, leaving two dead and 10 others injured, including a person who was rescued from the smoldering rubble after hours of being trapped. The explosion sent black smoke spiraling into the midday sky in the Mon Valley, a region of the state synonymous with steel for more than a century. Allegheny County Emergency Services said a fire at the plant in Clairton started late Monday morning. Officials said they had not isolated the cause of the blast. The rumbling from the explosion, and several smaller blasts that followed, jolted the community about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southeast of Pittsburgh. "It felt like thunder," Zachary Buday, a construction worker near the scene, told WTAE-TV. "Shook the scaffold, shook my chest, and shook the building.” At a news conference, Scott Buckiso, U.S. Steel’s chief manufacturing officer, did not give details about the damage or casualties, and said they were still trying to determine what happened. He said the company, now a subsidiary of Japan-based Nippon Steel Corp., is working with authorities. Allegheny Health Network said it treated seven patients from the plant and discharged five within a few hours. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said it is treating three patients at UPMC Mercy, the region’s only level one trauma and burn center. According to the company, the plant has approximately 1,400 workers. In a statement, the United Steelworkers, which represents many of the Clairton plant’s workers, said it had representatives on the ground at the plant and would work to ensure there is a thorough investigation. David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, an environmental group that has sued U.S. Steel over pollution, said there needed to be "a full, independent investigation into the causes of this latest catastrophe and a re-evaluation as to whether the Clairton plant is fit to keep operating.” U.S. Steel CEO David B. Burritt said the company would investigate. It’s not the first explosion at the plant. A maintenance worker was killed in a blast in September 2009. In July 2010, another explosion injured 14 employees and six contractors. According to online OSHA records of workplace fatalities, the last death at the plant was in 2014, when a worker was burned and died after falling into a trench.

Bloomberg [8/11/2025 6:00 AM, Staff, 19320K] reports thanks to the recently enacted tax-and-spending bill, US immigration agencies are about to be flooded with new cash and personnel. Effectively controlling the border is essential. The problem is that America’s immigration woes are not primarily due to insufficient resources — and without necessary reforms, this latest influx could well cause more harm than good. Last year, Republicans reclaimed power partly due to a wave of support for mass deportations after the largest surge of unauthorized immigration in the country’s history. Since then, the tide has largely ebbed. Arrests at the southern border plummeted to about 6,000 in June — the lowest in decades — from more than 47,000 in December. That’s progress. Now, just as the crisis is subsiding and Americans seem to be losing their appetite for mass deportations, the Department of Homeland Security has been granted an additional $165 billion — meaning that border and immigration funding will likely outstrip the budgets of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined in the years ahead. For what, exactly? Such spending was already at a record high. Over the past two decades, the government has doled out close to half a trillion dollars for immigration enforcement and related efforts. The budgets for Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (both part of DHS) have roughly tripled since 2003. Hundreds of millions have been spent on failed surveillance technologies (recall the “virtual fence”?) and billions on the president’s ineffective “border wall.” It’s hard to see how these added funds — more than the Transportation Department’s entire budget last year — are necessary, especially as federal deficit spending continues to spiral.

Washington Post [8/11/2025 7:00 AM, Staff, 32099K] reports college is already expensive, but the Trump administration is doing its best to ensure that undocumented students cannot afford it. Last month, the Education Department opened investigations into five universities for providing scholarships to undocumented students, including “dreamers” who came to the United States as young children and have since been granted special status to defer their removal from the country. The government claims these scholarships constitute discrimination on “the basis of national origin” under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The argument is as absurd as it is cruel. Start with the absurdity: The investigations stem from complaints filed by the Legal Insurrection Foundation, a conservative legal group that argues scholarships for undocumented students discriminate against their American-born peers, given the limited amount of scholarship money available. But the scholarships under scrutiny are a tiny drop in the bucket. At the University of Michigan, one of the schools targeted, the Dreamer Scholarship awarded $100,000 in 2023-2024 — compared to the $855 million that the university distributed in total financial aid that same year. The other schools targeted are the University of Louisville, University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Miami and Western Michigan University.

Wall Street Journal [8/11/2025 5:38 PM, Staff, 646K] reports President Trump took federal control of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department on Monday, pledging to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor—and worse.” He’s also calling up 800 troops from the D.C. National Guard to assist. Now Washingtonians and visitors can judge Police Commissioner Trump by the results he gets. The Constitution establishes the District of Columbia as a federal enclave, so there’s no abuse of power in Congress and the President exercising authority over it. (Mr. Trump’s threats to intervene in the policing of Chicago, say, are a different matter.) These days D.C. largely governs itself, using delegated powers, but the law preserves Presidential control of the police during emergencies, generally up to 30 days unless Congress approves. “Crime is out of control,” says Mr. Trump’s emergency declaration. “The city government’s failure to maintain public order and safety has had a dire impact on the Federal Government’s ability to operate efficiently to address the Nation’s broader interests.” In a news conference at the White House, the President mentioned the recent assault of a former DOGE staffer, Edward Coristine. He said murders hit a high in 2023, when 274 were killed. Violent crime has since fallen, as the press quickly pointed out, and fair enough. Nobody can accuse Mr. Trump of understatement, given his vision of D.C. as painted by Hieronymus Bosch. “Our capital city,” he said, “has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs, and homeless people.” Yet Mr. Trump’s opponents are in the awkward position of arguing it’s no emergency if last year a mere 187 people were murdered and only 1,026 were assaulted with a dangerous weapon. By getting involved in D.C. governance, Mr. Trump is setting a precedent, and the next Democratic President could follow it, with other priorities. Yet Republicans might still consider that an improvement on the status quo. At least the White House is sensitive to national opinion, which is larger than the progressive voter base that elects the D.C. City Council.

The Hill [8/11/2025 8:00 AM, Artem Kolisnichenko, 18649K] reports U.S. immigration policy in the South is undergoing a quiet but large-scale shift. In July 2025, according to data from the research service TRAC, the number of criminal cases reached its highest level in recent years. What stands out is how these cases are distributed. Most are scattered across different districts where immigration status increasingly leads to prison time. Migrants are being charged more often for illegal re-entry, bypassing the standard immigration process. All this increases the strain on the federal system and on the budget. But more importantly, it changes the nature of enforcement, turning immigration status into a criminal offense. In July alone, federal prosecutors filed more than 2,600 criminal cases against immigrants — the highest monthly figure since the start of the pandemic. Over 85 percent were tied to charges under the title of the criminal code related to "Aliens and Nationality." Five southern districts in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico accounted for more than 70 percent of all cases. This is not a local bottleneck — it is a structural imbalance whereby geography determines not your fate in immigration court but whether you end up behind bars. A 57 percent increase in these cases since the start of the year points to an increasingly punitive approach. It’s an informal transfer of prosecutorial power to local actors like sheriffs and U.S. attorneys. In practice, it all comes down to where you cross. This imbalance worsens legal inconsistency. In some districts, cases are dropped, whereas in others, they lead to prison time. The South has become a uniquely structured model of punitive immigration enforcement.

The Hill [8/11/2025 7:30 AM, Rudy Takala, 18649K] reports when it comes to immigration, there’s a refrain that periodically arises with respect to new immigrants: "They’re even more American than us," or something to that effect. And if immigration causes any ill effects on Americans already here — such as disruptions in the economy or employment environment — they are reminded that they should just grit their teeth and "learn to code.” Unfortunately, that advice may no longer be helpful. Layoffs in the tech industry for 2025 had already exceeded 80,000 as of July, according to estimates. Although the public may know the tech climate has been bleak, they haven’t heard much about the causes. Corporate executives have been eager to insinuate that AI is driving the employment environment. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in June that there would "be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate." However, Jassy did not mention another factor — the employment data indicate that Amazon has led corporate America in spurning U.S. workers in favor of foreign-born alternatives.

New York Times [8/11/2025 7:39 PM, Jess Bidgood, 138952K] reports that, closely flanked by the defense secretary and the nation’s top law enforcement official, President Trump sought to project an image of raw power on Monday as he announced his plans to send National Guard troops to the nation’s capital and engineer a federal takeover of its police department. He also sounded a little like he wanted a job other than his own: Mayor. “We’re going to replace the medians that are falling down all over the road, we’re going to replace the potholes,” Trump said, just after urging the nation’s tourists not to be put off from their trips to see the White House or the Air and Space Museum by the apocalyptic stories of murders and carjackings that he was telling at that very moment, despite the fact that the city’s violent crime rate has fallen. “Keep coming!” Trump said, briefly assuming another mantle, that of local tourism director. “By the time you get your trip set, it’s going to be safe again.” While Trump has deployed the National Guard to cities before, including in Los Angeles earlier this year and in Washington in 2020, this is the first time that he has actually moved to take control of a local police force, and to make a city’s crime his problem. “I actually think it’s easy,” Trump said today. “If you’re competent, it’s easy.” Some actual mayors, however, would disagree. Earlier today, I called Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa, a Democrat in a red state who spent decades working as a police officer and then as her city’s police chief before being elected mayor in 2019. I wanted to know what she had to say about reducing crime. “I’m not sure that President Trump would be interested in my advice,” Castor said. But she offered her perspective anyway. “Law enforcement can only be successful by earning and keeping the trust of the community,” she said. “Just by putting sheer numbers of individuals out on the community in a law enforcement position, it may bring the city to a halt, but it’s not going to have a long term positive effect on any community.” Bringing crime down, Castor added, “is painstaking and it can’t be done overnight.” When I asked Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham, Ala., how his city reduced homicides by 50 percent compared to this time last year, he offered a multipronged and technical answer that touched on things like solving and deterring crimes, and services aimed at stopping juvenile offenders from committing new crimes. “It is far from easy, it takes a lot of work, but you have to listen to people on the ground and you have to listen to local law enforcement,” Woodfin, a Democrat, said.

Washington Examiner [8/11/2025 11:19 AM, Christopher Tremoglie, 1934K] reports Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) released a report last week claiming to have evidence of more than 500 cases of "credible reports of human rights abuse" in detention centers throughout the country. The revelations include accusations of physical and sexual abuse, malnourishment of detainees, and the mistreatment of pregnant women and children. The investigation is meant to disparage illegal immigration enforcement by the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and the Department of Homeland Security. Moreover, it’s an attempt to sabotage ICE’s efforts to protect innocent people from violent illegal immigrants. Consider the revelations within the first page of Ossoff’s "investigation." First, it is specified that Ossoff began his investigation on Jan. 20, 2025, the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated and started his second term. If Ossoff were genuinely concerned about abuse in detention centers against illegal immigrants, he would have chosen a date other than the very first day Trump began his term. Next, it should be noted that this date was five days before Kristi Noem, a frequent target of Democrats, was even confirmed as secretary of Homeland Security. Ossoff very clearly had a political agenda. Then, there was the revelation of the supposed incidents of abuse. Ossoff breaks down the details of his report, "compassionately" highlighting the supposed acts of violence against the detainees. Yet, here is the thing. Suppose Ossoff is so concerned about illegal immigrants and violence. Why did he devote more time and resources to investigating federal detention centers holding criminal illegal immigrants than innocent Americans harmed by illegal immigrants? Innocent people such as Laken Riley, who was a resident of Ossoff’s state? Moreover, here is Ossoff’s legislative and voting history as a senator. You’d be hard-pressed to find legislation focusing on violent, criminal illegal immigrants or protecting the public from them. And you surely won’t find any special investigations or reports he authorized about immigrant crime either.

New York Times [8/11/2025 7:20 PM, Chris Cameron and Hamed Aleaziz, 138952K] reports the number of people in immigration detention reached a new high of more than 60,000 on Monday, breaking a modern record set during the first Trump administration, according to internal records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The number of detained people has jumped since January, when about 39,000 people were in immigration detention, reflecting efforts by the Trump administration to quickly ramp up arrests and deportations. According to ICE records obtained by The New York Times, more than 1,100 people had been detained since Friday, about 380 people a day. The capacity for immigration officers to detain people has grown rapidly since ICE was formed in 2003. Twenty years ago, the average daily population of detained immigrants was approximately 7,000, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The previous peak since the government’s current method of counting began was 55,654 in August 2019, during the first Trump administration. The latest figures reflect the shifting focus of immigration policing: Most of the people detained in January had been arrested by Customs and Border Protection, the agency that patrols the nation’s land borders, seaports and airports. ICE, which conducts immigration raids in the nation’s interior, is now making the overwhelming majority of arrests six months into President Trump’s second term. Mr. Trump has made his escalating immigration crackdown a focus of his second term. His administration, and his allies in Republican-led states, have devoted considerable effort to expanding the government’s ability to arrest, detain and deport immigrants. Mr. Trump, who was re-elected on a promise of mass deportations, has often expressed frustration that arrests and deportations are not rising more quickly. Immigration arrests require extensive resources, including ample time for surveillance, and the Trump administration has laid out ambitious long-term plans to expand ICE, after Congress more than tripled the agency’s budget from about $8 billion to roughly $28 billion. The military has also become increasingly involved in the escalating immigration crackdown: Days after Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Pentagon authorized using a military base in Colorado to hold immigrants, and the administration has sent some migrants to the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Last week, the Defense Department announced that it was building another detention facility at a military base in Texas with capacity for 5,000.

Washington Times [8/12/2025 12:00 AM, Stephen Dinan, 2106K] reports President Trump is booting out illegal immigrants faster than President Biden added them, according to the latest Census Bureau numbers, which show an unprecedented drop in the number of immigrants living in the U.S. The total number of foreign-born people dropped by 2.2 million from January to July, and most of that — 1.6 million — was among the illegal immigrant population, said Steven A. Camarota, the research director at the Center for Immigration Studies who crunched the numbers. It’s an almost unfathomable turnaround from the Biden years, when illegal immigrants surged into the U.S. at record rates, netting about 120,000 new people each month. Over the past six months, though, the illegal immigrant population has been dropping at nearly 270,000 a month, or more than twice the rate of increase under Mr. Biden. “The best evidence we have is that the illegal population is now falling at a rate that even exceeds the massive growth that we had in Biden’s four years,” Mr. Camarota said. The decline coincides with a massive effort by the Trump administration, which is increasing formal arrests and deportations and has invested heavily in machinery to try to encourage illegal immigrants to leave on their own. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last week that foreign leaders in the hemisphere tell her they are seeing a wave of people arriving in their countries after having left the U.S. “Over and over again, I’m hearing that hundreds of thousands of their citizens are coming home, voluntarily,” she said. The new data comes from the Current Population Survey, a monthly Census Bureau report that is used to produce data such as the monthly unemployment figures. One of its questions prods respondents to reveal where they were born, which produces the overall immigration number. In January, it stood at 53.3 million, an all-time high in sheer number and as a percentage of the total population. Last month, it dipped below 51.1 million. Using other assumptions, Mr. Camarota is able to estimate the illegal immigrant population from the CPS data. He figures that rose from 10.2 million at the start of the Biden years to 15.8 million in January, before tumbling to 14.2 million now. Not all the illegal immigrants went home. Some are part of the normal churn of migration, such as gaining legal status or dying. That was true for the Biden years as well. Mr. Camarota said most of those who left were likely newcomers from the Biden years or were otherwise less rooted in the U.S., and thus it was easier to pick up and leave. That could presage diminishing returns for Mr. Trump’s enforcement push. The implications of the drop are massive. Mr. Camarota said the total U.S. population could decline this year, for the first time since the 1930s. The natural net increase from births is about 500,000. If the U.S. has already shed more than 2 million people, that would easily swamp the births. Mr. Camarota said the decline gives communities breathing space after the increases of the Biden years. “It’s likely that this represents a savings in money for the taxpayer,” he said. “It will take pressure off schools and hospitals and other services. It’s likely it will potentially create job opportunities for Americans.”

Breitbart [8/11/2025 3:22 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested what agency officials call "the worst of the worst" illegal aliens across the United States over the weekend, some of them convicted of attempted murder, rape, and domestic abuse, Breitbart News has exclusively learned. On August 9 and 10, ICE agents arrested dozens of illegal aliens, many with criminal convictions. ICE officials told Breitbart News the arrests are more reason why the agency is looking to recruit thousands more agents to help locate, arrest, and deport illegal aliens. "While Americans were enjoying their weekend, ICE was hard at work arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens that pose significant public safety threats," the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "Some of the dirtbags arrested over the weekend include rapists, attempted murderers, and violent abusers," McLaughlin said. "If you are a patriotic American and are tired of seeing your community pillaged by illegal alien crime, apply to join ICE law enforcement and help us remove gang members, pedophiles, terrorists, murderers, and more violent thugs. JOIN.ICE.GOV."

Telemundo51 [8/11/2025 5:19 PM, Alejandro Isturiz, 177K] reports this Sunday, ICE deported María Úrsula Valle to Mexico. Her family is now suffering the anguish of separation after her three children and her sister were left behind in the U.S., after what was supposed to be an immigration appointment to adjust her status turned into a nightmare. Distraught, she recalls a sad childhood moment with her sister, whom she no longer has close by, but in Mexico, where they emigrated from 30 years ago, and now she’s afraid something bad might happen to her. María Úrsula Valle has three children who are American citizens. The family says they are now placing their hope in the new attorney they hired to resolve what they believe the previous attorney failed to do properly to prevent deportation.

Breitbart [8/11/2025 6:17 PM, Warner Todd Huston, 3077K] reports left-wing, British-born HBO talk show host John Oliver was fantasizing about President Donald Trump’s funeral on Sunday before encouraging his viewers to follow his tips, should they encounter immigration officers during raids or making arrests across the U.S. Oliver went on a rant defending lawbreaking illegal immigrants and revealed his desire to protect criminal illegals during Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, and early in the segment he dreamed of President Trump’s death, saying he would like to hear the song, "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," played at the president’s funeral. After playing a video made by a local ICE office featuring the song, Oliver quipped, "Look, we all know this, but sometimes, it is worth reiterating: this White House is full of the pettiest little bitches imaginable. And while that video is obviously disgusting, on the plus side, I now know what song I want played at Trump’s funeral.” "I know it will be hard to get in, but you can throw a Bluetooth speaker pretty far!" he added. Later, after he ridiculed former Superman star Dean Cain for his efforts to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruit new officers. Oliver laid out his advice for budding Democrat insurrectionists who hope to obstruct legal immigration enforcement. Oliver suggested people use their cell phones to record ICE arrests.

Breitbart [8/12/2025 12:58 AM, Staff, 3077K] reports the U.S. Justice Department has transferred 14 Mexican nationals serving prison sentences in the United States on drug-related charges to their native country, according to both governments. The transfer occurred Friday but was made public Monday by the Justice Department, which said in a statement that it was pursuant to a prisoner transfer treaty between the two countries. The Justice Department said the unidentified inmates had requested the transfer, and both the United States and Mexico agreed. Under the treaty, the inmates will complete their sentences in Mexican detention facilities. "These people were transferred to a prison in national territory with the aim of obtaining their social reintegration with greater proximity to their families," Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. According to U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, the transfer will save the United States more than $4 million in incarceration costs for the 96 remaining years on their combined sentence. "The Justice Department will continue such transfers — pursuant to our treaty with Mexico — to reduce incarceration costs and relieve overcrowding in our federal prisons," Galeotti said. The announcement comes a month after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government was seeking to immediately repatriate 14 Mexican nationals held at Florida’s Everglades immigration detention center, more commonly known as "Alligator Alcatraz.” It was unclear if the 14 Mexican nationals repatriated Friday were the same individuals Sheinbaum was seeking to return home. "All arrangements are being made to ensure their immediate repatriation to Mexico," she said at a July 22 press conference, local media reported.

New York Post [8/11/2025 9:31 PM, Caitlin McCormack, 49956K] reports an illegal immigrant was arrested in South Dakota while transporting $12 million in methamphetamine — the largest single seizure of the drug in the state Highway Patrol’s history, Gov. Larry Rhoden announced on Monday. The 42-year-old man, who was not identified, was pulled over during a traffic stop by South Dakota Highway Patrol while he was speeding on Interstate 90 in Sturgis, roughly 100 miles west of the Wyoming border, according to a press release from the governor’s office. Turns out, the driver was carting a staggering 207 pounds of crystal meth in his vehicle — roughly the same weight of an adult black bear. Authorities emptied out his vehicle and recovered stash, which has a street value of approximately $12 million, according to the release. The suspect was "found to be a non-citizen and is now in immigration proceedings," according to the release. His country of origin and where he was detained is unclear. The drug bust was part of the governor’s Operation Prairie Thunder, which allows law enforcement in the state to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "We are taking action to protect the people of South Dakota from criminals and drug traffickers. Our Highway Patrol showed incredible professionalism in achieving this record drug bust," Roden said. "I promised that my administration would keep South Dakota strong, safe, and free – and we will continue to deliver on that promise through Operation: Prairie Thunder.” In early 2025, Roden also entered into an agreement with ICE that gave the state’s Highway Patrol officers the ability to "perform certain immigration enforcement functions," including the power to arrest without a warrant. The 287(g) Task Force agreements were discontinued under the Obama and Biden administrations, but reintroduced by President Trump on the day of his inauguration. As of May 2025, 40 states have at least one active 287(g) Task Force agreement in place, according to ICE. Other agencies involved in the investigation include the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Meade County Sheriff’s Office and Rapid City Police Department, according to the release.

CBS Colorado [8/11/2025 9:05 AM, Staff, 51860K] reports
Colorado Congressman Jason Crow is expected to tour the ICE detention facility in Aurora after he was denied entrance last month. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

(B) GMA3 [8/11/2025 3:26 PM, Staff] reports Governor Joe Lombardo is working to authorize the Nevada National Guard to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The governor’s office says this comes after a federal request. The Nevada National Guard says the authorization is still in the planning phase. This follows the Department of Justice listing Nevada as a sanctuary jurisdiction last week. Politicians from both parties have pushed back on that label.

Telemundo52 [8/12/2025 3:20 AM, María Paula Ochoa, 103K] reports at least 15 people were detained Monday morning by immigration agents outside a Home Depot store in North Hollywood, according to footage captured by witnesses. Federal agents arrived at the store’s parking lot around 9:30 a.m. Monday and detained several people. In images taken by witnesses with their cell phones, agents are seen leading at least one person through the store’s parking lot and then loading them into a vehicle without identification. In response to the raid, the National Day Laborers Network (NDLON) held a vigil in front of the Home Depot in memory of those arrested. Organizers and community members denounced the operation, the latest in a series of raids led by the Trump administration. It was a different demonstration from what we have seen, as this time there was music and very joyful lyrics against the raids, and according to what they say, they did it this way to show that even though they feel that Latino immigrants are being attacked, the federal government will not be able to steal their joy. Latin rhythms and anti-immigration lyrics carried the message of protest against a new raid this morning outside a Home Depot store in North Hollywood. "There were three undocumented immigrants. I told them: ‘Immigration, run, but these poor people jumped this fence. "They jumped the fence, immigration went the other way and took them away," said Ricardo Calderón of KICA-TV on YouTube. Since July 11, when a federal judge ordered to restrict indiscriminate operations, in some counties such as Los Angeles, these had decreased. But since last week, at least four have been reported at Home Depot stores in Van Nuys, Westlake, Cypress Park and now North Hollywood. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Breitbart [8/11/2025 3:35 PM, Neil Munro, 3077K] reports President Donald Trump’s top civil rights deputy defended the H-1B outsourcing program Saturday night as many Americans angrily slammed a Republican representative’s call for the importation of more foreign doctors. Lying about and generalizing concerning the quality of their care (all board certified doctors have to pass the same tests every 10 years) or falsely claiming that H1-Bs are taking the medical school places of Americans, doesn’t advance any intelligent discussion about the issues. Dillon’s defense of the program — and her breezy dismissal of critics — prompted a second wave of online criticism from Americans who are very familiar with the damaging impact of H-1B migrants and related corporate fraud on American graduates. Trump’s DOJ deputies have promised to sharpen their focus on white-collar migration crimes.

Breitbart [8/11/2025 3:35 PM, Neil Munro, 3077K] reports a GOP representative caused a national uproar on Friday when he urged government officials to import more foreign doctors to treat sick Americans. The issue blew up when Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) reversed his July opposition to the use of migrant doctors: “H1-B Visas are critical for helping alleviate the severe physician shortage this nation faces,” Doctor Murphy tweeted August 8. “We cannot train enough American Doctors fast enough. We can’t let lack of knowledge of the importance of this program affect patient care.” Three weeks prior, he had tweeted: Extremely disturbing trend is allowing physicians trained overseas to practice in the US wo American training. Medical Education overseas is NOT of the same quality as that in the US. Patients will suffer." Critics said Murphy’s change of view was prompted by donations. But he likely also felt lobbying pressure from a well-organized group of Indian workers in his district. His tweet was swamped by angry criticisms from Americans and accumulated 5.4 million views.

Los Angeles Times [8/11/2025 3:52 PM, Annie Goodykoontz, 14672K] reports a man believed to have been a part of a Romanian criminal organization was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week after he stole tens of thousands of welfare cards across California and New York. Catalin-Marius Graur, 43, was sentenced Aug. 4 after pleading guilty in October to one count of bank fraud. When he was arrested at a New York City Airbnb apartment in June 2024, he had over $37,000 in cash and nearly 1,500 stolen account access numbers in his possession, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. In his scheme, officials said, Graur targeted those receiving Electronic Benefit Transfer funds, which are distributed by social services departments to help low-income communities receive food and cash aid. According to DOJ officials, Graur would steal EBT card information by attaching "sophisticated skimming devices" to ATMs and other sales machines across Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. Graur was not living in the United States legally, according to officials. A Romanian citizen, he entered the U.S. in 2020 on a tourist visa but overstayed his visit, the release said. He worked with multiple people internationally in the scheme, with one accomplice receiving more than 36,000 stolen EBT card numbers from Graur over the course of three years, the statement said. Another co-conspirator involved in the scheme, Mihai-Adrian Humoiu, was sentenced to over seven years in prison in May, according to the FBI. According to the Los Angeles division of the FBI, which investigated Graur’s case, there are multiple instances of Romanian citizens coming to the U.S. to commit bank fraud. The agency has investigated that crime route in particular for many years. Separately, another person, also from Romania, pleaded guilty to bank fraud and asylum fraud in San Francisco for the same type of scam with EBT cards, according to another DOJ statement. Marius Marian, 39, illegally accessed over $500,000 in EBT funds through attaching skimming devices to ATMs. Marian is a Romanian citizen who illegally entered the U.S. and then was deported in 2019 after serving eight months in custody for bank fraud. In an application for asylum, submitted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security around April 2023, he knowingly failed to disclose his previous deportation, the statement said. His sentencing is scheduled for October.

Univision [8/11/2025 6:28 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports the immigrant and holder of a green card Sonny Lasquite was arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, his relatives reported. He was returning from a vacation in the Bahamas. The arrest took place on 28 July. According to local media reports, it was due to an alert in the federal system linked to a 2012 drug case in which it cooperated with the authorities. Lasquite has lived in the United States for about 23 years and worked as a waiter at events in Las Vegas, court records show. He is currently being held at Stewarten Detention Centre in Georgia.

Federalist [8/11/2025 3:02 PM, Brianna Lyman, 1142K] reports Democrats are increasingly explicit about their goals to turn illegal aliens into future voters — making Republican talk of amnesty or compromise more worrisome. Those efforts would be nothing less than hammering the final nails into the coffin of both the Republican Party and America. At a Fort Worth "The People vs. The Power Grab" rally, Beto O’Rourke laid it out plainly. "We absolutely failed to live up to the expectations that we set, so next time we win power, we’re going to drive that car like we stole it," O’Rourke said. "We’re going to legalize every DREAMer, every DREAMer’s parents, every hardworking American doing backbreaking work that makes this country so g-dd-mn great in the first place, even greater as US citizens.” O’Rourke isn’t the only Democrat to suggest turning illegal aliens into citizens. Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost said in June that he wants to "document every single [illegal alien] with a speedy path to citizenship.” Given the chance, Democrats will choose voter registration over deportation. They are simply waiting for their next chance at power to pull the trigger. It’s comments like these that underscore why there is absolutely no room for exception or compromise on mass deportation by Republicans. There’s a host of issues with giving illegal aliens citizenship or legal status or a carveout — but the most consequential is voting. Legalizing millions of illegal aliens would reshape the electorate overnight. States like Texas could flip blue, while congressional toss-ups like New York Rep. Mike Lawler’s district could disappear for Republicans — not because voters changed their minds, but because Democrats imported and legalized new ones. It’s a possibility not far out of reach — which is why President Donald Trump must keep his foot on the gas with mass deportations and ignore big agriculture and hospitality, as well as spineless Republicans in Congress demanding mass amnesty. Trump has floated an amnesty-like program for illegal aliens working in the hospitality or agricultural industry. "Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace," Trump said in a Truth Social post. "In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!". But this isn’t a question of who is a "criminal" and who is not — everyone who crosses the border illegally is a criminal. Whether or not the individual is violent is irrelevant. This is about national survival — which will be impossible if Democrats solidify their grip on power by weaponizing the illegals Trump fails to deport.

Breitbart [8/11/2025 4:22 PM, Warner Todd Huston, 3077K] reports the Santa Ana city council approved a new $100,000 fund of taxpayer dollars to pay the rent of illegal migrants who are "affected by immigration enforcement.” Not only did the city approve the program, they also gave it an official title in Spanish, not English. The council passed what it is calling the "Santa Ana Ayuda Sin Frontera" program ("Help Without Borders"). The program will allow migrants to apply for funds for overdue rent, utility bills, and other household expenses, according to a press release on the city website. "Our community stands strongest when we support one another, especially in times of uncertainty," Mayor Valerie Amezcua said in the release. "This assistance program reflects the Santa Ana City Council’s commitment to protecting the dignity and stability of each resident impacted by the recent, unjust immigration enforcement actions.” The city council is also condemning President Trump’s campaign to gobble up illegal aliens for deportation, calling it a threat to city "residents.” Santa Ana also recently reaffirmed its status as a so-called "sanctuary city" and signed onto a federal lawsuit demanding an end to enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.

Daily Caller [8/11/2025 5:43 PM, Audrey Streb, 1010K] reports the Trump administration since June has ramped up detentions of electronics, reportedly including components for solar panels, over possible links to forced labor in China, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP data shows a rise since June in U.S. detentions of electronic shipments under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law aimed at preventing imports sourced with slave labor in China’s Xinjiang region, with a portion of the impounded imports reportedly including solar panel components, according to E&E News. From January to May, CBP intercepted $5.73 million worth of electronics imports, and the number surged to $15.67 million in June alone, CBP data states. Though it is not clear how much of the halted electronic imports are related to solar materials, the green energy technology has been seized and linked to Chinese slave labor by CBP in previous years. Recent reports indicate that China has continued to use Uyghurs for slave labor, and that it has attempted to skirt U.S. forced labor laws by moving Uyghur Muslim workers to factories outside of the Xinjiang region.

Daily Caller [8/11/2025 5:43 PM, Audrey Streb, 1010K] reports the Trump administration since June has ramped up detentions of electronics, reportedly including components for solar panels, over possible links to forced labor in China, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP data shows a rise since June in U.S. detentions of electronic shipments under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law aimed at preventing imports sourced with slave labor in China’s Xinjiang region, with a portion of the impounded imports reportedly including solar panel components, according to E&E News. From January to May, CBP intercepted $5.73 million worth of electronics imports, and the number surged to $15.67 million in June alone, CBP data states. "It’s actually quite difficult to verify that any [solar imports] are exempt from slave labor," Michael Lucci, CEO of State Armor, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "A lot of the industry for solar and for batteries is centered in Xinjiang, which is where two consecutive State Departments have concluded that there’s an ongoing genocide." Nearly half of the world’s supply for polysilicon, a key material of solar panels, comes from Xinjiang, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The enforcement effort is reportedly slowing polysilicon cell imports, E&E News reported. Though it is not clear how much of the halted electronic imports are related to solar materials, the green energy technology has been seized and linked to Chinese slave labor by CBP in previous years.

FOX Business [8/11/2025 3:08 PM, Alec Schemmel, 9940K] reports after the Trump administration signaled a new executive order could be forthcoming that would clarify the United States’ stance on whether gold imports should face tariffs, the president himself took the issue into his own hands with an announcement Monday that gold ‘will not be Tariffed.” Trump’s announcement follows a ruling by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s website, which said gold would be subject to reciprocal tariffs after a Switzerland-based precious metals broker asked for clarification on the matter. The ruling said that a 39% rate would be imposed on one kilogram and 100-ounce gold bars imported from Switzerland. Reports that the Trump administration would be placing tariffs on U.S. gold imports were slammed as "misinformation" by the White House, which reiterated Monday that it intends to "to issue an executive order in the near future clarifying misinformation about the tariffing of gold bars and other specialty products.” While the contents of the executive order are not known, Trump’s announcement explicitly said "Gold will not be Tariffed!" with the post being introduced as "A Statement from Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America.” News of the potential tariffs late last week caused gold prices to go up, but following responses from the White House suggesting this would not be the case, they began declining.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [8/11/2025 2:18 PM, Staff, 51390K]

NewsNation [8/11/2025 6:14 PM, Salvador Rivera, 5801K] reports FBI Director Kash Patel says fentanyl seizures in the United States are up by 25 percent since President Trump took office. Patel says they hope to continue the amount of "record-breaking" seizures with the help of the U.S. military. According to the FBI, 1,500 kilos of the synthetic drug have been seized during Trump’s first 200 days in office, enough fentanyl to kill 1.13 billion people. "The seizures to date have gone up by 25 percent compared to the same period last year, more than ever," Patel said on social media. "We expect to work with our partners Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, and the Defense Department.” Patel defended Trump’s wishes to send troops to fight drug cartels in Latin America, a maneuver he says will expand the war on fentanyl.

Breitbart [8/11/2025 2:16 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports that an illegal alien MS-13 gang member, convicted of raping and murdering 37-year-old Rachel Morin — a mother of five children — in April, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Monday. Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal alien from El Salvador where he is also a member of the violent MS-13 gang, was convicted months ago by a Maryland jury of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, third-degree sexual offense, and kidnapping. On Monday, a Maryland judge sentenced Martinez-Hernandez to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a second life sentence, and another 40 years in prison for raping and bludgeoning Rachel to death in what has become known as the most horrific crime in Harford County, Maryland, history. On June 15, 2024, the Tulsa Police Department arrested 23-year-old Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal alien from El Salvador with ties to the MS-13 gang, in connection with Rachel’s murder. Martinez-Hernandez brutally raped, bludgeoned, and strangled Morin to death. On three occasions in 2023, Border Patrol agents apprehended Martinez-Hernandez — twice in January in New Mexico and Texas and once in February in New Mexico. On each occasion, he was returned to Mexico. Sometime after he was last returned to Mexico, Martinez-Hernandez crossed the border and made his way to California, where he allegedly assaulted a woman and her child. He later traveled to Maryland, where he raped and murdered Rachel.

Politico [8/11/2025 11:40 PM, Kyle Cheney, 16523K] reports that, as President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard in Washington, on Monday, a court hearing on the other side of the country shed new light on the administration’s drive to use the military in American cities — and some of the tensions at the heart of that effort. On the witness stand in a federal courtroom in California, a longtime military leader testified that he expressed early resistance when federal immigration authorities wanted military support for a planned immigration operation in June in Los Angeles. But when he voiced his opposition, a senior Customs and Border Patrol official rebuked him and questioned his “loyalty” to the nation, recalled Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, who commanded Guard troops in Los Angeles. It was a remarkable split screen. In L.A., the testimony from Sherman came as part of a three-day trial in which a judge will decide whether the administration’s use of the National Guard in that city broke the law. In D.C., Trump forged ahead with a new deployment — and even suggested that other Democrat-run cities like New York and Chicago could be next. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who is overseeing the L.A. trial, noted that his decision in the case could have implications for whether Trump is able to make similar deployments in other cities. The trial’s first day of testimony centered largely on how the military provided support to immigration agents on the streets of Los Angeles and whether they were strictly adhering to legal limits on their ability to participate in law enforcement activity. Though the testimony from three witnesses — two military officials and an ICE supervisor — largely described a cautious and limited approach to the military’s role, there were revealing moments of tension within the administration. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed 4,000 Guard troops to L.A. in June, and soon added 700 active duty Marines. Their purpose, according to Hegseth, was to protect federal buildings and flank ICE agents during immigration raids, some of which had been beset by unruly protests and violence. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom says the troops have strayed from their mission, instead conducting civilian law enforcement in violation of an 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatus Act. That law was intended to prevent the president from turning the military on civilians without express approval from Congress. The most revelatory testimony of the day came from Sherman, who initially commanded the Guard troops Trump deployed to Los Angeles. He recalled his opposition to a request by immigration authorities for military support during an operation slated for Father’s Day in the city’s MacArthur Park.

Washington Post [8/11/2025 6:57 PM, Brianna Sacks, et al., 32099K] reports the Federal Emergency Management Agency and at least three other federal agencies have canceled their contracts with unions to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order stripping many federal workers of union protections, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. On Friday, FEMA’s acting administrator, David Richardson, sent a memo to American Federation of Government Employees Local 4060, the union representing the agency, saying that FEMA’s collective bargaining agreement had been terminated, ending a nearly 10-year contract. The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have also canceled their collective bargaining agreements. The agencies’ actions come after Veterans Affairs, the federal government’s second-largest agency, announced plans Wednesday to end nearly all of its contracts with federal unions. FEMA and USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The EPA said in a statement last week that it was working to implement a March executive order from Trump saying that collective bargaining requirements no longer applied to many federal agencies, citing exclusions based on national security. The moves to terminate union contracts, which affect thousands of federal employees, come after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit this month lifted a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order. “Make no mistake, this move isn’t about government efficiency or national security. It’s about silencing workers and clearing the way for more deregulation,” said Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents more than 8,000 EPA workers nationally, in a statement after the notices went out. VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins attacked unions as being harmful to veterans’ care and protecting inefficient workers. Most of Veterans Affairs’ 400,000 workers are also represented by the AFGE, which has sued the Trump administration for staffing cuts. Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national president, said the decision was “another clear example of retaliation.”

NBC News [8/12/2025 5:00 AM, Evan Bush, 44540K] reports when Camp Mystic wanted to build in Central Texas areas considered high risk on Federal Emergency Management Agency flood insurance maps, it did what many property owners do: It hired engineers to take a closer look. FEMA’s flood maps are often outdated and can be inexact, particularly in areas where the agency hasn’t performed detailed studies. This left an opening for Camp Mystic to generate a more precise analysis of the terrain and to ask FEMA to change how its flood zones were designated. From 2013 to 2020, the overnight girls camp asked FEMA to redesignate the flood risk for 65 of its buildings at its sprawling facilities in Texas’ Guadalupe Valley — more buildings than previously known. The government agency told NBC News that in that period of time it altered the status of 60 buildings, changing the risk designations of both decades-old buildings and its new construction from “high” to “moderate” or “low,” on paper. Five buildings remained in high-hazard zones. A review of documents related to Camp Mystic — from county floodplain development records, an engineering study, FEMA flood map determinations and federal flood insurance studies — offers a window into a process that experts say plays out for thousands of properties each year, quietly shrinking the footprint of the nation’s flood risk on paper, even as climate change makes flooding a more severe threat on the ground. The trail of documents from Camp Mystic details the ease with which property owners can remold how the federal government assigns flood risk. And they spotlight a national issue relevant beyond Texas: In some areas, FEMA’s main tool for assessing flood risk is stuck in time.

CBS News [8/11/2025 6:08 PM, Alex Sundby, 51860K] Video: HERE reports Tropical Storm Erin formed in the eastern Atlantic Ocean on Monday, forecasters said. The storm was expected to strengthen later in the week and could become the Atlantic’s first hurricane of the season. The storm formed just west of the Cabo Verde islands off the western coast of Africa, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Erin was expected to move west. Early models showed that the storm was expected to strengthen into a major hurricane by the time it nears the Caribbean islands toward the end of the week. It doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the U.S. As of late Monday afternoon, the center of Erin was located about 2,155 miles east of the northern Leeward Islands in the West Indies with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. Drone video footage posted to social media showed the aftermath of flooding from the storm in Cabo Verde, a group of islands about 385 miles off the African coast. Officials declared a state of emergency as crews dealt with the damage. There’s uncertainty about where Erin goes after this week, but most models show the storm pivoting to the northwest and north, CBS News Miami meteorologist Shane Hinton reported. The new activity in the Atlantic comes as parts of South Florida, home to two of the largest school districts in the U.S., are starting a new school year. Classes in Broward County began Monday, and students in neighboring Miami-Dade County are set to go back to school later in the week.

AP [8/11/2025 3:24 PM, Sarah Elbeshbishi, 56000K] reports nearly a decade after the deadly 2016 floods, West Virginia officials are moving forward with a study to look at flood mitigation measures across the Kanawha River Basin. Last month, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced that the state will work with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers on a study that thoroughly examines flood risk management strategies across 20 West Virginia counties, most of which were impacted by the June 2016 floods. Morrisey’s announcement comes nearly four years after the study was initially funded by the federal government. West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito requested the study in 2016, following the deadly flooding that swept across the state and left 23 dead. Federal funding for the project was later secured in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But these types of studies require the state and federal government to split the cost equally. And the state didn’t put forward its $1.5 million share for the study until last month, indicated by Morrisey’s July announcement. In addition to the money for the Kanawha River Basin study, the governor’s office also put $1.5 million toward the Upper Guyandotte Flood Study. That study will look at the flood risk and possible mitigation measures across Wyoming County and parts of Raleigh, which are especially vulnerable to flooding. These two studies are the first major investments in several years by state leaders to address the growing threat of flooding, underscoring the state’s slow progress in tackling this issue.

AP [8/11/2025 6:48 AM, Staff, 56000K] reports flash flooding canceled the final day of the Wisconsin State Fair on Sunday as continued heavy rainfall in half a dozen Midwest states forced motorists to abandon their vehicles, cut power to thousands of households and closed busy roadways. Organizers of the Wisconsin State Fair said they were scrapping the final day of the 11-day event after rains flooded the fairgrounds in West Allis, which is just outside Milwaukee. "We are saddened we cannot deliver this final day of the Wisconsin State Fair, but know that this is the best decision with current conditions and the forecast ahead," organizers said in a statement. The National Weather Service issued flood watches and warnings for parts of Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin. After rainfall began on Saturday in some areas forecasters predicted "repeated rounds of heavy rain," along with hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes into Monday. Among the worst hit was the Milwaukee area, where up to 14 inches (36 centimeters) of rain had fallen in some areas by Sunday, according to the National Weather Service, which also noted river flooding in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties. Some motorists left their stranded cars on roads. Nearly 18,000 customers of We Energies in southeast Wisconsin were without power late Sunday. In the suburban village of Wauwatosa, an overflowing and fast-moving Menomonee River submerged a popular playground.

NewsNation [8/11/2025 7:00 PM, Drew Miller, 5801K] reports the United States Coast Guard has released the footage of the water rescue made Friday morning, where four people had to be pulled from the water, one of whom got trapped under the capsized boat. The rescue happened about eight miles off the coast of Lake Erie, where a group of friends had to be rescued after their boat capsized during a fishing trip, with the first calls going out around 9:30 am. A Coast Guard helicopter and dive team from Detroit flew in around 11:15 that morning and quickly were able to get a diver in the water who was able to quickly reach the stuck passenger and get them to the first responders who had rescued the other three. "None of us had life jackets on. There’s life jackets in the boat and they were trapped under the boat and we’re outside of the boat," Jerry Warner, one of the people rescued, told us Friday. All four of the rescued fishermen were uninjured and added how thankful they were to be alive and for the rescue crews who came out to save them. The Coast Guard said this is the first life saved for two members of the crew, with the whole crew earning praise for their swift work from their helicopter aircraft commander. "I commend our crews for having swiftly executed the procedures we train daily. The Coast Guard uses a variety of stations to use their expertise to bring family and friends back together, and it was a pleasure to work with the crews of Station Erie," said Cmdr. Robert O’Donnell, helicopter aircraft commander.

MarineLink [8/11/2025 7:25 PM, Staff] reports The U.S. Coast Guard has officially commissioned the USCGC Storis (WAGB 21) in Juneau, Alaska. The vessel is the Coast Guard’s first polar icebreaker acquired in over 25 years. The Storis, formerly the motor vessel Aiviq, was acquired on December 20, 2024, and subsequently renamed after modifications to enhance its communication and defense capabilities. Storis is manned by a hybrid crew of military cuttermen and civilian mariners. It will be temporarily berthed in Seattle, Washington, alongside the Service’s two other polar icebreakers, until necessary infrastructure improvements are completed in Juneau. As the nation’s third polar icebreaker, Storis was acquired to bolster these operations, providing near-term operational presence and supporting national security in the Arctic as a bridging strategy for Arctic surface presence. Additional Coast Guard icebreakers will be acquired through investments in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – the largest single funding commitment in Coast Guard history – including $4.3 billion for Polar Security Cutters, extending U.S. reach in the Arctic, $3.5 billion for three Arctic Security Cutters and $816 million for light and medium domestic icebreaking cutters. The commissioning marks the second vessel in Coast Guard history to bear the name Storis, with the original "Galloping Ghost of the Alaskan Coast" having served 64 years of icebreaking operations in the Arctic. “The commissioning of Storis marks a new beginning for the U.S. Coast Guard,” said Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Troy Edgar. “President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill has recapitalized USCG with $25 billion – the largest single investment in the Coast Guard. The new investment will lead to a Coast Guard that is better equipped to protect our national interests, support our maritime communities and stand alongside our allies.” USCGC Storis will enhance the nation’s maritime capabilities in the Arctic, continuing the Service’s modernization through Force Design 2028, an initiative introduced by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to transform the Coast Guard into a more agile, capable and responsive fighting force. “USCGC Storis is a major win for the American people,” said Adm. Kevin Lunday, Acting Commandant of the Coast Guard. “The commissioning of USCGC Storis immediately strengthens our ability to control, secure, and defend the U.S. border around Alaska and maritime approaches in the Arctic. Storis is the first step of a historic investment in the Coast Guard to add critical capacity to our polar icebreaker fleet to protect U.S. sovereignty and counter malign influence throughout the Arctic.”

NewsNation [8/11/2025 11:35 AM, Tim Steele, 5801K] reports three people were rescued by the US Coast Guard after a fishing vessel capsized near the Yaquina Bay jetty, the Coast Guard posted on X. The three who were rescued from the vessel, Das Bug, were “transferred to EMS,” officials said, while the search for a fourth person is ongoing. An Air Station North Bend helicopter was brought in to help with the search. No further information is available at this time. KOIN 6 News will update this story as developments are confirmed.

ABC News [8/12/2025 3:06 AM, Jon Haworth, 31733K] reports the United States Coast Guard suspended the search for a missing fisherman after a vessel with four people on it capsized in 7-foot swells and heavy winds off the coast of Oregon, officials said. Authorities at Coast Guard Sector Columbia River received a report at about 4 p.m. on Sunday that a 40-foot fishing vessel named Das Bug had taken on water while transiting through the Yaquina Bay Jetty and capsized with all four crew members ending up in the water, according to a statement from the Coast Guard on Monday. "Three individuals were rescued from the water by a 47-foot Motor Lifeboat crew from Coast Guard Station Yaquina Bay and transferred to emergency medical services," the Coast Guard said. "The individuals were taken to Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital and treated for hypothermia.” Crews from Coast Guard Station Yaquina Bay and an MH-65 Dolphin crew from Coast Guard Air Station North Bend conducted evening searches for the missing individual but could not locate the missing fisherman. A first light search was also conducted on Monday by an MH-65 Dolphin crew from Coast Guard Air Station North Bend but the decision was made to suspend the search for the missing man shortly after when crews were unable to find him. In total rescue crews searched for eight hours, covering a total of 54 square miles and searched in inclement weather, including 7-foot swells and 13 knot winds. "Suspending a search without finding the person you have been looking for is always one of the most difficult decisions we have to make," said Lt. Cdr. Jacqueline Hunnicutt, search and rescue mission coordinator for Coast Guard Sector Columbia River. "Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.”

CBS News [8/11/2025 9:06 AM, Emily Mae Czachor, 51860K] reports Chinese research ships are appearing more often in the United States Arctic than they have in years past, the U.S. Coast Guard said. In response, Coast Guard crews are ramping up their presence in U.S. Arctic waters to address what they’ve described in a news release as "increased activity" as of late by Chinese research vessels in that area. The Coast Guard has detected and responded to two Chinese research ships currently operating in the U.S. Arctic, and five similar vessels are being monitored in or near the polar region, according to the federal agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. "The presence of these vessels is consistent with a three-year trend of increased activity from Chinese research vessels operating in the U.S. Arctic," the Coast Guard said in its latest news release on the matter. "Last year, three Chinese research vessels conducted research operations north of the Bering Strait." FOX News [8/11/2025 1:15 PM, Greg Norman, 46878K] reports that the Coast Guard warned of "increased Chinese research vessel activity" in the U.S. Arctic as it responded to multiple vessels in the region. The agency said it recently "detected and responded to two Chinese research vessels operating in the U.S. Arctic and is currently monitoring a total of five similar vessels in or near the U.S Arctic." "On August 5, a C-130J Hercules fixed wing aircraft from Air Station Kodiak responded to the Chinese research vessels Ji Di and the Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di. Both vessels were transiting northeast in the Bering Sea," the Coast Guard said. "On August 6, the crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL 751) again responded to the Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di as it was transiting north in the Chukchi Sea above the Arctic Circle, after passing through the Bering Strait," they added. The Coast Guard released a photo of the Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di as taken from the C-130J Hercules. They noted that the aircraft and Waesche were "patrolling under Operation Frontier Sentinel, an operation that responds to adversaries operating in and around Alaskan and U.S. Arctic waters." "In July, Coast Guard Arctic District deployed a C-130J Hercules fixed wing aircraft from Air Station Kodiak to query the Xue Long 2, another Chinese research vessel, approximately 290 nautical miles north of Utqiagvik, Alaska," the Coast Guard also said. The sightings of the Chinese ships are part of a "three-year trend of increased activity" in the region, according to officials.

Washington Post [8/11/2025 8:24 AM, Christian Shepherd, 32099K] reports China coast guard ship barreled into a Chinese navy destroyer on Monday as the two vessels chased a Philippine coast guard ship in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. The collision, which left the smaller Chinese ship badly damaged, occurred as the Philippine patrol boats were escorting dozens of fishing vessels into the waters near Scarborough Shoal, a contested island that the Philippines calls Bajo de Masinloc, according to Jay Tarriela, a spokesperson for the Philippine coast guard. Chinese patrols blocked them and fired a water cannon, Tarriela said. The China coast guard ship performed a “risky maneuver” during a high-speed chase and crashed head-on into the Chinese warship, leaving the smaller ship “unseaworthy,” Tarriela wrote on X. China accused the Philippines of ignoring its warnings and “forcibly intruding” into waters near Scarborough Shoal, which Beijing calls Huangyan Dao, without mentioning the collision. The Chinese patrols “took all necessary measures, including tracking, monitoring, blocking, and controlling, to drive the Philippine vessels away,” China coast guard spokesperson Gan Yu said in a statement Monday. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reported similarly:
New York Post [8/11/2025 11:02 AM, Patrick Reilly, 49956K]
AP [8/11/2025 11:05 PM, Staff, 56000K]

Reuters [8/12/2025 3:23 AM, Mikhail Flores and Karen Lema, 51390K] reports the Philippines expressed serious concern on Tuesday over what it described as "dangerous manoeuvres and unlawful interference" by Chinese vessels during a coast guard supply mission for Filipino fishermen in the Scarborough Shoal on Monday. "Their actions not only posed a grave danger to Philippine personnel and vessels, but also resulted in the unfortunate collision between the two Chinese vessels," the Philippine foreign ministry said in a statement. A Chinese navy ship collided with a smaller coast guard vessel while the latter was chasing one of the Philippine Coast Guard ships involved in the mission, according to the PCG, which captured the incident on video. China’s defence ministry and its embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ministry’s statement. On Monday, China’s coast guard said it took necessary measures to expel Philippine vessels from waters around the Scarborough Shoal. The Philippine said it had offered medical aid and other support to the Chinese side, including an offer to tow the damaged China Coast Guard vessel out of the area. "Yesterday’s incident demonstrates the importance of adhering to international maritime rules," the Philippine foreign ministry said. It reaffirmed its commitment to diplomacy and dialogue in resolving differences. Monday’s confrontation marks the latest in a series of incidents amid a period of heightened tensions between Manila and Beijing over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. A 2016 ruling of an international arbitral tribunal voided Beijing’s sweeping claims in the region, saying they had no basis under international law, a decision China rejects. Rear Admiral Roy Trinidad, Philippine navy spokesperson for the South China Sea, warned at a press briefing on Tuesday that similar incidents could happen again as long as China continued to conduct what he called "illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive" activities in the strategic waterway.

CyberScoop [8/11/2025 5:15 PM, Matt Kapko] reports SonicWall insists a spree of ransomware attacks hitting its Gen 7 firewalls is not linked to a zero-day vulnerability, but rather a critical defect the company previously disclosed and patched last summer in its network security operating system. The vendor disputed initial assessments from outside researchers suggesting the speed and scale of the attacks pointed to a potential zero-day vulnerability affecting the secure sockets layer (SSL) VPN protocol as the initial attack vector. “SonicWall has thoroughly investigated the matter, and based on current findings, we have high confidence that this activity is related to CVE-2024-40766,” SonicWall said in a statement, adding the defect is “not a new zero-day or unknown vulnerability.” Conflicting theories and broad uncertainty surrounding the root cause of the latest series of attacks highlight the challenges security experts confront as they scramble to identify and remediate defects under attack in the wild. Arctic Wolf researchers previously noted the activity was similar to prior attacks involving CVE-2024-40766. SonicWall said fewer than 40 organizations have been impacted by the attacks, which started in mid-July and increased in pace over the next couple weeks. Two other cybersecurity companies, Huntress and GuidePoint Research, also capped their estimated victim count at under 40. Many of the attacks involve customers that recently migrated from Gen 6 to Gen 7 firewalls without resetting passwords, SonicWall said in its updated blog post. The company did not say how many impacted customers were running firewalls without the previously issued patch for CVE-2024-40766.

CyberScoop [8/11/2025 5:20 PM, Tim Starks] reports using a seven-year-old vulnerability, researchers said they were able to realistically leak private data from public clouds, suggesting that a “lack of concern” about such supposedly impractical attacks is misguided, according to a presentation delivered Monday. The anonymous researchers presented their findings at a hacker conference, WHY2025, in the Netherlands, and they leaned on the kind of “transient execution” vulnerabilities that attracted attention in 2018 with high-profile Intel chip flaw revelations, one of which was known as Spectre. “Given that today’s clouds have large fleets of older CPUs that lack comprehensive, in-silicon fixes to a variety of transient execution vulnerabilities, the question arises whether sufficient software-based defenses have been deployed to stop realistic attacks — especially those using older, supposedly mitigated vulnerabilities,” they wrote. The answer to that question is “no,” they concluded. “We show that the practice of mitigating vulnerabilities in isolation, without removing the root cause, leaves systems vulnerable.” The findings demonstrate that “more than a theoretical possibility, this is a real-world threat in popular clouds,” they explained, unlike the Spectre vulnerability that hasn’t had much real-world applicability.

FOX News [8/11/2025 8:33 AM, Stephen Sorace, 46878K] Video HERE reports the man suspected of fatally shooting a police officer and unleashing a barrage of bullets on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta on Friday had been fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the suspect’s father. Patrick Joseph White, 30, blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Saturday. The official said White’s father had contacted police and identified his son as the possible shooter, telling law enforcement that White had been upset over the death of his dog and had become heavily focused on the COVID-19 vaccine. The law enforcement official told the AP that White was armed with five guns, including at least one long gun, when the attack unfolded. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Blaze [8/11/2025 1:45 PM, Julio Rosas, 1805K] reports that Presidents in Latin America have voiced their opposition to President Donald Trump reportedly ordering the U.S. military to take direct action against drug cartels in the region. As Blaze News previously reported, such a directive to the Department of Defense could allow the U.S. military to use force against groups that have been designated as foreign terrorists organizations. Many of those groups that are labeled as terrorists are based in Mexico, but a few others in Latin America and Haiti have the designation. Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned Colombians that Trump is going to bomb their country. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum assured her country on Friday that the United States is not going to invade with its military. "We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. That’s ruled out, absolutely ruled out. ... When [the U.S.] come[s] to raise it, we have always said no," Sheinbaum said about the idea. Sheinbaum boasted that U.S. federal agents who operate in Mexico do so under strict rules. "I think we are the country that has the most regulation for foreign agents, whether from the United States or from another country," she added. "Let’s see how the executive order is, but there is no risk that they are going to invade our territory," she concluded.

Washington Examiner [8/11/2025 12:44 PM, Robert Schmad, 1934K] reports board members of a terror-linked nonprofit organization have cut dozens of checks to Democratic politicians over the past decade, campaign finance records show. On Oct. 15, 2024, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Samidoun as "an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization." Employees and board members of Samidoun’s U.S. parent organization, the Alliance for Global Justice, have been frequent donors to high-profile Democratic politicians, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Employees of Defense for Children Palestine, which the Israeli government has linked to the PFLP, have also cut checks to notable Democrats. Samidoun, which exists on paper to advocate the rights of those detained by the Israeli government, was determined to be "owned, controlled, or directed by, or having acted for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the PFLP" by the Treasury Department in late 2024. Part of the Treasury Department’s case against Samidoun rested on Khaled Barakat, a PFLP member who serves on Samidoun’s board and has been involved in "fundraising and recruitment efforts support[ing] the PFLP’s terrorist activity against Israel."

AP [8/12/2025 2:05 AM, Munir Ahmed, 56000K] reports the United States designated a Pakistan separatist group as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department said, a move hailed Tuesday by Pakistani officials. The designation of the Balochistan Liberation Army and its fighting wing, the Majeed Brigade, blamed for deadly attacks in Balochistan province, coincides with a visit to the U.S. by Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir. The announcement comes less than two weeks after Washington and Islamabad reached a trade agreement expected to allow U.S. firms to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves in resource-rich Balochistan and to lower trade tariffs for Islamabad. The State Department is “designating the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and its alias, the Majeed Brigade, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and adding the Majeed Brigade as an alias to BLA’s previous Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) designation,” the agency said in a statement. “Today’s action taken by the Department of State demonstrates the Trump administration’s commitment to countering terrorism,” the U.S. statement said. Syed Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based security analyst, said the designation of the BLA and its Majeed Brigade fighting wing follows Munir’s visits to the U.S.

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Reuters [8/11/2025 1:52 PM, Jasper Ward and Maiya Keidan, 51390K]
NewsMax [8/11/2025 3:54 PM, Michael Katz, 4622K] r

CNN [8/11/2025 11:43 AM, Casey Gannon, 875K] reports a federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s request to unseal grand jury materials from the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case. The Justice Department has sought to release grand jury testimony and exhibits from cases involving Jeffrey Epstein in New York. Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a scathing opinion, saying unsealing the materials in Maxwell’s case is not a matter of historical or public interest and calling the premise of the DOJ’s argument false. "The Court therefore denies the Government’s motion to unseal at the threshold. Contrary to the Government’s depiction, the Maxwell grand jury testimony is not a matter of significant historical or public interest. Far from it," Engelmayer wrote. "Its entire premise – that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them – is demonstrably false," Engelmayer said. The judge also pointed to the fact that much of the grand jury material that the DOJ is seeking has already been public and was presented during Maxwell’s trial in 2021. "It consists of garden-variety summary testimony by two law enforcement agents. And the information it contains is already almost entirely a matter of longstanding public record, principally as a result of live testimony by percipient witnesses at the 2021 Maxwell trial," Engelmayer wrote. Engelmayer went into great detail in his ruling about the evidence that was introduced during Maxwell’s trial, making a point that the government was not familiar with it.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [8/11/2025 10:41 AM, Staff, 3077K]
Reuters [8/11/2025 12:06 PM, Luc Cohen, 51390K]
CBS News [8/11/2025 3:26 PM, Mary Cunningham, 51860K]
FOX News [8/11/2025 10:25 AM, Michael Ruiz and Maria Paronich, 46878K] Video: HERE

CyberScoop [8/11/2025 2:15 PM, Derek B. Johnson] reports the Federal Communications Commission has adopted new rules to make it more difficult for foreign firms to apply for licensing to build out submarine cables, citing the need to protect the continued construction of critical undersea cables that underpin the internet and transcontinental communications. The rules would require the FCC to presumptively deny “certain foreign adversary-controlled license applicants” from obtaining licenses needed to operate in U.S.-controlled waters. It would also restrict undersea capacity leasing agreements, ban the use of unspecified covered equipment and establish a range of physical and cybersecurity requirements on those same firms. The FCC said that as the U.S. seeks to become “the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies and secure AI dominance,” the cables responsible for powering that data explosion must be protected from acts of foreign sabotage. According to figures provided by the FCC, there are 90 cable systems already licensed by the agency. The FCC expects those numbers to grow significantly in coming years as businesses and governments continue to build out additional infrastructure. In a statement, Chair Brendan Carr said the FCC’s order was meant to “facilitate, not frustrate” this expansion of submarine cable infrastructure, while making it harder for foreign nations to potentially gain influence or access to that infrastructure through an affiliate third-party company. “We not only want to unleash the deployment of new undersea cables — we want to make sure those cables are secure. In recent years, we have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened by foreign adversaries, like China,” Carr said.

Federal News Network [8/11/2025 2:20 PM, Terry Gerton, 2346K] reports that guest: Ret. Ambassador Gordon Gray. Title: Kuwait Professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Summary: As the U.S. faces rising global threats, a new warning from national security leaders is raising alarms at home. The National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) say recent layoffs at the State Department, impacting over 2,000 positions, could do “lasting harm” to U.S. foreign policy and national security. The group says rebuilding the diplomatic corps will require more than just hiring — it will take a generational investment in talent, training, and trust. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [8/11/2025 3:26 PM, Nasser Karimi and Kareem Chehayeb, 56000K] reports talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency will be “technical” and “complicated,” the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry said Monday ahead of a visit by the nuclear watchdog for the first time since Tehran cut ties with the organization last month. Relations between the two soured after a 12-day air war was waged by Israel and the U.S in June, which saw key Iranian nuclear facilities bombed. The IAEA board said on June 12 Iran had breached its non-proliferation obligations, a day before Israel’s airstrikes over Iran that sparked the war. Later on Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency that Massimo Aparo, the IAEA’s deputy director general and head of safeguards, had left Iran. Aparo met with an Iranian delegation, which included officials from the foreign ministry and the atomic energy organization, to discuss “the method of interaction between the agency and Iran.” Gharibabadi said they decided to continue consultations in the future, without providing further details. The IAEA did not immediately issue a statement about the visit by the agency’s deputy head, which will not include any planned access to Iranian nuclear sites.

Breitbart [8/12/2025 12:33 AM, Staff, 3077K] reports US President Donald Trump on Monday ordered a delay in the reimposition of higher tariffs on Chinese goods, hours before a trade truce between Washington and Beijing was due to expire. The White House’s halt on steeper tariffs will be in place until November 10. "I have just signed an Executive Order that will extend the Tariff Suspension on China for another 90 days," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. The truce on steeper levies had been due to expire Tuesday. While the United States and China slapped escalating tariffs on each other’s products this year, bringing them to prohibitive triple-digit levels and snarling trade, both countries in May agreed to temporarily lower them. As part of their May truce, fresh US tariffs targeting China were reduced to 30 percent and the corresponding level from China was cut to 10 percent. Those rates will now hold until November — or whenever a deal is cut before then. Around the same time that Trump confirmed the new extension, Chinese state media Xinhua news agency published a joint statement from US-China talks in Stockholm saying it would also extend its side of the truce. China will continue suspending its earlier tariff hike for 90 days starting August 12 while retaining a 10-percent duty, the report said. It would also "take or maintain necessary measures to suspend or remove non-tariff countermeasures against the United States, as agreed in the Geneva joint declaration," Xinhua reported. In the executive order posted Monday to its website, the White House reiterated its position that there are "large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits" and they "constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.” The order acknowledged Washington’s ongoing discussions with Beijing "to address the lack of trade reciprocity in our economic relationship" and noted that China has continued to "take significant steps toward remedying" the US complaints. "Beijing will be happy to keep the US-China negotiation going, but it is unlikely to make concessions," warned William Yang, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. He believes China sees its leverage over rare earth exports as a strong one, and that Beijing will likely use it to pressure Washington. US-China Business Council president Sean Stein said the current extension is "critical to give the two governments time to negotiate an agreement" providing much-needed certainty for companies to make plans. A trade deal, in turn, would "pave the way for a Trump-Xi summit this fall," said Asia Society Policy Institute senior vice president Wendy Cutler.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [8/12/2025 5:16 AM, Trevor Hunnicutt, Andrea Shalal, and Joe Cash, 51390K]

Breitbart [8/11/2025 8:16 AM, Staff, 3077K] reports U.S. chip makers Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices inked an "unprecedented" deal in which they will pay 15% of their sales to China to the U.S. treasury in exchange for export licenses to ship their advanced H20 and MI308 semiconductors. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has begun issuing licenses to both companies to supply the AI chips to China, sources and officials told the BBC and the Financial Times on Sunday, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump last week. The arrangements came two months after Trump reversed an earlier decision banning Nvidia from exporting its H20 chip to China, with the Santa Clara, Calif., firm moving to cut the deal because the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security had not issued the expected licenses. The deal, which takes to a new level Trump’s tactic of using trade restrictions to pressure multinationals to invest in the United States or shift manufacturing there, has attracted criticism from security experts who called the H20, in particular, a "potent accelerator" of Chinese AI that would help its military and erode the United States’ lead in the technology.

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