Cam here 👋 bringing you your daily dose of what people are doing – good, bad, and otherwise – in the world of politics. We’re diving into the stories you won’t see anywhere else. And remember, you can also keep up with me over on TikTok and Bluesky.
And if you’re looking for something to watch, check out the recent update on my ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s finances, “The OTHER Epstein Files You've Not Heard About” — and make sure to subscribe to COURIER’s YouTube channel for future updates!
Since day one of Trump’s political career, people have desperately attempted to normalize his absurd abuses of power and blatant corruption – and 10 years later, much of corporate media remains a victim of their own attempts to return to a sense of normalcy.
It’s time to stop sane-washing the insanity.
What Happened
The catalyst for a nation’s leader to send military forces to patrol the Capitol is typically one of three different situations: when there’s civil unrest, when there’s war, or when an autocrat wants to feel powerful.
In Kabul, the Taliban has forces patrolling the streets, arresting barbers for giving haircuts that aren’t in compliance with the government’s authoritarian rules on personal appearance.
In Moscow, the military is patrolling to clamp down on civil unrest and to shoot down attack drones sent by Ukraine.
In Libya, a civil war resulted in two different military branches patrolling the streets of Tripoli, regularly fighting each other at the expense of nearby civilians.
In the US, President Donald Trump is taking over the local police department and deploying the National Guard and the FBI to patrol DC — not because we’re at war, and not because there is any civil unrest, which places us in Scenario #3.
“I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump said Monday. “This is Liberation Day in DC, and we're going to take our capital back."
Trump’s talked about “taking control of DC” since he got back into town, and finally found an excuse to do it: on August 7, a group of teenagers allegedly tried to steal a former DOGE employee’s car. The car wasn’t stolen and local Metro Police arrived on the scene to arrest two 15-year-old, unarmed suspects. The DOGE guy posted a photo of himself after the fact, with no cuts or bruises, but somehow covered in blood that was smeared dramatically around his inexplicably shirtless body.
And that was what the President of the United States posted multiple times on his personal social media platform, Truth Social.
“Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens,” Trump posted. “The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14. The most recent victim was beaten mercilessly by local thugs.”
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Trump used the incident as a rallying cry throughout the weekend, reiterating the need for him to “take Federal control of the City.” On Monday, he took federal control of the Metropolitan Police Department and put the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s new Commissioner, Terry Cole, in charge — even though there were no drugs involved. He deployed the National Guard, ordered FBI agents on night patrol, and instituted a curfew for one neighborhood… and it’s not the neighborhood where the alleged car jacking took place.
No, the curfew isn’t for Logan Circle; it’s for Navy Yard, four miles south. This also happens to be a part of DC where Trump voters live and Trump staffers socialize, making the curfew more about creating a “safe space” for his allies than addressing crime — which, by the way, happens to be at a 30-year low.
Trump’s use of military force on US soil has historically been motivated by what benefits him politically, not the interest of public safety. In 2020, he sent the National Guard to confront people peacefully protesting the murder of George Floyd, but ignored for hours pleas to have them deployed to the Capitol a few months later, when his supporters violently broke into the Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the election results so Trump could remain in office.
More recently, Trump sent military forces to Los Angeles against the wishes of city and state leaders when protestors stood up to ICE agents who descended on the city to conduct raids and abduct immigrants.
And, despite the president’s claim that these efforts to remove the “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” he said DC is overrun with, no ICE agents have been taken into custody, despite their well-documented history of violently overrunning cities, ganging up on people, destroying their personal property, and abducting them.
Attempts to Sanewash
Far-Right Spin
Pirro calls out DC laws letting 'young punks' off the hook for violent crimes
'This is Liberation Day in D.C.': Trump deploying National Guard to streets of nation's capital
‘Texas law forced me to choose: Watch my baby die or flee my home for medical help’
Eighth-generation Texan Megan Bond recounted the stories of her dangerous pregnancies to Bonnie Fuller for COURIER Texas:
I feel bad for anyone who was in the medical office at the time I and my husband learned that our second desperately wanted baby was suffering from the same fatal fetal anomaly, bilateral renal agenesis, as our first baby.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. We had been told that there was only a 1% chance that we could have a second baby with bilateral renal agenesis, a condition in which your baby develops with no kidneys and no lungs so it will suffocate just after birth.
I was 15 weeks pregnant and had just had my anatomy scan. As my husband, Kevin, and I watched the technician, we could see for ourselves on the ultrasound screen that our baby boy, Teddy, had no amniotic fluid around him inside my womb.
We knew that meant that he had no kidneys, like our first baby, Keith, who we had made the very difficult decision to abort, because he was going to die right after birth.
We had learned through this first heartbreaking experience that kidneys are necessary to produce a fetus’s amniotic fluid. Without amniotic fluid, it’s impossible for a baby’s lungs to develop.
Even though we had now seen that Teddy’s little body was not surrounded by amniotic fluid, we were hoping against hope that we were wrong, as we waited in utter silence for the maternal fetal medicine specialist to come in and see us.
Every second waiting was agony.
Then she came in and confirmed the worst possible news—our second precious baby wouldn’t survive.
Time just stood still. My scream was irrepressible. Emotions just took over.
My husband and I hadn’t even told our parents that I was pregnant. But now we couldn’t put it off. We had to call and tell them the news immediately—both that I was pregnant, and that I was losing this new, much longed-for baby.
Read the rest of Megan’s story about the perils of pregnancy in Texas here.
Advertise in this newsletter
Do you or your company want to support COURIER’s mission and showcase your products or services to an aligned audience of 190,000+ subscribers at the same time? Contact advertising@couriernewsroom.com for more information.
Share this post