Events over the Weekend

Today I am going to address a few topics that came up over the weekend. First, I will update developments regarding the federal intervention in the District of Columbia. I made a late update to my post on Friday that dealt with the attempt by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump to appoint a new head of the Metropolitan Police Department. As I had discussed in that post, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwab had sued Trump in order to stop that effort. After the judge in the case showed strong skepticism of the federal government's actions, Department of Justice lawyers asked for time to modify the directive that had been issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Subsequently, Bondi rescinded her initial directive and provided a replacement. The new directive did not include a change of MPD leadership but, instead, concentrated on the MPD providing assistance with immigration arrests and removing the unhoused population from tent encampments. Not surprisingly, therefore, that over the weekend, federal activities heavily concentrated on immigration arrests and tent clearing.

One point that I made in Friday's post that was reinforced with additional evidence over the weekend was that the federal actions are, despite Trump and Bondi's claims to the contrary, not aimed at reducing crime in the District. The published arrest numbers have been surprisingly low with the majority being immigration arrests. As an interactive map published by the Washington Post shows, federal personnel have almost completely avoided D.C.'s highest-crime neighborhoods. Instead, federal deployments have concentrated on areas frequented by tourists but which have almost no crime, especially violent crime, and areas that have popular dining and nightlife attractions, but which also are not high crime areas. Again, the federal efforts seem to be primarily aimed at arresting immigrants and removing the unhoused.

Over the weekend, the governors of three conservative states — West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina — announced that they will provide National Guard troops to the federal operation in D.C. In addition, there was an announcement that National Guard troops will begin carrying weapons in the District. There are some fairly complex legal issues relevant to this deployment that may become important. My understanding, which is a layman's at best, is that the District's National Guard is deployed under what is called Title 32 status. This exempts the Guard from the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from being used for domestic law enforcement purposes. However, it is not clear that the same will be true for National Guard forces from the three states that have announced deployments. Once again, Attorney General Schwab may be heading to federal court.

Anecdotally, it feels like D.C. is shutting down due to the federal intervention. August is always a dead time in D.C. as many people leave town for the beach, mountains, or almost anywhere else. But the past few days have been especially quiet. When I have been out, traffic has been almost completely nonexistent. Restaurants are reporting a 25% drop in diners since the federal deployment. We have near-constant helicopters overhead that I believe are part of federal activities. The amount of money being spent on something that is little more than a public relations exercise with a few dozen immigrants being arrested and some tent encampments being cleared must be immense. Nothing about Trump's actions in D.C. makes sense.

Along those lines, I will continue to stress as much as possible that Trump is suffering from cognitive impairment. Cognitively impaired individuals make bad decisions, and due to the disappointing reality that Trump is not only President but believes himself to be a dictator, his bad decisions have a larger impact than they might otherwise. One example of Trump's bad decisions is the power that he has given Laura Loomer, an all-around terrible person who has described herself as "a proud Islamophobe". Loomer's treatment of Muslim rideshare drivers was so bad that Uber actually banned her from its service. On X, she relentlessly attacks Muslims and Arabs as terrorists, pedophiles, and criminals. In one recent tweet, she wrote "Barack Hussein Obama’s Muslim brother is attacking me online for exposing GAZANS coming into our country. The Muslim invasion of America began with Barack Hussein." At one point during the campaign, Loomer and Trump were seen together so often that Bill Maher publicly suggested that they were having a sexual relationship (a remark for which Loomer is now suing Maher). Now that Trump is President again, Loomer has been granted tremendous influence within the administration. A figure as powerful as the then-director of the National Security Agency, General Tim Haugh, was removed after Loomer met with administration officials in the Oval Office to complain about him. There is a long list of now-former administration officials who were "Loomered", as Loomer proudly describes her ability to get people fired.

Loomer's latest travesty involved injured children from Gaza who were being provided medical care in the United States. A non-profit organization, HEAL Palestine, has been arranging the evacuation of injured individuals from Gaza so that they may seek medical care abroad. A small number of children have been provided with U.S. visas so that they can receive care here. When Loomer saw a video of a Palestinian child, who is an amputee, being welcomed at an airport in San Francisco, she launched a full-scale attack on everyone involved. On X, Loomer described the injured children as "Islamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone" and demanded that Department of State officials responsible for the visas be identified and punished. Andrew Miller, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State who dealt with similar cases during the Biden Administration, noted on X that all of these children would have had Israel's approval to leave Gaza and would have been vetted through U.S. databases. He wrote that "This is rank ethnic/religious prejudice. Denying sick people critical medical care is cowardly & depraved."

Loomer was able to obtain a telephone call with Marco Rubio, the putative Secretary of State who devotes most of his efforts to deporting students. After speaking to Loomer, Rubio cancelled all visas for people from Gaza. Consider that on Friday, Rubio was involved in Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and today will be involved in meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several European leaders. In the middle of this, Rubio accepted a call from a crazy bigot and agreed to prevent Palestinian children — more than likely injured by U.S.-supplied weapons — from receiving desperately needed medical attention in the U.S. This is lunacy.

Another insane-sounding event took place over the weekend. On Friday, Las Vegas police announced that eight child sex predators were arrested during an undercover operation. Among those arrested was an individual named Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, who, like the others, was charged with a felony offense of Luring a Child with Computer for Sex. Alexandrovich is the Executive Director of the Defense Division of Israel's National Cyber Directorate. He was in Las Vegas to attend an annual cybersecurity conference. The National Cyber Directorate is an Israeli government agency that operates under the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Inexplicably, Alexandrovich was released from custody and allowed to return to Israel. In Israel, Netanyahu's office lied about what had occurred in Las Vegas, denying the arrest. However, Alexandrovich has been placed on leave. There was no public explanation for why Alexandrovich was released and allowed to leave the country. However, one report says that the release occurred after the Trump administration intervened at Israel's request. If so, this is the second recent example of the Trump administration coddling child sex predators. The Trump administration recently arranged the transfer of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp where she is apparently eligible for work-release. The Trump administration is increasingly becoming pro-child sex exploitation.