The Latest: Trump’s emergency order over Washington, DC, is expiring

Congress did not extend President Donald Trump’s Aug. 11 order that federalized the city’s police force and launched a surge of law enforcement into the city. But the National Guard and some other federal agencies will continue their deployment, and it’s not clear when that might end.

Also, this measure of control the city may be regaining comes the same day a House committee begins debating 13 bills that, if approved, would wrest away even more of the city’s governing ability.

Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C.’s policing and Wednesday’s discussions by the House underscore how interlinked the nation’s capital is with the federal government and how much the city’s capacity to govern is beholden to federal decisions.

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She told dozens of Washington residents attending the hearing that safety concerns justify expanding military deployments in cities across the country, following Trump’s surge of federal troops and law enforcement agents into the nation’s capital.

“You know it because in your communities, you know people and you witness it, there’s drive by shootings, there’s drug deals, and the youths of this community are being done wrong, absolutely being done wrong,” the Georgia Republican said, repeating dystopian rhetoric about public safety in the capital and other cities.

“And I, 100%, and some of my colleagues, 100% support the use of the National Guard to clean up the crime and stop the criminals from murdering and raping and stealing and making cities unsafe,” said Greene. “And that’s the reality of where we are today. And so this debate can continue back and forth, but it is ridiculous. Fighting for criminals is a losing argument.”

“This body is full of lap dogs doing exactly what the President wants, when he wants. It’s not pushing back,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat and the youngest member of Congress.

Frost accused his Republican colleagues on the Oversight Committee of hypocrisy as they try to undo home rule in the nation’s capital, contrary to GOP rhetoric about “a party that’s supposed to be about states’ rights and local rule and people the consent of the governed, which is fundamental to our Constitution and this country.”

Frost then called for DC statehood, saying city residents “want to be represented by the government that they pay taxes to.”

Several dozen attendees wearing “FREE DC” shirts and hats clapped and cheered at his remarks.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s non-voting member of Congress, said that several bills being debated on the House Oversight Committee would limit Washington’s ability to govern itself in the limited manner afforded to it by federal law.

“This bill disparages DC and perpetuates the misinformation and disinformation the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have spread about the safety and beauty of DC,” Norton said. “I encourage tourists to continue to visit DC, and businesses and people to continue to move this wonderful city. DC is a world-class city, full stop.”

Comer said the “Make the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful Act” would benefit residents by establishing a commission charged with administering the city. The legislation also would codify Trump’s executive order federalizing the city’s police force and supplant municipal policies.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and congressional Democrats have called for greater autonomy — and voting rights in Congress. But House Republicans say the Constitution provided otherwise.

“There is no other municipality addressed in Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution,” said Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona. He argued that residents should understand and accept the city’s unique constitutional situation. “You chose to live in it,” he said.

“It was clearly recognized that DC was going to have a unique role to play for the entire republic and the citizens of the envisioned capital would enjoy a special access to government to be uniquely represented,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican.

The District of Columbia is a federal district. While Congress delegated much of the city’s day-to-day operational authority to the local government under the Home Rule Act of 1973, Congress reserves the power to reinforce its authority over the city, and federal laws passed by Congress itself govern how interventions by Capitol Hill or the White House are carried out.

This access to lawmakers effectively removed the residents’ need for other forms of representation, Higgins argued. “This is the way the nation’s capital governance was envisioned.”

Oversight Chairman James Comer accused local officials of allowing crime to “flourish” in Washington, D.C. before opening debate on “several pieces of legislation to reinforce President Trump’s efforts to make Washington, D.C. safe again.”

Ranking member Robert Garcia, a Democrat, called it a “blatant power grab” by Republicans who are “hijacking authority” from local leaders and residents.

The Oversight Committee is working a slate of bills related to D.C. that it aims to send to the GOP-led House for votes.

They say the GOP is misleading the public while failing to support law enforcement with more funding in a state budget that the Republican-controlled General Assembly was supposed to approve months ago.

The U.S. Senate campaign of Democrat Roy Cooper points to what it considers his long history fighting crime as governor and attorney general.

Cooper’s likely Senate rival, the former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, tried to link the violence to Cooper’s creation of a task force on solutions to racial bias in the criminal justice system. But Cooper never gave the task force any authority to release state prisoners.

Mayor Vi Lyles posted an open letter on social media late Monday, calling the refugee’s death a “tragic failure by the courts and magistrates.”

“Our police officers arrest people only to have them quickly released, which undermines our ability to protect our community and ensure safety,” Lyles added. “We need a bipartisan solution to address repeat offenders who do not face consequences for their actions and those who cannot get treatment for their mental illness and are allowed to be on the streets.”

Caine told attendees at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington that there are a “number of serious and simultaneous events” including conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and escalating tensions in Asia and the Western hemisphere. With such upheaval in the world, sharing information is even more critical, he said.

“It’s always been a frustration from our allies and partners, and understandably so,” Caine said of the flow of defense information from the U.S. “I think we’re doing a good job at that. We could always do better.”

Caine told the crowd of mostly tech industry insiders that the Pentagon must also improve its relationship with the private sector to make it easier for start-ups and established companies to do business with the government, and to ensure America’s military is equipped with the latest technology.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the U.S. must improve its sharing of intelligence and information with key allies as global tensions rise and America’s adversaries grow more technologically sophisticated.

Caine was speaking at a cybersecurity conference on Wednesday when he said the U.S. and its allies have improved their technical cooperation in the face of threats from China, Russia and Iran.

But technological innovations by adversaries as well as enhanced cyber threats show more must be done, Caine said. Autonomous systems, cyber warfare and artificial intelligence mean information about weapons, tactics and capabilities is more important than ever, he said.

The National Park Service had until July 18 to flag “inappropriate” signs, exhibits and other material, according to a document shared with the AP by the National Parks Conservation Association, which obtained internal information from an anonymous source within the Interior Department. The public was also encouraged to participate.

And the administration said it would remove all “inappropriate” material by Sept. 17, according to The New York Times, citing internal agency documents.

“Pretending that the bad stuff never happened is not going to make it go away,” said Alan Spears, a senior director with the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonpartisan group separate from the national parks system that advocates for it. “We need to be able to talk about these things if we’re going to have any hope of bringing people together.”

▶ Here’s a look at some of the material flagged for review

Does the Everglades National Park represent a slight to development in America? Does mentioning missionaries, who sought to destroy the language and culture of Alaska Natives, cast American history in a negative light? How about the memoir of an enslaved girl for sale in a park’s bookstore?

These are some of dozens of items National Park Service employees flagged as potentially “disparaging” to Americans, according to screenshots shared with The Associated Press.

Trump ordered park employees to flag any public materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” and instead “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”

Sean Duffy also threatened to pull federal funding if his department’s investigation finds security problems in the North Carolina city’s mass transit system.

Duffy and Trump are pointing to last month’s killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a train last month as evidence that cities led by Democrats aren’t doing enough to combat crime.

Duffy blamed her death on the “soft on crime policies” of local leaders and said this continues to put the traveling public at risk. His department said there have been six attacks on transit workers in Charlotte this year, up from just one last year, and higher than the national average.

Two unions representing millions of school employees nationwide are joining a federal court challenge of the Trump administration, saying immigration arrests near schools are terrorizing children and teachers, leading some students to drop out.

A day after he took office, Trump rescinded a Department of Homeland Security memo that urged immigration agents to steer clear of schools and churches.

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association say the move was illegal. The unions are joining an ongoing lawsuit filed by a farmworker union and a group of churches. The amended lawsuit was filed Tuesday in a federal court in Eugene, Oregon.

The U.S. president will speak on Wednesday with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump has not yet made any public comments yet about Poland’s report Wednesday that it shot down Russian drones that violated its airspace.

The ruling Tuesday by a federal judge, which almost certainly will be appealed, is a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to assert more control over the U.S. central bank, which is traditionally independent from day-to-day politics so that it can better achieve its congressionally mandated goals of stable prices and maximum employment.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that Cook’s challenge would likely prevail. A Trump appointee accused Cook of mortgage fraud, saying she simultaneously claimed two properties she bought before joining the Fed were her “primary residences,” which could have resulted in lower down payments and mortgage rates.

But the judge said such allegations don't legally justify her firing, since by law, Fed governors can only be removed “for cause,” which Cobb said was limited to actions taken during a governor’s time in office.

The department’s producer price index — which captures inflation in the supply chain before it hits consumers — showed that wholesale inflation decelerated by 0.1% in August after advancing 0.7% in July. It’s a possible sign that retailers and wholesalers are absorbing the cost of Trump’s sweeping taxes on imports, and it makes it even more likely that the Fed will cut its benchmark interest rate next week for the first time this year.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core producer prices also fell 0.1% from July and were up 2.8% from a year earlier.

The numbers were lower than economists had forecast. Trump’s tariffs were widely expected to send prices higher, but so far their impact has been muted. “The big picture remains that tariff effects are feeding through only slowly,’′ economist Stephen Brown of Capital Economics wrote in a commentary.

A Democratic former school board member who garnered attention for defeating a future cofounder of Moms for Liberty has announced her 2026 bid for the U.S. Senate in Florida.

Jennifer Jenkins unseated Tina Descovich on the Brevard County School Board in 2020 in a county that Trump had carried by nearly 20 points. Now she’s challenging Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, who faces a special election to hold on to her seat after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to succeed Marco Rubio, who was tapped by Trump to become secretary of state.

“Ashley Moody doesn’t know what it’s like to struggle paying for food, housing, health care and day care. But I do,” Jenkins said in a campaign launch video.

The president in a post on his social media network Wednesday morning referred to the suspect in the stabbing death of a Ukrainian woman on a train in Charlotte, N.C. as an “ANIMAL” and said he should be tried quickly “and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.”

“There can be no other option!!!” he wrote.

The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., had served time in prison, been briefly committed for schizophrenia and was arrested earlier this year after repeatedly calling 911 from a hospital. Then a judge released him without bail.

The justices will hear the case in November, a lightning-fast timetable by the court’s typical pace. The tariffs will stay in place in the meantime.

The court agreed to take up an appeal from the Trump administration after lower courts found most of his tariffs illegal. The small businesses and states that challenged the tariffs on goods from almost every country in the world say they have driven businesses nearly to bankruptcy.

Trying to walk a delicate line following Israel’s attack on Hamas officials in Doha, he said he was “not thrilled” about the strike while stopping short of condemning Israel for carrying out an audacious military operation on the soil of another major U.S. ally.

Qatar has played a key role mediating between the U.S. and Iran and its proxies, including during talks with Tehran-backed Hamas as the war with Israel in Gaza grinds on.

▶ Read more about Trump, Qatar and Israel

After House Democrats released a picture of a birthday message, which features the drawing of a curvaceous woman, purportedly signed by Trump for Jeffrey Epstein, Republicans rushed to support the president’s assertions that he had nothing to do with the letter.

Trump on Tuesday said he wouldn’t “comment on something that’s a dead issue.” Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its owner over a report that described such a page in detail.

The meeting between Marco Rubio and South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is set for the White House Wednesday morning.

A total of 475 workers, more than 300 of them South Koreans, were rounded up in the Sept. 4 raid at the battery factory under construction at Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant west of Savannah. Some were shown being shackled with chains around their hands, ankles and waists in video released by U.S. authorities.

Hyun traveled to Washington tasked with bringing them home. South Korean media reported that a charter plane left for the U.S. to bring them back.