Armed military personnel patrol the streets of Washington. What the media is writing
The military patrolling Washington on the orders of US President Donald Trump began carrying firearms, while the city began to be more severely judged for minor offenses. The head of the White House threatened to send troops to Baltimore and Chicago, where the Democrats hold power. What the media write about Trump's methods of fighting crime is in the Izvestia digest.
Reuters: Washington military will be given rifles and pistols
U.S. National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets of Washington as part of President Donald Trump's anti-crime campaign have been carrying guns since the evening of August 24. The exact number of military personnel who will carry weapons is still unknown, but according to officials, they will carry either M17 pistols or M4 rifles.
Reuters
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week allowed the fighters to carry weapons. The Guard's Joint Task Force said in a written statement on Sunday that its personnel would use force only "as a last resort and exclusively in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury."
Some Republican governors have sent hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington at Trump's request. The President said that the capital was gripped by a crime wave, although official data indicate a decrease in the crime rate in the city. On Sunday, Trump said there was no more crime in the city, and attributed this to the deployment of troops and hundreds of federal law enforcement officers.
The New York Times: In Washington, arrests for minor violations are turning into federal cases
While Trump posed for photos with military personnel in Washington last week, lawyers across the city in federal court were fighting his new version of justice. The flood of defendants illustrated new ways to enforce the law in the capital. They were brought before a judge on charges that would normally have been dealt with in local courts if they had been brought at all.
The New York Times
One man was arrested for opening a bottle of alcohol. Another was charged with threatening the president after he made a scandal while drunk after being arrested for vandalism. The prosecutors were so alarmed by the case of one of the accused about weapons that they intend to close it.
The charges were brought in accordance with a directive from Federal Prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, who instructed prosecutors to bring charges in the most serious form in each case and to do so in federal court, where sentences are usually much longer.
CNN: Trump's aspirations will lead to tension and litigation
A new confrontation is brewing in America because of Trump's zeal to impose presidential power in large cities run by Democrats. His rhetoric that crime is out of control is often misleading. It can provoke serious tensions between the federal Government and the states due to the limitations of its constitutional and legal powers.
CNN
"We must continue to support local law enforcement agencies, and not just allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his efforts to create a crisis and a distraction because he is extremely unpopular," said House Democratic Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries.
Trump's critics claim that his deployment of National Guard forces in the U.S. capital and Los Angeles in response to demonstrations this year against his immigration policies is a prototype for larger-scale national repression operations. However, the president has fewer legal options to send federal troops into cities and dictate the policy of law enforcement agencies in the states than in Washington, which is a federal district.
The Washington Post: Trump threatens to send troops to Baltimore after criticizing the governor
Trump threatened to send troops to Baltimore after he and Maryland's Democratic governor, Wes Moore, exchanged criticism on social media about the president's characterization of crime in the city and his deployment of the National Guard in Washington. Trump said Baltimore was "out of control" and "gripped by crime," in response to Moore's invitation to join city officials to walk the streets and discuss public safety issues in September.
The Washington Post
Trump said Moore needs to "deal with this criminal disaster" before he agrees to join the governor on a walk around Baltimore. Trump hinted at his decision this summer to send Guard soldiers to Los Angeles and the District of Columbia, saying that if Moore needed help securing Baltimore, "I will send troops there."
Trump also threatened to review federal funding for the restoration of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, an iconic and important transportation artery that collapsed last year after a cargo ship lost power and crashed into a support column. Trump and Moore also exchanged personal insults. The president raised the scandal that plagued Moore last year when it became known that he had falsely claimed to have received a Bronze Star in a White House scholarship application.
NBC News: Chicago mayor criticized Trump for intending to send troops
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has defied Trump's threat to send the National Guard to the city to fight crime and is exploring legal ways to prevent soldiers from being captured. On Friday, Trump spoke about the deployment of troops in Washington and said that Chicago and New York would be the next cities. He called the deployment in the country's capital an attempt to combat crime, but critics consider this step nothing more than a political overstrain.
NBC News
"Security is not needed,— Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in an interview. — This is not the task of our military. The brave men and women who dedicated themselves to serving our country did not sign up to take over American cities." Johnson also noted a decrease in the number of murders, shootings and carjackings in the city.
Chicago Police crime data released earlier this month shows that homicides have decreased by 31% compared to the same period last year, shootings by 36%, and carjackings by 26%. Johnson wondered why Trump had cut federal investments in violence prevention and slashed the budget for food and medical assistance programs if he wanted to reduce violence in major cities.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
