August 14, 2025

Thursday, August 14, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

D.C. remains under siege.

Changing her tone, the mayor of Washington condemns Trump’s deployment of the National Guard.

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington on Tuesday night criticized President Trump’s decision to deploy the D.C. National Guard as an “authoritarian push” and an “intrusion on our autonomy.”

Striking a tone far more forceful than earlier in the day, Ms. Bowser made the comments during a town hall on social media in which she answered questions about Mr. Trump’s announced takeover of Washington’s police force. She called on community members to “protect our city, to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule and get to the other side of this guy and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push.”

Earlier Tuesday, after meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Ms. Bowser, a Democrat, adopted a more conciliatory stance, saying that she was focused on “how to make the most of the additional officer support we have” and making sure that the federal force “is being well used, and all in an effort to drive down crime.”

Ms. Bowser pushed back against Mr. Trump’s portrayal of the U.S. capital, saying that his seeing homeless encampments “triggers something in him that has him believing that our very beautiful city is dirty, which it is not.”

“We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks,” she said. “We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story, who we are and what we want for our city.”

On Monday, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington and a former Fox News host, pledged to crack down on “young punks” and other criminals in Washington.

Ms. Bowser urged parents to make sure that their children did not congregate in large groups on the streets.

“This is the type of thing that makes for good TV,” she said. “To be candid, that’s part of the motivation I think — is to get some good TV and arrests in D.C.” (New York Times).

Trump looks to extend DC police takeover beyond 30 days.

President Trump on Wednesday said he’ll seek “long-term extensions” from Congress to extend his federal takeover of the Washington police amid his crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital, declining to rule out the possibility of a national emergency.

“Well, if it’s a national emergency, we can do it without Congress,” Trump said, when asked about whether he’s talked to the House and Senate about extending the takeover. He added that he expects to be before Congress “very quickly” and snag Republican support.

Trump on Monday put the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and activated National Guard troops, painting the district as being ravaged by violent crime.

To do so, he invoked an emergency provision of the Home Rule Act, which lets the president take temporary control of the District’s police in emergency conditions. Congress must pass a joint resolution to extend it beyond 30 days.

Speaking to reporters at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, Trump said he’s aiming to go before Congress with a crime bill that will “pertain initially to D.C.” but serve as a “very positive example” for elsewhere.

“And we’re going to be asking for an extension on that, long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days. Thirty days is, that’s, by the time you do it — we’re going to have this in good shape. … We’re going to do this very quickly, but we’re going to want extensions,” Trump said.

“I don’t want to call a national emergency. If I have to, I will. But I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has hit back at Trump’s move, calling it an “authoritarian push” by the administration. The Democratic Mayors Association called it a “political charade” that doesn’t match up with the actual crime statistics in the District. (The Hill)

Reach out to your elected officials, Democrats as well as Republicans, and ask them to stop Trump. Do this even if you think it won’t help. Let us all be on record for opposing this dictator. News of a tsunami of calls travels fast.

---

Proudly support Josh Turek For Senator from Iowa and kick Joni Ernst out of the Senate!

Watch this video.👇

https://substack.com/@adamparkhomenko/note/c-144776659?r=1dh16&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Donate to Josh Turek for Iowa

Abigail Spanberger, leading in the race for Governor of Virginia, shows the way to create support in unexpected places, if you are a Democrat. 👇

Donate to Spanberger for Virginia

Too close for comfort - Mikie Sherrill is leading but it’s by one point - in the hard race for Governor of New Jersey.

Bio- Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill represents New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District since 2019.

U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Navy helicopter pilot, former federal prosecutor, 3 time Congresswoman, wife, and mother of four kids – Mikie Sherrill is running for governor.

Her opponent is Jack Ciattarelli, a Trump-endorsed candidate who lost to Incumbent Governor Phil Murphy in 2021 by a margin of 3.2 percentage points.

** Words from Mikie ** - “We need to campaign like we're behind — because we may well be.”

Support Mikie Sherrill for Governor of New Jersey.Click on this link.She can win this.

---

We won’t forget about Epstein.

Letters from an American. Heather Cox Richardson. August 12, 2025.

Liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov nailed it this morning when she wrote: “He’s doing everything EXCEPT releasing the Epstein files.” Her comment was in reference to President Donald Trump’s social media post of 7:30 this morning, when he chummed the water by suggesting that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, more commonly known as the Kennedy Center, would soon be called the “TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER.”

He made the comment as he said this year’s Kennedy Center Honors recipients would be announced tomorrow.
Trump has been frantically trying to change the subject away from his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein since July 7, when Attorney General Pam Bondi stirred up fury from Trump’s MAGA base by saying the Department of Justice will not release any more information from the Epstein investigation.

On July 23, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s name is in the Epstein files “multiple times.”
But even Trump’s attack on Washington, D.C., yesterday has not managed to distract attention from the possibility that the president of the United States sexually assaulted children. Epstein’s associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, has been in the news because of the administration’s sudden transfer of her from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

In 2021, Maxwell was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse children and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Allison Gill, who goes by the name Mueller She Wrote on social media and who writes at The Breakdown, reported yesterday on Ghislaine Maxwell’s electronic file from the Bureau of Prisons, to which she got exclusive access. Sex offenders are not eligible to serve their sentences in minimum security prisons, but the file shows that someone waived that status to permit her transfer. Gill’s information also shows that the terms of her custody permit her “to leave the minimum security campus for work assignments; much like Jeffrey Epstein was allowed to leave prison as part of the sweetheart deal he got from Alex Acosta.”

Writing in The Hill today, former deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York James Zirin wrote: “You may ask whether Trump approved the transfer. You can bet on it. This Justice Department doesn’t make a move without Trump’s thumb on the scale.”

Also yesterday, Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York refused to grant the Trump administration’s request that grand jury files from Maxwell’s sex trafficking case be unsealed. As Zirin noted, that request was always a red herring: grand jury minutes do not include evidence or witness statements and are “largely uniformative.”

Judge Engelmayer was even clearer. As Casey Gannon noted at CNN, the judge called out the Department of Justice for misleading the public about what the files would reveal. “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,” he wrote, and pointed out that the material is already almost all public.

Engelmayer continued with an observation about why Bondi might have made the request: “A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” he wrote. (From Heather Cox Richardson, Substack, August 12, 2025.)

One more thing.

---

Just for fun.

Here is another Roundup favorite.

You can watch Venus, not her Barbie, compete as a wildcard in singles and mixed doubles at the U.S.Open which starts on Monday. Venus is 45.

---