The increased presence of local and federal law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. has intensified in the days following President Donald Trump’s unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the city’s police department for at least a month. Troops are expected to start more missions in Washington on Thursday.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to London on Thursday in a show of support for Ukraine as Trump prepares for his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Both Zelenskyy and the Europeans have worried that the bilateral summit would leave them and their interests sidelined.
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GOP climate change denial continues amid soaring heat and fires
Trump has called climate change a hoax — rhetoric echoed by many in the GOP — and his administration has worked to dismantle and defund federal climate science and data collection, with little to no pushback from Republicans in Congress.
He’s proposed to revoke the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — the central basis for U.S. climate change action. He’s declared a national energy emergency to expedite fossil fuel development, canceled grants for renewable energy projects and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels.
The Associated Press reached out to more than half a dozen Republicans who criticized Canada but none returned phone calls or emails.
Republicans demand Canadian action on wildfires — but not on climate change
Republican lawmakers are blaming Canada for not preventing and containing the wildfires whose smoke has fouled the air in their states.
In letters expressing outrage and indignation, they’re demanding more forest thinning, prescribed burns and other measures. They say the smoke is hurting U.S.-Canadian relations and warn that the U.S. could make it an issue in tariff talks.
What they don’t mention is climate change, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels like coal and gas. Scientists say that’s a glaring omission that also ignores the U.S. contribution to heat-trapping gases that help set the stage for more intense wildfires.
“If anything, Canada should be blaming the U.S. for their increased fires,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Maine clinics want their Medicaid funding
A network of clinics that provides health care to thousands of people across Maine is expected to ask a judge Thursday afternoon to restore its Medicaid funding as the Trump administration seeks to keep federal money from going to abortion providers.
Trump’s “ big beautiful bill ” blocked Medicaid money from flowing to Planned Parenthood and also stopped funding for Maine Family Planning, a much smaller provider that offers health care services in poor rural areas.
Anne Marie Costello, deputy director for the Center for Medicaid & CHIP Services, called the lawsuit “legally groundless.”
“The core of its claim asks this Court to revive an invented constitutional right to abortion — jurisprudence that the Supreme Court decisively interred — and to do so in a dispute over federal funds,” Costello said in court documents.
▶ Read more on the Medicaid funding dispute
National Guard sets up outside Washington’s Union Station
At least two groups of Guard members were standing near Humvees outside the city’s main train station as taxis and other vehicles drove by. They also stood near a tent with an anti-Trump sign hanging from it.
The White House said Wednesday the number of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital would ramp up and federal officers would be on the streets around the clock after Trump announced his administration would take over the city’s police department for at least a month.
The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell modestly last week
Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 9 fell by 3,000 to 224,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday, below the 230,000 new applications that economists had forecast.
These applications are seen as a proxy for U.S. layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy in the spring of 2020.
Thursday’s report showed that the four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, ticked up by 750 to 221,750. The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 2 fell by 15,000 to 1.96 million.
Inflation surges as Trump’s import taxes push costs higher
The Labor Department reported Thursday that its producer price index — which measures wholesale inflation before it hits consumers — was up 0.9% last month from June and 3,3% from a year earlier.
The numbers were much higher than forecasters had expected.
The wholesale inflation report two days after the Labor Department reported that consumer prices rose 2.7% last month from July 2024, same as the previous month and up from a post-pandemic low of 2.3% in April. Core consumer prices rose 3.1%, up from 2.9% in June. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The new numbers suggest that slowing rent increases and cheaper gas are at least partly offsetting the impacts of Trump’s tariffs. Many businesses are also likely still absorbing much of the cost of the duties instead of passing them along to customers via higher prices.
There’s confusion over who controls Washington police
The White House says Attorney General Pam Bondi is effectively in charge of the police department in Washington, D.C. But the city’s police force already has a Pam at the helm — Chief Pamela Smith — and she says she only reports to the mayor.
D.C. and federal officials say they are working together, but the unusual arrangement is raising questions about who gets to make decisions about police resources, personnel and policy.
Trial over California National Guard deployment concludes
The judge has yet to rule after a three-day trial over whether the administration broke the law by sending Guard troops to accompany immigration agents on raids in Southern California.
The state argued that the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits military enforcement of domestic laws. Lawyers for the administration said the law does not apply because Trump called up the Guard under an authority that allows separate authority.
What to know about the US-Russia summit in Alaska
It’s happening where East meets West, in a place familiar to both countries as a Cold War front line of missile defense, radar outposts and intelligence gathering.
Whether it can lead peace in Ukraine after more than 3 1/2 years of war remains to be seen.
It takes place Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning. It played a key role in the Cold War in monitoring and deterring the Soviet Union.
It’s Putin’s first U.S. trip since 2015, for the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Because the U.S. isn’t a member of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for Putin on war crimes accusations, it’s under no obligation to arrest him.
▶ Read more on things to know about the meeting between Trump and Putin
— Dasha Litvinova and Michelle L. Price
Guard troops expected to ramp up DC missions Thursday
National Guard officials say they expect troops to start doing more missions as orders and plans are being developed and more troops stage at the Guard's armory.
Neither Army nor District of Columbia National Guard officials have been able to describe the training backgrounds of the troops who have reported for duty so far.
While some Guard members are military police, and thus better suited to a law-enforcement mission, others likely hold jobs that would have offered little training in dealing with civilians or law enforcement.
Federal agents will patrol the streets 24/7 in Washington, White House says
Officials said the number of National Guard troops will ramp up and federal officers will be out around the clock after the president made the unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the police department for at least a month.
Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is walking a political tightrope. She has called the takeover an “authoritarian push” but also framed the infusion of officers as a boost to public safety.
Hundreds of federal law enforcement and city police officers who patrolled Tuesday night made 43 arrests, compared with about two dozen the night before. Councilmember Christina Henderson downplayed these as “a bunch of traffic stops” and said the administration is seeking to disguise how unnecessary the intervention is.
“I’m looking at this list of arrests, and they sound like a normal Saturday night in any big city,” Henderson said.
▶ Read more about the intervention
