Some of the 800 National Guard members deployed by the Trump administration began arriving as police and federal officials took the first steps in an uneasy partnership to reduce crime in what President Donald Trump called – without substantiation – a lawless city.
The influx on Tuesday came the morning after the Republican president announced he would be activating the guard members and taking over the District’s police department. He cited a crime emergency – but referred to the same crime that city officials stress is already falling noticeably. The president holds the legal right to make such moves, at least for a month.
Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged to work alongside the federal officials Trump has tasked with overseeing the city’s law enforcement, while insisting the police chief remained in charge of the department and its officers.
“How we got here or what we think about the circumstances – right now we have more police, and we want to make sure we use them,” she told reporters.
The tone was a shift from the day before, when Bowser said Trump’s plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and call in the National Guard was not a productive step and argued his perceived state of emergency simply doesn’t match the declining crime numbers.
Still, the law gives the federal government more sway over the capital city than in US states, and Bowser said her administration’s ability to push back is limited.
Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media that the meeting was productive.
The law allows Trump to take over the DC police for up to 30 days, though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested it could last longer as they “reevaluate and reassess” following the monthlong period. Extending federal control past that time would require Congressional approval, something likely tough to achieve in the face of Democratic resistance.
About 850 federal law enforcement officers were deployed in Washington on Monday and arrested 23 people overnight, Leavitt said. The charges, she said, included gun and drug crimes, drunk driving, subway fare evasion and homicide.
The US Park Police has also removed 70 homeless encampments. People who were living in them can leave, go to a homeless shelter or go into drug addiction treatment, Leavitt said. Those who refuse could face fines or jail time.
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, said Trump has accused Democrats of being “weak on crime”.
“He singled out Democrat-run cities like Oakland – which is outside San Francisco – New York, Baltimore, even Chicago,” she said. “Given the fact they’re run by Democrats … this is causing a little bit of concern.”
Democrats are calling the move “a power grab”.
“Even though they’re saying this is technically legal, it is a hostile takeover given that these powers have actually never been executed in modern history,” Halkett said.
Trump’s bumpy relationship with DC
While Trump invokes his plan by saying that “we’re going to take our capital back”, Bowser and the MPD maintain that violent crime overall in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low after a sharp rise in 2023.
Carjackings, for example, dropped about 50 percent in 2024 and are down again this year. More than half of those arrested, however, are juveniles, and the extent of those punishments is a point of contention for the Trump administration.
“The White House says crime may be down, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem and that violent crime exists at levels that are far too high,” Halkett said.
Bowser, a Democrat, spent much of Trump’s first term in office openly sparring with the Republican president. She fended off his initial plans for a military parade through the streets and stood in public opposition when he called in a multi-agency flood of federal law enforcement to confront anti-police brutality protesters in the summer of 2020.
She later had the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in giant yellow letters on the street about a block from the White House.
In Trump’s second term, backed by Republican control of both houses of Congress, Bowser has walked a public tightrope for months, emphasising common ground with the Trump administration on issues such as the successful effort to bring the National Football League’s (NFL’s) Washington Commanders back to the District of Columbia.
She watched with open concern for the city streets as Trump finally got his military parade this summer. Her decision to dismantle Black Lives Matter Plaza earlier this year served as a neat metaphor for just how much the power dynamics between the two executives had evolved.
Now that fraught relationship enters uncharted territory as Trump has followed through on months of what many DC officials had quietly hoped were empty threats. The new standoff has cast Bowser in a sympathetic light, even among her longtime critics.
The top diplomats from Russia and the United States have held a phone call ahead of a planned meeting this week between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin
In a post on Telegram on Tuesday, the ministry said Sergey Lavrov said the two sides had reaffirmed their intention to hold successful talks. In a statement, US Department of State also “both sides confirmed their commitment to ensure a successful event”.
Speaking shortly after the announcement, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt revealed that Trump would meet with Putin in the city of Anchorage. She said the pair would discuss ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“On Friday morning, Trump will travel across the country to Anchorage, Alaska for a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Leavitt told reporters.
She added that Trump “is determined to try and end this war and stop the killing”.
On Monday, Trump told reporters he was “going to see” what Putin “has in mind” when it comes to a deal to end the fighting.
Trump also said he and Putin would discuss “land swapping”, indicating he may support an agreement that sees Russia maintain control of at least some of the Ukrainian territory it occupies.
Kyiv has repeatedly said that any deal that would see it cede occupied land – including Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – to Russia would be a non-starter.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30 percent of the Donetsk region that Ukraine controls as part of a ceasefire deal, saying the position had been conveyed to him by a US official.
He reiterated Ukraine would not withdraw from the territories it controls, noting that such a move would go against the country’s constitution and would serve only as a springboard for a future Russian invasion.
Moscow has maintained that any deal must require Ukraine to relinquish some of the territories Russia has seized since 2014. He has also called for a pause to Western aid for Ukraine and an end to Kyiv’s efforts to join the NATO military alliance.
Friday’s planned meeting will be the first time Putin has been in the US since 2015, when he attended the UN General Assembly.
On July 2, Khaled Azem was pulled from his car at a checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank, he tells Al Jazeera.
Israeli soldiers beat and humiliated him, forcing him to say: “I love Israel”, while filming him on his phone, then posting it to his social media.
Azem, 25, and his brother-in-law had just left the Azem home in Sebastia, a village to the northwest of Nablus, to work on a construction site.
That’s when he fell victim to one of the increasing attacks that villagers say are part of Israel’s plan to drive Palestinians out.
Israel has been eyeing Sebastia’s significant archaeological site, which dates back to the Iron Age, since 2023, wanting to turn the area into a national park and tourism hub.
The baby of the family
On a hot afternoon in late July, Azem is sitting on his front porch, framed by his mother and grandmother. He smiles shyly and, at one point, puts his arms around both of the women.
He’s the baby of the family, the youngest of four siblings, and he and the two women share sloped hazel eyes. They also share the same anxieties over Israel’s increasingly violent military presence in and around their town.
“I used to go out often with my family,” Azem told Al Jazeera. “But now, due to the occupation forces, I hardly go out at all.”
The family has lived in this yellow-plastered house for 40 years – longer than Azem has been alive. Before the violence escalated, his days were quiet and calm.
He worked as a builder in Tel Aviv and enjoyed going into town in the evening to meet friends. Sometimes, he’d walk alone to the ruins overlooking the dry hills around Sebastia, past the ancient Roman columns and stone amphitheatre, enjoying the peaceful solitude and beautiful landscape.
That peace has now disappeared.
First came the job losses. Israel revoked nearly all border permits for Palestinians after October 7, 2023, and barred Palestinian workers from the construction industry.
Unemployment soared over 30 percent, leaving Azem and his two brothers without regular work, and the family now relying solely on the income of Azem’s father, Wael, a taxi driver.
Then came the Israeli military incursions, which ramped up since late 2023, with soldiers now storming through the village nearly every night. One evening, on January 19, an Israeli army sniper shot and killed a 14-year-old child, Ahmad Rashid Rushdi Jazar, near Sebastia’s kindergarten.
Now, many families, including Azem’s, no longer venture outside their homes, especially in the evenings.
‘A message for Sebastia’
Azem recalls his attack as he drove to a construction gig before dawn with his brother-in-law.
Three Israeli soldiers stopped his car at a checkpoint in the adjoining town of Deir Sharaf. The Israelis demanded their names and identity cards and began to interrogate them, asking what they were doing and where they were from.
Azem told them he was from Sebastia, at which point the soldiers made him get out of the car and kicked his legs out from under him, forcing him to his knees.
Azem says the soldiers tried to frame him as an armed fighter, yelling questions at him like: “Why are you attacking us with Molotov cocktails?” The questions didn’t make sense to Azem, who says he has never engaged in violence.
He told them he doesn’t do much of anything, except occasionally look for work.
Azem repeated that he was only on his way to work and told them he didn’t know anything. He says the soldiers then pushed him face-first into the ground, and one of them stepped on his head and asked: “Do you love Iran?”
Azem said no, that he wasn’t political and that he doesn’t support Iran.
For the next 40 minutes, as his brother-in-law sat in the car, the soldiers kicked and beat Azem with their weapons as he lay on the ground. One soldier sat on his legs to ensure he couldn’t escape. Then they demanded his phone.
The soldiers filmed a video in which they commanded Azem to repeat after them, in Hebrew: “I love Israel” and “I will do everything they ask of me”.
Azem still has the video the soldiers shot on his phone. Filmed above the muzzle of a gun, Azem’s worried face is turned towards the lens, repeating the Hebrew words one by one as he lies on his belly.
The soldiers then uploaded the video to Azem’s Facebook account. They waited 15 to 20 minutes to ensure that some of Azem’s friends and family saw the video before giving back the phone.
As Azem recounts the story, his voice is strong and clear, but he anxiously bounces his heels on the floor.
When the soldiers finally let him go, his brother-in-law had to turn around and drive home. Azem, too injured to work, spent the rest of the day trying to sleep and heal.
Humiliated by the video and afraid that he will be attacked again, Azem no longer leaves his house. When friends call and invite him out, he declines.
“I am extremely embarrassed,” Azem says. “The video mocks us, the people of Palestine.”
Though he took the video down quickly, others saw it, including Sebastia’s Mayor Mohammed Azem (no relation), who saved a copy as evidence of the soldiers’ mistreatment.
“If I leave home again … I don’t want to think what they could do to me next time,” Azem says.
Maha, Azem’s mother, speaks up: “When the Israeli soldier learned he was from Sebastia, they wanted to make this video to send a message to all of Sebastia, to say: ‘I’m here, and I control your village, and I do what I want to do here.’”
“If he hadn’t said [what they commanded him to say], they could have hurt him worse, or killed him,” she adds.
Humiliation by design
Israel has been accused of deliberately and systematically humiliating Palestinians, particularly civilians detained in Gaza. There, human rights organisations say soldiers have forced men to strip while being filmed. Israel has also been accused of using sexual assault, rape, and the threat of rape as a way of humiliating prisoners.
In the West Bank, soldiers near Hebron have allegedly drawn the Star of David on a Palestinian child’s book and branded the symbol on a man’s face in occupied East Jerusalem.
“Israel employs a systematic strategy of humiliation to psychologically impact and break down Palestinian individuals and communities,” writes Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Swiss nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, comparing such acts of humiliation to those witnessed during World War II’s Kristallnacht.
Israel has purportedly set its sights on Sebastia because it’s an important archaeological site believed to be among the oldest continuously inhabited places in the occupied West Bank.
It was an important centre under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Roman rule. Israeli politicians say it was the historical capital of the Biblical Kingdom of Israel, while Christians and Muslims believe it is the burial site of John the Baptist.
In 2012, Palestine applied for Sebastia to become a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site, an application that is still pending.
The town remains under civilian Palestinian control, but the acropolis has been under Israeli control since the 1995 signing of the Oslo Accords. Increasingly, and especially since 2019, Jewish settlers have “attempted to impose a separation between the acropolis of the ancient site of Sebastia … and the village”, according to a report from Emek Shaveh, an Israeli archaeological NGO.
In May 2023, the Israeli government approved a massive $8m plan to turn Sebastia into a tourist hub and national park. Last summer, Israel’s military issued an order to seize 1.3 dunums (1,300 square metres) of land at the summit of the archaeological site.
Since then, Israel has put more checkpoints around Sebastia. And this May, it began excavations there, transporting sacks of soil with ancient artefacts to the nearby illegal settlement, named Shavei Shomron.
Emek Shaveh says taking artefacts and material from Sebastia is considered illegal under international law. Last month, it released a paper addressed to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, stating: “Israel’s attempt to appropriate the acropolis and sever it from the town undermines the historical integrity of the site … and violates the cultural rights of the town residents.”
In response to Emek Shaveh’s objections, the Israeli military confirmed last year that establishing a military facility at the summit of the Sebastia archaeological site would involve frequent military incursions through the Palestinian town below.
In May 2025, a UN report revealed that Israel plans to build a fence and bypass road through Sebastia. The report said this will “not only cut off Palestinians from the site, it will also develop the site to focus exclusively on Jewish history”.
In June, Israel’s Civil Administration also issued a permit for its army to set up a “defence station” at the nearby historical Massoudieh Ottoman train station.
A child from Sebastia points out his favourite roaming grounds in the ancient ruins, so long as there are no Israeli soldiers around [Delaney Nolan/Al Jazeera]
Locals fear the worst
Palestinian residents and leaders fear that Israel’s plans are leading towards the annexation of Sebastia. They see it as similar to moves made in Tulkarem and Jenin, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced by Israeli military raids this year.
Sebastia’s Mayor Azem told Al Jazeera that Israeli military incursions have escalated in recent weeks. While soldiers used to come to the village once a week, over the last three months, they’ve arrived every night, paralysing the villagers’ freedom of movement.
“They even attack the electricity,” he says. “The municipal employees, when they’re working in the street, they attack them.”
There is no presence of Palestinian resistance fighters in Sebastia, and locals don’t have weapons to defend themselves, the mayor says.
Groups of Israeli settlers also regularly visit the Sebastia archaeological site under the protection of Israeli soldiers. This has led to frequent incidents of settler violence against Palestinian residents.
Mayor Azem pointed to an incident in June in which soldiers stormed into a Sebastia home and beat a family, sending a daughter to the hospital.
“They attacked the house of a family who have small daughters,” said Azem. “When they pushed and attacked the girls, the Red Crescent came and took them to the hospital,” because locals can’t use their own cars for transportation to the hospital, for fear of Israeli military violence.
Israeli authorities did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the attacks.
These incursions and the intended bifurcation of the village are happening even though Israel is signatory to the First Protocol of the Hague Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from retaining cultural property in an occupied territory.
On May 13, UNESCO approved funds to prepare a preliminary assessment of Palestine’s application for Sebastia to become a World Heritage site. This gives villagers a glimmer of hope of some limited protection from annexation.
But Mayor Azem believes UNESCO has been slow to move forward partly because it doesn’t want to agitate the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has already put UNESCO participation under review due to so-called “anti-Israel sentiment”.
Meanwhile, back on the porch with Azem and his family, his mother notes that while things were bad before October 7, 2023, “now it’s 10 times worse”.
She says her village no longer holds events after dark – they even worry that weddings that go past dusk will bring violence.
“There are no reasons for attacking us, but they don’t want us to be happy,” Maha says.
A man who opened fire at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) apparently wanted to send a message against the COVID vaccines, according to authorities in the United States.
The update on Tuesday came just days after Patrick Joseph White, 30, attacked the government health facility in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 8.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said that documents found at White’s home “expressed the shooter’s discontent with the COVID-19 vaccinations” and that he wanted to make “the public aware of his discontent with the vaccine”.
Hosey added that White had recently expressed thoughts of suicide, with a neighbour telling local media he had claimed his depression was connected to the vaccine.
According to investigators, White died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the day of the attack. He fired more than 180 shots with a long gun, fatally shooting a police officer at the scene.
Since the shooting, critics have slammed President Donald Trump and his allies for creating an environment that fuels vaccine scepticism and misinformation.
“This tragedy was not random and it compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured,” a union representing CDC employees, AFGE Local 2883, said in a statement on Monday.
It called on the administration to take a “clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation”.
“Their leadership is critical in reinforcing public trust and ensuring that accurate, science-based information prevails,” the union said.
A track record of misinformation
Trump was in the final full year of his first term in 2020, when COVID-19 started to spread in the US. More than 1.2 million Americans died as a result of the pandemic.
But a study from Cornell University in 2021 found that nearly 38 percent of the “misinformation conversation” surrounding COVID-19 involved Trump.
At the time, one of the study’s authors told The New York Times that the president was the “single largest driver of misinformation” about COVID-19.
Trump repeatedly promoted unproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine as alternatives to vaccination during the pandemic. He also downplayed the pandemic’s risks, saying in February 2020: “I think it’s going to work out fine.”
Since January, in the opening months of his second term, critics have accused Trump of continuing to sow doubt in vaccination and medical research.
They point to his nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic, as leader of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the CDC.
Recently, Kennedy cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research into mRNA vaccines, a medical breakthrough credited with helping to end the COVID pandemic.
Experts say the funding cut will hamper the development of an emerging technology that could be used to combat other pathogens.
But Kennedy suggested the vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu”, a claim not supported by research.
‘A climate of hostility’
On Monday, Kennedy visited the CDC in Atlanta as well as the DeKalb County Police Department.
He later met privately the wife of the police officer killed in the attack, 33-year-old David Rose.
“No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,” Kennedy said in a statement Saturday, adding that federal health officials are “actively supporting CDC staff”.
Investigators said they had recovered five firearms related to the attack, with more than 500 shell casings recovered from the crime scene.
The shooting broke about 150 windows across the CDC campus, with bullets piercing “blast-resistant” windows as workers remained pinned inside.
Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, said Kennedy was responsible for villainising the CDC’s workforce through “his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust”.
“We don’t need thoughts and prayers,” the group wrote on its website. “We need an administration that does not villainize federal workers who are just trying to do their job. We need a Health and Human Services Secretary who does not promote misinformation about science and vaccines.”
The United States Department of Justice has accused George Washington University of deliberate indifference to anti-Semitism, making the Washington, DC-based institution the latest to find itself in the crosshairs of the administration of President Donald Trump.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the Justice Department said the school violated federal civil rights by creating a “hostile educational environment” for Jewish, American-Israeli, and Israeli students and faculty.
“The Division finds that GWU took no meaningful action and was instead deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its Jewish and Israeli students and faculty,” the statement says.
It added that the department will seek “immediate remediation”, though no further details are given.
In a letter to the university, the Justice Department accused GWU of being “deliberately indifferent” to complaints it received from students and faculty, saying they failed to prevent or remedy abuses despite knowing of them.
Dozens of universities may face investigation
The Justice Department notice comes as the Trump administration has intensified pressure on institutions of higher education over allegations that they have allowed anti-Semitism to fester, particularly as pro-Palestinian protests and encampments spread across US university campuses in 2023 and 2024. Critics have accused the administration of using accusations of anti-Semitism as a fig leaf in its war against higher education.
In February, the Justice Department launched a federal task force to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism at 10 university campuses: Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California.
Sixty universities were later warned by the Department of Education that they could face enforcement action against them if they do not take steps to protect Jewish students.
Last, week, the Trump administration suspended $584m in federal grants to UCLA and then requested a $1bn settlement to resolve accusations stemming from the school’s handling of pro-Palestine protests.
