During a Wednesday photo op, protesters booed Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as they met with National Guard troops in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station.
The protesters shouted “Free DC!” as the men tried to speak to cameras, with Vance boasting, “A lot has changed in the past seven days,” or since President Trump ordered a flood of troops and federal agents into the city after citing false and exaggerated crime statistics. “You guys are doing a hell of a job. I'm proud of you and we're grateful,” Vance told the soldiers as the protests continued.
“We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies who all need to go home and take a nap because they’re over 90 years old,” Miller told the cameras while standing beside Hegseth and Vance at a Shake Shack. He also called the demonstrators “crazy communists” and claimed—without evidence, and despite scenes like this in the Columbia Heights neighborhood on Tuesday—they have “no roots” in Washington, which Miller said is “one of the most violent cities on planet Earth.” And: “By the way,” he added, “most of the citizens who live in D.C. are Black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens for generations.”
Update: 61% of DC residents say they feel less safe with Trump’s military occupation and federal takeover of the nation’s capital, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll. 79% of DC residents surveyed say they oppose Trump’s takeover, while only 17% say they support it.
There are better ways to improve things, residents suggested. Those include “increased economic opportunities in poor neighborhoods (with 77% support), stricter national gun laws (70%), an increased number of Metropolitan Police officers patrolling communities (63%) and using outreach workers to resolve disputes (57%),” CNN reports off the new poll.
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Panning out, Trump’s DC takeover “Looks a Lot Like an Immigration Raid,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. “In practice, the most visible impact of Trump’s federal takeover has been the immigration-enforcement effort in [select neighborhoods] including Mount Pleasant,” as illustrated in this video taken Friday and posted online by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We're taking America back, baby,” one of the masked men said as his crew tore down an anti-ICE banner. (His remark arguably begs the questions “back” from whom, and who is “we”?)
Trump’s federal agents “have pulled delivery drivers off mopeds, arrested construction workers and demanded proof of legal status from vendors selling mangos and watermelons,” the Journal reports. “Vehicle checkpoints have sprung up nightly, and ICE vans have parked outside daycare centers and churches that tend to employ immigrants.”
Notable: “Of the 465 total arrests from the start of operations in the District of Columbia through Tuesday, roughly 44%, or 206, have been arrests of immigrants in the country illegally, according to a White House official.” Read more (gift link), here.
Nationwide: “Deportations Reach New High After Summer Surge in Immigration Arrests,” the New York Times reported Wednesday with a slew of updated government-provided data.
Background: “In late May, Stephen Miller…ordered ICE leaders to escalate arrests across the board, even if it meant broadening its focus beyond immigrants with a criminal record. Since then, almost all of the increase in arrests has been of people without any prior criminal convictions.”
In new podcast discussions, The Atlantic’s David Frum spoke with immigration reporter Caitlin Dickerson to unpack for listeners “How ICE Became Trump’s Secret Army.”
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Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1968, James Anderson Jr. posthumously received the first Medal of Honor awarded to an African American Marine. He had perished as a 20-year-old private first class when a grenade landed near him and his fellow Marines. “Unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, he reached out, grasped the grenade, pulled it to his chest and curled around it as it went off,” his citation reads.
Around the Defense Department
A new attack drone team is defining UAV warfare for the Marines. In January, the Marine Corps stood up a 12-person Attack Drone Team to be its point outfit for developing tactics, techniques and procedures for the armed first-person viewer drones that are increasingly fielded to its infantry units. Defense One’s Meghann Myers talked with the commander of Weapons Training Battalion, the team’s parent unit. Read her report, here.
Meanwhile, the Air Force is asking companies to build ‘exact replicas’ of the Shahed-136 drone to help develop defenses against the Iranian-designed, Russian-built weapon, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports.
And the Navy? Here’s a Wednesday headline from Reuters: “The US Navy is building a drone fleet to take on China. It's not going well.”
Pentagon reductions set back critical AI-data platform. After users flocked to Advana, DOD’s AI office laid out a plan to keep it growing. Then came DOGE. “You tell this organization to do ‘A.’ Then you cut contracted staff by 80 percent and you have a turnover of close to what, 60 percent? Things are going to break. Things are going to get delayed. We’re in both places,” said one defense official who asked for anonymity to speak freely. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker explains what Advana is, why more than 70,000 defense employees were using it, and how badly needed improvements to keep it working have been brought to a halt.
A naval aviator has been rescued off the Virginia coast after their F/A-18E jet went down Wednesday morning, the Navy said in a press release.
Russia’s war on Ukraine
Russia launched more than 600 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight in what the Associated Press reports was “one of its biggest aerial attacks on Ukraine of the year.”
At least one person was killed in western Lviv and three others were injured when the attacks struck more than two dozen residential buildings, a kindergarten and administrative buildings, Ukrainian officials said. “A U.S. electronics plant near the Hungarian border was also struck,” AP reports, describing it as “one of the biggest American investments in Ukraine.”
“Several cruise missiles were lobbed against an American-owned enterprise in Zakarpattia,” President Volodymir Zelenskyy noted on social media Thursday. “It was a regular civilian business, supported by American investment, producing everyday items like coffee machines. And yet, it was also a target for the Russians.”
“The Russians carried out this attack as if nothing has changed at all, as if there are no global efforts to stop this war,” Zelenskyy said, and emphasized despite Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, “There is still no signal from Moscow that they truly intend to engage in substantive negotiations and end this war.”
NATO diplomats are newly worried because, as one said, it appears “The U.S. is not fully committed to anything,” Politico reported Wednesday after talks between U.S. European allies this week regarding a potential post-war Ukraine. The talks involved Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy, and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine. “The main takeaway is [a peace deal is] is not moving very quickly,” one European official told Politico.
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