Trump’s National Guard in D.C. Given Embarrassing New Task

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to deal with a so-called crime emergency in Washington, D.C.—so why are troops wandering around picking up trash?

A full busload of National Guard servicemembers were spotted collecting garbage across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park on Tuesday.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that servicemembers had also been looped in on landscaping duties, and were tasked with spreading mulch beneath park trees.

“I think it’s nice, as a D.C. resident,” one Guard member told the Post. “But there are different things we could be doing.”

This move comes on the heels of Trump’s announcement last week that he would ask Congress for $2 billion to “beautify” Washington D.C. The process would involve repaving streets, updating lampposts, and upgrading public spaces within a three-mile radius of the Capitol Building. So basically, just the part that Trump has to see on a daily basis.

And they’re already enlisting soldiers and law enforcement officers to help.

The National Guard from the District of Columbia also posted a video on X of servicemembers picking up trash. Officials told NBC Washington that the effort was part of a “beautification and restoration” operation involving more than 40 tasks around the district.

While involving federal forces in trash pick-up is an obvious misuse of resources, it’s probably a better use of time than ramping up arrest numbers to create the illusion of a crackdown on crime in the nation’s capitol. Meandering servicemembers only serve to undermine Trump’s tactic of lying about crime rates to justify law enforcement crackdowns in Democrat-led cities.

Six Republican-led states have mobilized roughly 1,200 additional troops to join the 800 already unleashed on Washington D.C.’s streets, tasked with stopping criminals—though the rate of crime was already down.

But while they’re there, they may as well pick up a broom and start sweeping.

President Trump’s Justice Department has failed to charge the D.C. Sandwich Guy with a felony.  

On August 13, former DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn went viral for chucking a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent in D.C.’s popular U Street corridor. 

Dunn reportedly called the heavily armed officers “fucking fascists,” and yelled “I don’t want you in my city!” before chucking the wrapped sandwich straight at the CPB agent’s chest. The agent was obviously completely fine. Dunn fled but was caught, later saying, “I did it. I threw a sandwich.” The next night, Dunn was arrested at his apartment by multiple federal agents, a gaudy scene the Trump administration posted for all to see. 

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors failed to convince grand jurors that Dunn committed felony assault by throwing a sandwich. It’s unclear if they will pursue lower misdemeanor charges against Dunn, according to The New York Times. 

This is yet another embarrassing failure for the Justice Department, and the second in two days. On Tuesday, prosecutors gave up on charging D.C. woman Sidney Lori Reid with a felony after failing to convince three different grand juries that she deserved eight years in prison for allegedly placing herself between ICE agents and someone they were detaining. After being shoved against a wall by agents, prosecutors claimed Reid “forcibly pushed” an FBI agent’s arm off of her with the intent to injure the agent.

Federal prosecutors typically have success winning over grand juries due to the biased precedent towards the prosecution, and the fact that the defendant’s lawyers aren’t even allowed in the room. To fail twice, especially after making such a huge production out of Dunn’s arrest, signals that the Trump administration’s mission of prosecuting everyone to the fullest extent may backfire. 

President Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland is tearing at America’s strategic alliances.

Denmark’s foreign minister summoned its U.S. diplomat for talks Wednesday after news broke that several individuals with ties to Trump had been conducting an influence campaign in Greenland.

At least three Americans connected to the White House are involved in the campaign, according to unnamed government and security forces cited by Danish public broadcaster DR. It is not clear if the Americans are acting independently or on orders from the Trump administration.

One of the Americans reportedly compiled a list of denizens friendly to the U.S., collected the names of people who oppose Trump, and has conducted reconnaissance on narratives that could potentially frame Denmark in a bad light for sympathetic American media. The other two Americans have been cozying up to politicians, businesspeople, and locals, reported DR.

“We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement. “It is therefore not surprising if we experience outside attempts to influence the future of the Kingdom in the time ahead.”

“Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom will, of course, be unacceptable,” Løkke Rasmussen continued. 

Trump’s quest to conquer Greenland has become increasingly serious since he returned to the White House. In May, the president refused to rule out the possibility of taking Greenland by force. That same month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. intelligence community was conducting a spy campaign on the island, a directive that came from several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  

Greenlanders have not taken kindly to Trump and his associates’ sudden interest in acquiring their land. After months of heavy pressure from the Trump family, including an embarrassing stunt in which Donald Trump Jr. reportedly convinced homeless residents to wear MAGA merchandise in exchange for food, and an effort in the U.S. Congress to rename the territory to “Red, White, and Blueland,” Greenland’s various political parties set aside their differences in March to unite under a singular goal: opposing U.S. aggression.

“This [latest development] shows that the problem has by no means disappeared, and that it is still very much something that must be addressed,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) who focuses on transatlantic relations, told DR Wednesday. “It is very worrying.”

Amid escalations in Donald Trump’s use of lawfare against his political opponents, the president on Wednesday threatened to hit George Soros with charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO—citing long-running MAGA conspiracy theories about the Democratic megadonor.

On Truth Social Wednesday, Trump said George Soros and his son Alexander “should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”

Trump and his allies frequently claim that popular displays against their agenda must be the result of an astroturfed campaign—with George Soros often posited as the mastermind.

The Soros’s Open Society Foundations issued a statement in response to Trump’s threat. The philanthropy network does “not support or fund violent protests,” and the president’s remarks about its founder, George Soros, and chair, Alex Soros, are “outrageous,” the statement says.

Going back to 2018, Trump claimed that demonstrators against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination were “paid for by Soros and others.” Similar claims were touted by the MAGA right amid the Women’s March in 2017 and protests against police brutality in 2020.

More recently, Trump said constituents who spoke out at Republican town halls were “paid troublemakers.” Protesters against Trump’s ongoing federal takeover of Washington, D.C., were too, according to the president, bought by Democrats.

Conspiracy theories related to Soros came to the fore in particular during the June demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.

Trump repeatedly claimed protesters were “paid insurrectionists or agitators or troublemakers.” Meanwhile, MAGA social media circulated conspiracy-minded posts, such as photos of pallets of bricks (actually taken in New Jersey and Malaysia) as purported evidence of Soros-funded groups arming L.A. protesters with bricks “to be used by Democrat militants against ICE.”

Now, the president suggests such paranoid claims are sturdy enough to serve as the foundation for RICO charges. “Be careful, we’re watching you!” the president wrote, before signing off.

This story has been updated.

A group of Federal Emergency Management Administration staff who wrote a letter to Congress criticizing President Donald Trump—and who asked to be protected from “politically motivated firings”—have been suspended, likely for political reasons.

Thirty-six FEMA employees, including two who were involved in the federal response to deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer, received emails Tuesday saying they’d been placed on administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to The New York Times.

They were part of a group of 182 FEMA employees who signed a letter warning Congress that President Donald Trump’s efforts to “phase out” the agency could make way for another Hurricane Katrina-level environmental disaster. The rest of the signatories were anonymous.

The employees advocated that FEMA be removed from the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, and made into an independent Cabinet-level agency. The letter criticized faulty leadership, as well as the Trump administration’s decision to gut millions from essential programs related to climate change and resilience.

Notably, they’d asked for protection from “politically motivated firings.” FEMA’s former acting head Cameron Hamilton was fired in May after defending the agency.

While the employees who were suspended Tuesday night were not given a reason for the decision, the suspensions appear to be part of a wider trend in the Trump administration of weeding out dissidents.

In July, 144 staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency were placed on administrative leave after they signed and publicized a “declaration of dissent” against Administrator Lee Zeldin and the greater Trump administration.