Trump’s Crime Crackdown Is Based on Lies and Fear; the U.S. Supreme Court Is Asked to Reconsider Gay Marriage–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 11, 2025

Indy Digest: Aug. 11, 2025

About 15 years ago, when we lived in Tucson, the hubby and I were at a food-related event, about a 25-minute drive from our home. As we were in the process of leaving the event, we got a phone call from our home-alarm company.

It was not the first time we’d received such a call; a sensor had malfunctioned and triggered an alert a time or two. Several other times, our cats triggered an interior sensor. But this call was different: Our front door, living room and hallway sensors had all been triggered.

Someone had broken into our house.

We told the alarm-company to yes, please send the Tucson police. As we made the drive, we worried about what damage we’d find, what belongings would be missing, and whether our two indoor cats would be OK.

We were fortunate. After the burglar kicked in our door, he was apparently startled by the screeching alarms and didn’t stay long; the only thing that was missing was a jar of coins. The cats were still inside the house, safe and unphased by what had happened.

Financially, we lost $40 or so in change; we had to pay for a new door jamb; and we decided to invest in a new security door. If memory serves, I don’t think we even filed an insurance claim, given the expenses were not much more than the deductible.

But emotionally, the burglary left a mark. We were traumatized by the violent invasion of our space, our home.

Many of you have similar stories, and a lot of you have been the victims of crime that were much, much worse. Crime, unfortunately, happens to almost all of us, and it leaves a mark on almost all of us—and this is why it’s such an effective tool for politicians to use.

Unfortunately, because it’s so effective, it’s used often used dishonestly—and such is decidedly the case with what the president is doing right now in Washington, D.C. As reported by The Washington Post.

President Donald Trump announced Monday that he was placing the D.C. police under direct federal control and will deploy the National Guard to the streets of Washington to fight crime, an extraordinary flex of federal power that stripped city leadership of its ability to make law enforcement decisions and could expose residents of the nation’s capital to unpredictable encounters with a domestically deployed military force.

The decision to take over the D.C. police and deploy 800 National Guard troops comes as the president has been slamming America’s cities as places where crime is out of control, despite two years of declines that have brought homicide levels in many major cities to their lowest levels in decades.

Zeroing in on the specifics of the District of Columbia, USA Today points out: “Among major cities in the United States, Washington does have relatively high rates of violent crime and murder. But it has a much lower violent crime rate than some cities Trump hasn’t spotlighted, such as Memphis, Tennessee. In D.C., different types of crime tend to be concentrated in different parts of the city, and crime overall has been on a downward trend in recent years. The murder rate is far below its historic peak.”

Chillingly, Trump is threatening to make D.C. just the first city in which he’ll take militaristic action.

Axios notes: “President Trump temporarily placed Washington, D.C., police under federal control on Monday and implied that he would intervene in other cities despite crime rates falling. … Trump’s D.C. takeover is a major escalation of federal control not frequently seen in America, and further illustrates his willingness to target Democratic-led cities while testing the limits of presidential authority. While announcing the D.C. crackdown, Trump also named Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, New York and Chicago as cities that are ‘bad, very bad,’ without offering specific reasons why. He said D.C.’s crime rates and its homeless population are why he’s intervening in the nation’s Capital despite the Justice Department in January declaring violent crimes are at a 30-year low.”

The facts show, definitively and without a doubt, that what Trump is saying about crime is complete bullshit—but, hey, we’re not talking as much about tariffs, or the faltering economy, or the Epstein files, or any of the other things that are not going well right now for the Trump administration, are we?

Trump has shown, time and again, that he’s willing to do anything and everything he can to protect himself, consolidate power and further his interests—and his focus on crime is just the latest terrifying example.

As former Time magazine editor Richard Stengel notes: “Crime in DC is at a 30-year low. It’s not even in top 10 dangerous cities in US. Throughout history, autocrats use a false pretext to impose government control over local law enforcement as a prelude to a more national takeover. That’s far more dangerous than the situation he says he is fixing.”

—Jimmy Boegle

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More News

• Here’s yet another piece of evidence that RFK Jr. should be in prison, not running the Department of Health and Human Services. NBC News reports: “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers are voicing frustration over Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s past vaccine comments, following Friday’s shooting at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta that left one police officer dead. Although the motive of the suspected shooter—Patrick White, 30, from Kennesaw, Georgia—remains unknown, he told a neighbor that he believed the Covid vaccines had made him sick, a source told NBC News on the condition of anonymity. … For some employees, the shooting highlighted growing hostility toward public health officials, which they feel has been shaped by Kennedy’s long history of spreading vaccine misinformation, including the Covid vaccine. In 2021, Kennedy filed a citizens’ petition requesting that the Food and Drug Administration revoke the authorization of the Covid vaccines. The same year, he described the Covid shot as the ‘deadliest vaccine ever made.’ Just last week, Kennedy terminated 22 contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines—the same technology used to develop Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid shots. In an announcement on X, Kennedy claimed ‘mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.’”

• The U.S. Supreme Court may get the chance to revisit the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage later this year. Hoo boy. ABC News says: “Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision. Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds, is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees. In a petition for writ of certiorari filed last month, Davis argues First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from personal liability for the denial of marriage licenses. More fundamentally, she claims the high court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges—extending marriage rights for same-sex couples under the 14th Amendment’s due process protections—was ‘egregiously wrong.’”

• Also from ABC News: After the sudden closure of a newspaper company, a lot of small towns suddenly find themselves without a local news source. Please disregard the dangling clause in the third sentence: “Dozens of communities in the Midwest and West learned Thursday they had lost their newspapers after an Illinois-based publisher announced it would abruptly close because of financial problems. News Media Corp., which owns local newspapers across five states, said it will close 14 operations in Wyoming, seven in Illinois, five in Arizona, four in South Dakota and one in Nebraska. Touting itself as ‘the voice of small town America,’ NMC’s closure affects longtime newspapers that were often the primary source of news in numerous small towns, worsening the problem of news deserts in rural areas.“

• Trump’s tariffs are expected to cost U.S. households bigly, according to a new analysis. The Washington Post explains: “The higher tariffs, which businesses—not countries—pay to the federal government to import goods, are as high as 50 percent for Brazil and India, but just 15 percent for the European Union and Japan. For consumers, that escalation is expected to result in higher prices, costing households an average of $2,400 per year, according to estimates from the Budget Lab at Yale University. Americans are likely to face large markups on clothing in the coming months, including a 39 percent increase in prices for leather shoes and bags, and a 37 percent jump in clothing costs, the research center found. Even after long-run supply chain adjustments and buying shifts, those prices could remain elevated by nearly 20 percent.”

• Our partners at Calmatters explain how Californians could soon start getting electricity from fossil fuels again—and why that may not totally be a bad thing: “California spent decades building one of the greenest power grids on Earth. It ditched coal, cut fossil fuels, and built so much solar it now runs the world’s second-largest battery fleet to keep clean power flowing after dark. Now lawmakers are poised to tie that grid to coal-burning states. With electricity prices rising and pressure to keep the lights on, California is racing to create an expanded power market with other Western utilities to trade vast amounts of electricity. An expanded market could include climate-aligned states such as Oregon and Washington but potentially also coal-burning ones such as Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. Supporters said the proposal cuts costs and keeps the grid stable by letting providers trade energy more freely—particularly at peak times of need, like heat waves. They said expanded trading will help renewable energy proliferate as it competes with fossil fuels. But the plan has split California’s environmental and consumer groups. Backers said it’s key to selling the state’s solar power to others, which would help bring bills down. Opponents said it’s too risky, leaving the state exposed as President Donald Trump pushes markets toward coal and gas.”

• Today’s recall news involves … soap! Fast Company explains: “New Jersey-based DermaRite Industries has announced a voluntary recall of individual lots of soap and skincare products due to microbial contamination, which has been identified as Burkholderia cepacia, the company said last week. The bacterium can cause serious and life-threatening infections. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a recall announcement on August 9. Impacted products include over-the-counter (OTC) antiseptic lotion soaps, external analgesics, antimicrobial foam soaps, and antiseptic cleansers. … The recalled products were distributed nationwide in the United States and Puerto Rico. … Burkholderia cepacia can cause serious, life-threatening infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While healthy individuals with minor skin lesions are only likely to experience local infections, people with weakened immune systems are more at risk.”

• And finally … the Los Angeles Times tells the fascinating tale of Jason Hong’s airplane: It keeps getting stolen and flown to different Southern California airports—and it is even sometimes repaired. A snippet: “The first time he discovered it missing, Hong reported it to Corona police, unsure that he’d ever see the plane he’s owned for nearly 30 years again. After all, he thought, who steals an entire plane? Then on the morning of July 29, he got a call from La Verne Police, telling him his plane was found in Brackett Field Airport. ‘There’s my airplane, sitting there in the airport,’ Hong said, finding cigarette butts and garbage strewn about in the cockpit. He barely took time to process what happened when, frustrated, he decided to pull out the battery from the plane, close it up, and go home. The plane wouldn’t start without the battery, he figured, and he could come back the next weekend when he had time to clean and inspect it. Except that, when he returned that Sunday, Aug. 3, the plane had vanished again. Hong reported the plane missing again with La Verne Police, and wondered what was going on. It wasn’t long before he got another call. This time, El Monte Police told him his plane was sitting at San Gabriel Valley Airport. When Hong got there to inspect his plane, his confusion only grew. ‘I found it with a battery,’ he said.”

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