Trump’s ‘Law and Order’ Crackdown on D.C., and Silicon Valley Embraces the Pentagon

0:00I'm Dan Barry and I'm a longtime reporter with the New York Times. I've been here for 30 years and I've seen a lot of things change. I was here before there was a website. But one thing hasn't changed at all and that's the mission of the New York Times. To follow the facts wherever they lead. And if that means publishing something a government or a leader or a celebrity doesn't want aired, that's not our concern. If you believe in the importance of fact-driven reporting, you can support it by becoming a New York Times subscriber.

0:33From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 12th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45Are you worried this is going to be a complete disaster? I'm going to work every day to make sure it's not a complete disaster. Let me put it that way. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser says she's going to be closely watching to see how President Trump's promised crackdown on the city will play out. Trump announced yesterday that he's seizing federal control of the city's police force and sending hundreds of National Guard troops to fight what he called totally out of control crime. While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past that we're totally surprised.

1:28This is Liberation Day in D.C. and we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back. At a press conference yesterday, Trump painted a picture of D.C. as an urban hellscape and said he was invoking a 1970s law that gives the president the power to take over the district's police department for up to 30 days. Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people. And we're not going to let it happen anymore. We're not going to take it. Trump's apocalyptic description of D.C., though, ignored the fact that violent crime there has dropped sharply since the pandemic and is now at a 30-year low.

2:10And as of earlier this year, the level of homelessness has also declined. Details of the president's plan were still being worked out even as he made his announcement. And it's not clear, for example, what will happen to the homeless people Trump vowed to clear out or where exactly in D.C. the National Guard troops will be deployed. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone. The president also suggested that he could turn his attention to other Democrat-led cities next.

2:46Earlier this summer, Trump deployed nearly 5 ,000 National Guard troops, along with active-duty Marines, to L.A. after protests erupted over immigration raids there. Political scientists and military experts the Times interviewed said the deployments Trump has ordered show how he's increasingly drawing the country's armed forces into partisan political issues. One expert told the Times that Trump sees the military as a, quote, one-size-fits-all solution as he tries to accomplish his domestic political priorities.

3:26looking at how the Pentagon, under President Trump, has been strengthening its ties to Silicon Valley. The U.S. Army has created a new unit, Detachment 201, that it says will, quote, fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.

3:47And this summer, four current and former executives at Meta, OpenAI, and the data giant Palantir were sworn in at a ceremony to serve in the unit.

4:02For years, a close partnership between the military and Silicon Valley was really out of the question. They put language into their terms, which specified that they would not do work with the military. So you really saw a turning away from the defense establishment. Shira Frankel covers the tech industry for The Times. She says now the tech world has instead plunged headfirst into the military-industrial complex. OpenAI is making anti-drone tech. Meta is making virtual reality glasses to train soldiers for battle. And companies like Google, which used to have specific policies banning the use of its AI and weapons, have dropped those.

4:42There isn't one specific reason that these companies are now rushing towards defense tech, but a few different factors are involved. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which relied heavily on new technology like AI-backed military systems and drones have shown that new defense technology will be crucial for any modernized military. The Trump administration has said they want to invest heavily in new defense technology. And the new budget that was recently passed earmarks over a trillion dollars, much of it for new defense tech. Silicon Valley has always been about chasing what's new on the scene, and right now that's defense technology.

5:19None of these companies, from the really big ones like Meta and Google, to the smallest startups, want to be left behind. Shira says the new focus on military technology is, in many ways, a return to Silicon Valley's roots. The Defense Department was the first major backer of tech companies in the region, stretching back to the Cold War.

5:43Now, two more updates on the Trump administration. President Trump is buying more time as his negotiators try and reach a deal with the country's largest trading partner, China. He signed an executive order late last night extending a trade truce with the country. That'll keep tariffs on most Chinese goods around 30 percent. That's still much higher than when he took office, but nowhere near the eye-popping levels that he originally threatened. Trump said the negotiations have been going, quote, quite nicely, though there are still a number of sticking points, including the president's last-minute demand that China quadruple its purchase of American soybeans.

6:22The talks are now set to continue for another 90 days until the new deadline in early November. Also, President Trump has announced his new pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just weeks after he fired the previous commissioner when the agency published data showing weak job growth. Trump called the report rigged. The firing set off a wave of criticism from economists who warned that officials could now feel pressure only to release data that makes the White House look good, and that could erode the agency's credibility. Trump's new nominee for the position is E.J. Antony, who's currently chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025 and other right-wing initiatives.

7:09Announcing Antony's nomination, Trump wrote, Our economy is booming and EJ will ensure that the numbers released are honest and accurate. And Tony will need to be confirmed by the Senate.

7:27Across the country, a handful of state and local governments are trying to help tackle a little-known issue affecting Americans who show up for jury duty. People who are called up and sit for days or weeks of a trial can often be exposed to deeply disturbing information. They're asked to listen closely to testimony about horrific experiences and to scrutinize sometimes grisly photos and videos. They also can't talk about what they're going through with anyone while the trial is ongoing, not even their fellow jurors. One woman, who was an alternate juror on a case involving the murder of two children in New York, told the Times, quote, all I could do was go to the movies after the day ended, sit in a dark theater, and cry.

8:09Over the course of trials, mental health experts say jurors can develop secondary traumatic stress, also known as vicarious trauma. One study found that as many as 50 percent of jurors who served on difficult cases experienced symptoms like anxiety, sleep issues, or feeling emotionally drained. For some people, those symptoms lasted years. Jurors in federal trials can qualify for free counseling, but now lawmakers at the state and local levels are trying to expand those kinds of services. Philadelphia, for example, recently rolled out a post-trial counseling program for jurors that draws on the same techniques used to provide emotional support to emergency medical workers after they've encountered a traumatic situation.

9:00And finally. It was fiery orange with a blue tail and just coming straight down. Earlier this summer, people in the southern U.S. reported a mysterious fireball. It lit up the sky over South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. Some witnesses say it felt like an earthquake. Scientists scrambled to figure out what it was. They ultimately determined it was a meteor. And it turns out one Georgia resident got a really up-close look. A fragment of the space rock about the size of a cherry tomato punched through the roof of his house south of Atlanta. A geologist at the University of Georgia, who's been studying the sample since it was recovered, just announced the space rock that hit the house appears to be older than the Earth itself.

9:46The debris apparently missed the homeowner by about 14 feet. He told the geologist he's still finding space of space dust around his living room. And while that may have been a close call, there have been closer. In 1954, a nine-pound meteorite went through the roof of a home in Alabama. It bounced off a large radio and struck a woman, leaving her with bruises, but nothing worse than that. That's believed to be the only documented collision on record of a meteor actually hitting a human. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, more on what President Trump's plans for D.C. could mean for other cities across the country.

10:27You can find that in the Listen tab of the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.